Great great aunts and uncles etc, out on a picnic in the bush, a favourite Australian pastime. From a large glass plate negative.

Several decades later, my forebears again, this time doing it by car. Hmm, things have got a little less formal.

I love the feeling of space within this photograph. Its a beautiful composition. This genuine wide format negative gives a sense of the group surrounding you and yet the depth of field is marvelously shallow. There is one critically sharp point of focus in the middle of the group not obvious in this j-pegged version. It was taken by a bellows camera that obviously had a large friendly piece of glass on the front of it. Perhaps lenses have become too technically perfect. My grandmother did all her own developing and made contacts prints from her glass plates and roll-film negatives using the sun as her printing light in between helping to run a sheep station.

Me! Frustrated with the lack of animated action on the home front, the little tike packs his bags and decides to leave home. Intending to work his passage shoveling coal on a slow steam ship to the States, he arrives just in time to assist Disney with the final reel of Fantasia.