Goodbye 2015

I haven't made any New Year's Resolutions for the past couple of years, and I'm not at all inspired to do so this year either. After all - years are just arbitrary numbers on a calendar - and the cycles are not always in tune with good timeframes for planning to achieve stuff, etc.

Still, there are plenty of both natural as well as societal things that come in yearly cycles, and - arbitrary calendar or not - around this time I like to reflect a bit on what happened over the previous year. As well as look at what's coming up in the New Year.

2015 was a pretty good year to me. There was quite a lot of awesome travel, lovely new friendships/connections in my social/"dating" life, and work has been relatively good and flexible around it all. I've been slightly underemployed at times, and we'll see what early 2016 brings in that regard, but for the moment I think it should be fine. I'm quite loving my whole work to live lifestyle, and am not tempted to make an attempt at getting back into a proper fulltime "career" just now, but who knows what the longer term future might bring....

The biggest change that is definitely coming for me in 2016 is that I'll be moving into my parents' apartment to house sit - from February until late in the year sometime. They are going on a massive trip around the world, and the overall situation involved just doesn't lend itself to leasing the place out. This should work pretty well, since my costs will be lower while I'll still get to live on my own, as well as still be based quite centrally, and in quite a nice apartment.

Other than this, there are no other huge plans just yet. There'll definitely be some local travel adventures, and possibly a bigger overseas one if things time well with when my parents are overseas in an interesting place where I can crash with them, but that possibility is still extremely vague.

So anyway, not much to say here, just another rambling end of year reflection post!

Happy 2016 to everyone!!

January - Grand Canyon, USA

February - Lunar New Year at Crown

March - Flinders Island

April - Fitzroy Street Art

May - Last Light at Birrarung Marr

June - Melbourne Street Art

July - Sunset in St Kilda

August - Last Light at Treasury Gardens

September - RJ Hamer Arboretum

October - Evening on Swanston Street

November - Toora Wind Farm

December - Sunset Light over Melbourne

Up And Down The Yarra At Boxing Day

So today was the official Boxing Day public holiday. The way it works around here is that if a holiday falls on a weekend, the public holiday gets moved to the next weekday - so Saturday's "Boxing Day" (26th December) became a public holiday Monday here...

I was actually hoping to work today, but since I didn't manage to pick up any shifts, I thought I'd make the most of the day by going out on a fairly big-ish photo walk.

I ended up walking up and down the Yarra River, all the way down to Heyington Bridge on the south bank, and back up to the city along the north bank. It was a fairly epic walk in the scheme of things - but given my generally good level of fitness (for low-exertion exercise!) these days - it doesn't really feel like it was all that huge. My biggest regret is that I didn't consider sun protection before taking this endeavour on - and now I'm a bit burned!

The photos from this walk are nothing particularly special - just scenery from the walk itself (including a bit of casual macro photography). A big chunk of this walk is far enough out of the city centre to be away from the tourist trail, so it was actually very quiet and peaceful - and the suburbs in those parts (especially along the south bank) are very leafy and pretty indeed.

Anyway, here is a selection of some nice pics from the walk....

Christmas Eve in Docklands

I had the evening off work tonight, so I decided to go to "Harbour Town" shopping centre in Docklands and catch the sunset and nightfall from there. The top level of the carpark over there has some nice views, and it seemed like a great night to do this.

It turned out that the views to the west are obscured by buildings, so as the sun went down I had to run out to the main Docklands esplanade to catch the sunset - which was relatively spectacular and worthwhile to catch. And then I came back for the views of the CBD from the carpark again as night fell.

So that's the flow of the pics: the first pic is the pre-sunset view of the city from the top of the Harbour Town carpark. Then the harbour sunset views are from the esplanade down in Docklands itself, and then the later elevated nightfall pics of the city are once again from the Harbour Town carpark.

NOTE: The higher levels of the carpark tend to be closed by security later in the evening as they empty out. So please beware that you might not be able to get to the top (roof) level at all times.

Pre-sunset City View

Abandoned Shopping Trolley

Sunset Reflection

Sunset Over Docklands I

Sunset Under Bolte Bridge

Night Falling On Melbourne I

Night Falling On Melbourne II

Night Falling On Melbourne III

Melbourne Star

Night Falling On Melbourne IV

Melbourne Cool Change, 20th December 2015

The last few days here in Melbourne saw quite a nasty heat wave, and today a classic cool change came through - thunderstorms and frontal clouds and all (as well as a massive drop in temperature, whew!)!

Sometimes, these changes are accompanied by quite spectacular storms and roll clouds, but unfortunately today's wasn't quite as dramatic as they can be. Still, some of the photos came out quite interesting.

I've fiddled with the gradation and contrast with some of these to take the glare off the clouds, but most of them are fairly unedited and true to life. Except for the one with the "Dramatic Tone" filter of course, that's where I went all out messing around with the filter effects.

City from Batman Avenue

Dramatic Tone filter

View from Sidney Myer Music Bowl

Alexandra Avenue

Storm Clouds Over City I

Storm Clouds Over City II

Storm Clouds Over City III

Storm Clouds Over Southbank