I don’t usually recommended photo “”contests”, because so many of them are borderline scams, but I’ve checked the TOS (term of entry) and they don’t pretend to own the rights to anything you submit, copyright remains yours). So this one is safe to enter.
The once very civilized Windsor Hotel over shadowed by progress
I went into town to submit my carbon footprint painting and took some photo for my daily post but everywhere I photographed there was an advert for Matilda. Eventually I reached the theatre, a very grand Victorian ediface and unbelievably on the café strip outside the theatre there where no placards for the show just people enjoying the day and lunch.
Even though I was still half asleep and had not put in my contact lenses, I couldn't help but notice the magnificent sunrise. So I quickly grabbed my camera, despite being dark and not being able to see clearly I was able to get the camera in Exposure Priority and dial up what I thought might have been a higher ISO (I got both right) But I could tell the exposure would be way to slow (ie 1/4 second) to be hand held (click on the image on the right to see how blurry the resulting photo turned out). I didn’t even check the screen and cranked the aperture wheel down a few notches (not knowing or being able to see). These sounded better, possible quick enough, and I took a couple of overlapping images to make a panorama..
The exercise of using your camera without looking at the dials, and just taking the picture is highly recommended. (Even in the Dark)
The PrincessTheatre has a colourful history, and possibly its own ghost, but in the winter sunlight she puts on a fine facade. perfect for a couple of HDR photos.e 
Even on a chilly cold day, you can still find glimpses of green among the strong verticals in the Melbourne CBD. Both Autoawesomes from Google+, I might have otherwise overlooked.
was always going to be a challenge. Melbournians are renowned for just wearing black, and particularly so in winter. Then there’s the fact that all out festivals are in the warmer months. Today was the aftermath of the world cup and sport is the true religion of Melbourne so I thought there might be a chance there. Seems all of the German fans where celebrating somewhere else and no other team colours to be seen. Then I had the brilliant thought since it is also Bastille Day, plenty of good food on offer (another Melbourne passion), I figured there might be a little bit of France around to photograph so I headed for the current production of Les Misérables. No luck there either BUT China Town was decked out in its colourful finery, but I could not find what was being celebrated. Perhaps it is just being a long standing part of Melbourne life.
I tried out a little experiment as I was in the city to go the princes theatre to see “The King & I” which was a great production. Anyway on the way the wet city streets begged to be photographed but I only had my phone. So I took a couple of photos with HDR Camera+. Next as I waited for the train home I played the Pixlr app creative filters to make the image on the right and then I created a blog post, using a Blogger android app, expecting to be able to utilize the WiFi at the station. However after a lot of non action and spinner on the screen I eventually got a message that the server wasn’t available. However when I got home the photos where already on my Dropbox recent uploads, so dropbox worked just fine.
The small but growing Melbourne Photo Book Club has made it through their first year. So congratulations all, I’m finding the actual physical aspects being able to hold, flick through and discuss the photography, feel the papers and compare the book formats with others is way more inspiring than isolated research on-line which normally gets drawn in shameless self promotion of basically the same old formats, products and social media sites.
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| How Autostitch handled the moving collage |
This is a bit of a play on John Batman's original quote, but Melbourne is still a nice place to come home to.
Getting a good photo from the tiny modern jet airplane is not so easy, there is the light on the concave shape the multiple pans and strong light over the scene, lots of thong to spoil the photo but once and a while the lighting can be just right and you are in the right place at the right time(seconds later the plane turned and i just had sky!)
My photo of the block arcade (above), in central melbounre, has been included in the updated schmap guide to melbourne, under the historic buidlings category.
