Swan Lake Photography

Shakespeare have written more about birds than any other poet in western literature like the glorious swan, 
quote via shakespeare-online.com

Swan at Lake Wendouree, Victoria Australia Spring 2011

  

For all the water in the ocean
Can never turn the swan's black legs to white,
Although she lave them hourly in the flood.
(Titus Andronicus 4.2.103-5)

With this, we charged again: but, out, alas!
We bodged again; as I have seen a swan
With bootless labour swim against the tide
And spend her strength with over-matching waves.
(3 King Henry 6 1.4.19-22)

And wheresoever we went, like Juno's swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparable
(As You Like It 1.3.73-4)

What did thy song bode, lady?
Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan.
And die in music.
(Othello 5.2.284-5)

Go thither; and, with unattainted eye,
Compare her face with some that I shall show,
And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.
(Romeo and Juliet 1.2.88-90)

Mushroom or Toadstool Photography

"If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools."

- Katherine Mansfield; New Zealand-born British Author (1888-1923)

Groundbreaking Fabulous Fungus Toadstool!

A great umbrella design Toadstool mate!

Twin Toadstooling Each Other :-)

Toadstool Rising from the Dead!

 A toadstool macro taken at Wendouree Lake, Victoria Australia in Autumn 2011.

Some of us would have loved and experienced hiking-mountain when we were young and fascinated picking mushrooms that we have learned from our folks "what not to pick" when it comes to mushroom or toadstool. We have heard true stories of our tribes who have eaten toadstool and they felt sick or some even intoxicated by it due to ignorance and curiosity.  Whenever I see mushrooms or toadstools they'd surely remind me when I used to go with my playmates when we were young and picking mushrooms up the mountain in the Philippines. In case we go home late, we had reasons to bring home foods for dinner and not being scolded by our parents lol... an exotic mushrooms straight from the abundance of nature.  

Edward "Ned Kelly" Museum at Glenrowan

Have you heard of one of the notorious bushrangers Edward Ned Kelly in Australia from the 1880's onwards? What is all behind the metal mask of Ned Kelly? If you have watched the "Wild Boys" recently aired on the Prime 7 TV show 2011 (although Ned Kelly was not included in the scene series), it surely reminds us part pf the Australian history how it has been a corrupted law society while it was under the British law in Australia and so some who are behind their social masks played notoriously against each other in the Land Down Under. At least Ned Kelly has an obvious metal mask, what about those who have social mask but behind it, is even more dangerous? 

"We all have a social mask, right? 

We put it on, we go out, put our best foot forward, our best image.

But behind that social mask is a personal truth, 

what we really, really believe about who we are and 

what we're capable of." ~Phil McGraw

Ironoutlaw.com put it together that "Ned Kelly is listed in the top 100 of the world’s most influential Irish and Australia’s best-known historical figure, he deserves his place in the pages of history. He is world's first feature film made in Australia in 1906, 'The Story of the Kelly Gang' has been added to a United Nations heritage register, joining a list of fewer than 200 items on UNESCO's Memory of the World register, including the family archives of Swedish philanthropist Alfred Nobel and the official trial records of Nelson Mandela." More information about him via ironoutlaw.com

Brian in front of the Buffalo Mountain Wines, Glenrowan Victoria Australia

"You can fake your age or mask it, 

but the passion that moves the characters has to be real."
~by Victoria Abril

"Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word but the naked terror? 

To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion."
~ by Joseph Conrad

A verse from one of Joe’s songs:     My name is Ned Kelly,
    I’m known adversely well.
    My ranks are free,
    my name is law,
    Wherever I do dwell.
    My friends are all united,
    my mates are lying near.
    We sleep beneath shady trees,
    No danger do we fear.

"I wouldn't say one is easier or more difficult, but when you're inside a costume and a mask, you have to endure heat - and, often, difficulty seeing. The vision is not very good in a mask. And you have to cope with that, as well as trying to think about this character."
~ by Warwick Davis

"The freedom to connect to the world anywhere at anytime brings with it the threat of unscrupulous predators and criminals who mask their activities with the anonymity the Internet provides to its users."
~by Mike Fitzpatrick

"Life is too short to spend hoping that the perfectly arched eyebrow or hottest new lip shade 

will mask an ugly heart." ~by Kevyn Aucoin