Mary Livingston - Column

Juggling your day job with the Gobi Desert

By resident contributor: Mary Livingston

So photography is your passion too? Every waking moment you are aware of the light and the weather, shape and form, tone .... and the morning looks divine....but there are 100 other things you have to do, like work; attend meetings or feed children; things that cannot be delegated or ignored. And the weekend? Well that's miles off. So whenever I read an article by some well meaning photographer earnestly advising that midday is not really a good time of day for the best results (ie my lunch break time) and that golden hours are the best light for landscapes (ie breakfast and dinner time for hungry kids) my heart generally sinks as the opportunity to become the next Ansell Adams slips further from my grasp. And of course they may well be right but what can you do if the luxury of free time is rarely available to you?

Over the last few years I have learnt that just as the best camera is the one you have with you at the time, the best photograph is the one you are able to take in the conditions of the moment, whatever they are. It just requires more thought, and a different attitude to make the most of it. If you can't go to the Gobi Desert (a place I would absolutely love to experience), you must simply make it come to you. Its lunchtime now and I grab my camera for a walkabout in the city. The day looks uninspiringly overcast and a flat grey pervades.

It is cold and the mood on the street is one of hurried jostling rather than sunny lingering. A glass half empty sort of a day. Already I am noticing the effect of the conditions on people as they go by. Their jaws look set and their eyes unseeing. The buildings are muted with no contrasting outlines.

I am almost ready to give in...the writer guy was correct. But then I start to see things that I just would not notice on a better day. An unassuming doorway with a bulb hanging in it like a glow worm trying to entice in customers; exquisite detail in the stonework of a wall that I have never noticed before; the shape of a building from yesteryear that is tired and unloved alongside shiny newer ones; the reflections in windows that are silver monochrome.

Before I know it, the lunch hour has screamed past and I have a bunch of abstract, conceptual, new topographic movement and ICM images from the street that I can't wait to get to in the evening on my computer.

Sometimes this sort of excursion stimulates entirely new ideas. Other times it gets me thinking of returning to the same spot under completely different conditions or trying a new genre. Either way it has been a fantastic break and a chance to gain more insight and practice in this fascinating craft and its sense of infinity.

I have learnt to be in the moment and see what the day will gift to me. I have learnt how to adapt, no matter the conditions and embrace them as opportunities. These are essential life-time skills and I am happy because I return to work refreshed for the afternoon. All of the images I have shared with you here are from these sorts of urban midday walkabouts.

They are among some of my favourite images. The Gobi Desert can wait. For now, the glass is half full again and by the weekend it will be brimming.

What more could I ask for?