Summer Afternoon in the City

I went for a walk around the city this afternoon. The weather was beautiful - one of those nice Melbourne summer days which wasn't hot, but wasn't a cloudy and breezy "cool change day" either. Sunny and mild and just right.

I'd been wanting to go for a sunset or evening walk - because low light photography is generally much more interesting to me than daylight - but because of daylight savings it would simply be too late. By the time I'd get back and process the photos and put them up, it would be pushing midnight, and I want to have an early and relaxing evening at home tonight.

The walk took me from Chinatown towards the west end of the CBD, and then across the river and back home on the east side of the CBD. Had some fun with filters and post-processing too!

Graffiti in Chinatown

Chinatown and City Skyline

Red Walls and Red Lanterns

Merry Christmas (Cross Process filter)

Merry Christmas (Dramatic Tone filter)

Flinders Street Station

Melbourne Skyline (Watercolor filter)

Weird Statue Against Sky

Buildings and Trees I

Buildings and Trees II

Hospitality December

I just realised that I haven't blogged in a month. It's been an incredibly busy December at work. Truth be told, I actually don't even know where the month went. It was all a bit of a blur of night shifts and weird, hazy, unproductive, sleep-deprived days.

The big news is: I'm travelling to the US for a month in January! Planning this trip was part of what made December extra busy and surreal, but of course, work was what took the bulk of the time and energy.

The main impetus for this trip is to meet up with some special people over there, one of whom I met earlier in the year in Beijing, and another whom I'll be meeting for the first time. And then I'm taking the rest of the month to travel around the country solo - including crossing it by train. It promises to be quite the adventure!

I won't be taking my proper camera. As much as it's very tempting, it's also quite hard. I want to travel light, not look like too much of a "tourist", and not end up spending the whole trip behind the lens of a camera. I'll still have my smartphone though, which is perfectly adequate for holiday snaps.

So, it's Christmas Eve, and I'm off to work soon. Luckily, I picked up all the public holiday days that are coming up. So even though work is totally insane, at least it'll be a nice and productive ten days coming up.

Back to the grind....

Day Trip to Geelong

For some time now, I've been wanting to go to Geelong and take dusk and night photos of the waterfront. So today I had a day off and decided to go on a little day trip down there.

On the way there, I stopped in at Little River. I was hoping to take some photos of the You Yangs, but it didn't really work out. It was raining heavily and I couldn't really get away from the railway station, and the hills are actually further away and not as well placed to be photographed from there as I expected.

On the bright side, the weather turned out to be quite interesting for photography: it started off stormy and rainy and dramatic on my way down to Geelong (and while I was in Little River), and then by the time I got there it stopped raining and was just cloudy and dull. But then just before sunset it cleared up and turned quite spectacular - with the late afternoon sun lighting up storm clouds from behind, and bathing the waterfront in clear, post-rain afternoon light. Not sure if many of the photos do it justice. But anyhow - they are all in chronological order, so you can see how the weather and colours changed as the afternoon went along.

The most interesting feature of the Geelong waterfront right now is a giant metallic Christmas tree installation floating on the water next to the pier. Normally I'm not into Christmas stuff like that - I tend to find it kitschy - but this one actually works quite well. Both as a nice metallic statue-like thing on the water in the day time, as well as a light show at night time.

I got home well past 11pm. I love the daylight savings and the long evenings, but they sure can make night photography difficult! Especially when there is a bit of a trip to be made to and from a location. On the plus side - I'm starting a string of night shifts tonight, so it actually pays to be going to bed very early this morning, to get in the rhythm!

Stormy Little River I

Stormy Little River II

Stormy Little River III

Geelong Pier

Christmas Tree And Pier

Christmas Tree And Sailor Statues

East End Of Waterfront

You Yangs From Across Corio Bay

Afternoon Sunshine Breaks Through I

Afternoon Sunshine Breaks Through II

Afternoon Sunshine Breaks Through III

Late Afternoon Christmas Tree And Pier

Random Jetty

Sunset Over Geelong

Boats In The Harbour

Christmas Tree - Green Light

Christmas Tree And Pier By Night

Christmas Tree - Red Light

Christmas Tree - View From Pier

Christmas Tree Light Show

Christmas Tree From The Road

Southbank: Behind The Scenes

It's funny how some places are well known for a certain facade, but we never really see them from "behind the scenes". Southbank in Melbourne is one of those places. We all know its riverfront promenades, and the view of it from Melbourne city just across the river, but until tonight, I'd never really considered taking a walk around its back streets.

I can sort of see why nobody would think to photograph Southbank from anywhere but the riverfront (or from across the river). The back streets are mostly a jumble of freeway intersections, tall buildings, construction sites, and are generally a bit deserted and unfriendly for walking around, let alone get nice sweeping views of........anything really!

Nevertheless, when going through my photos from tonight's walk, I was surprised how well a lot of them turned out (I thought I'd be doing a lot more deleting than I did!). What seemed like quite boring and drab street scenes at the time actually made for some rather nice-looking urban night scenery.

Admittedly, towards the end of the photo series, the locations aren't really what people would generally think of as Southbank. The area around the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and the Arts Centre are usually thought of as part of Melbourne city itself. But technically I think they're in Southbank, or at least mark the boundary of it.

I walked from west to east, from the back end of Crown, right through to the NGV. The following photos are all in order of the walk.

Crown Taxi Rank

Crown Metropol Hotel

View Of Melbourne From Behind Crown

Random Southbank Alleyway

Southbank Construction

Southbank Apartment Blocks

Crown Promenade and Crown Towers from Southbank Backstreets

Southbank Backstreet Street Scene

Arts Centre

NGV Water Feature I

NGV Water Feature II

View of Southbank From St Kilda Road

Full Moon And Clouds Over Melbourne

I've been working day shifts for the last three days. Today is the last one and I'm back on night shift tomorrow and Saturday, so tonight I decided to have a nice long evening. To try to stay up as long as possible so I can sleep in tomorrow and get into the groove of the night shift routine again.

One tiny drawback of working day shifts (while simultaneously the days are getting quite long) is that it's been hard to go out for any night photography after work this week. So tonight was my first chance.

I picked a pretty good evening too: there was a big moon and some scattered mid-level clouds. I kinda wish that I went out earlier, to catch the sunset as well, but the results of the later twilight photography have been interesting enough!

Impressions of Seymour

I had a day off work today, so I randomly went to Seymour.

It's been a while since I've done one of these little public transport daytrips into the countryside, so this morning I decided it was time to do one. I had no idea where I was going initially - I simply went to the main train station and jumped on the next train that was heading out of town. I ended up in Seymour simply because it was as far as my Melbourne public transport smart card goes on that line at the moment.

Seymour turned out to be the quintessential Victorian country town. More or less exactly as I expected. The biggest surprise was the number of military artifacts and monuments scattered around town - I later learned that this is due to the nearby Puckanpunyal military base.

Other than this, there were the usual (quite expected) signs of rural decay - small businesses that seem to be struggling, or outright abandoned. But other than a few isolated signs of this, the town is quite pretty and scenic. It's right in the middle of the Goulburn Valley and has some nice river views in places.

I mostly walked around the town centre and through some parkland by the Goulburn River. It was refreshing to come face to face with farm animals, and generally get my head out of the city for the afternoon!

Seymour Town Centre I

Seymour Town Centre II

Flowers And Plane Trees

Tank

Military Chopper

Decaying "D"

Peeling Paint And Sky

Overgrown Gate Lock

Abandoned Windmill

Goulburn River I

Goulburn River II

Cows

Goulburn River Reflections

"No Horses On Footway"