Week 9 ~ A Childhood Memory

I struggled in the lead up to this theme. What childhood memory to portray and how to portray it? As always, I like to try something new to really push my own creative boundaries. I started by looking through some old family photos, the discoloured 70's variety. Can I suggest, if you have old family photos in those 'magnetic' albums - the slightly sticky backed pages with plastic over-sheet type - to remove your photos before they discolour and become completely stuck to the pages. This is particularly important if there are details written on the backs of the photos; you won't be able to cleanly remove the photos, and not only will you risk not being able to read the notes on the back of the photos, you also risk damaging the photos themselves. The worst thing for your old photos is to leave them in the magnetic albums that were so fashionable during that time, instead here are some suggestions for storing your older photographs.

Back to the photo. I have seen the photo held within another photo around the web and I've always liked the concept but never really had an opportunity to try it. So while I was looking through old family photos and looking for inspiration, I came across this photo of my dad swimming in Cattai Creek at Mitchell Park. It had been an age since I'd visited Mitchell Park, so last weekend I headed out there to try and find the spot where this would have been taken. I was a little shocked at the condition of the park. It's terribly overgrown and certainly not the place to go and have a family picnic the way we once did all those years ago. I'm hoping that it's because we've had a ridiculous amount of rain and not because the National Park and Wildlife Services have decided to stop maintaining it altogether.

Back in the 70's, Mitchell Park was a great place to spend the day with family and friends. There were BBQs, trail rides, the creek to swim in, an in-ground pool (my preferred choice), a kiosk, open parkland to kick a ball, and bushwalks. Today, well, there's lots of very tall grass, no pool, no kiosk, and I only saw one picnic shelter. There was only one other couple and they were packing up their kayaks and heading off. I remember Mitchell Park as being a vibrant noisy place, with lots of families enjoying the great outdoors. Last week, was a very different experience. Of course with all the rain experienced in the Hawkesbury region this week, I would imagine that a lot of Mitchell Park would be totally waterlogged.

Re-visiting old memories don't always yield the results you expect. And that of course can be both good and bad.
 

Other images from the day. The effect was achieved in-camera.