Capturing Simpson Cottage through a velvety lens

I’m not sure why or how time flies the way it does but somehow we are nearing the close of another year. 2023 has been full of surprises – good, bad and some a bit icky but hey that is pretty much the same for all of us right? 

Recently we were thrilled to host one of Australia’s best known Sports Photographers Delly Carr and his wife Leeane; as part of a road trip sponsored by Subaru Australia.

Sports photography is a complete contrast to the Simpson Cottage approach to enjoy a ‘slow life’. Athletes are generally focussed on speed and technique. They pour their heart and soul into gaining an edge and try to squeeze everything they can out of their body. Every nano second counts and an athlete is always focussed on not letting any moment in time escape because that could be the difference between winning or not.  Capturing the winning shot of the olympic swim meet is not unlike that winning moment; everything has to go right and there’s a ton of other people chasing the same prize.

 

So, I’m ashamed to say I’d pigeon holed Delly and his photography style, I foolishly assumed that as sports photographer he’d always take razor sharp images. After all, the shots of athletes with muscles perfectly defined like a Michael Angelo sculpture suspended in mid air as they cross the finish line are the bread and butter of a sports photographer and always perfectly focussed.

The aim of any photographer is to capture THE moment and tell a story in a photo of a moment frozen in time. In the case of sports photography, capturing the story of the blood, sweat and tears it took get to the finish line – or even the start line – the agony and ecstasy of their journey are nearly always told via images with razor sharp focus is the goal

So I assumed that’s what Delly would deliver…and I couldn’t have been more wrong. Delly sent a Dropbox with ‘fuzzy’ photos…don’t get me wrong I loved them at first sight. They were soft and romantic, they captured tiny snippets of the Cottage and they spoke of a bygone era. The romantic in me “got it” but my narrow-minded expectations and my fear of miss-representing him were so strong that at the risk of insulting him, I went back to Delly to double check I had downloaded the images properly. I must have come across as a complete idiot but in my defence, my photography skills are bordering on non-existent. I know enough to be dangerous and not enough to be useful but, to my relief Delly patiently explained how he’d achieved the images and that he didn’t want to take the obligatory shots and instead has delivered HIS take and interpretation of Simpson Cottage and the slow life we love so much.

       

Delly is the first photographer to interpret and tell the story of Simpson Cottage by capturing textures and tiny snippets of the cottage through his velvety lens.

I’ll let the images tell the story but I’ve come to the conclusion that;

1. I need to work on my assumptions of people; and, 

2. people who spend much of their time in the fast lane are the perfect match, and a dose of the Simpson Cottage slow life is just what they need. Especially talented sports photographers.

   

Words by Tara Larnach

Images by Delly Carr