Photowalk 11 Jan '10

Had an afternoon nap today, intending to go to Docklands for an evening shoot. Unfortunately, I woke up pretty late. By the time I reached Etihad Stadium (formerly Telstra Dome), the sun had already set below to horizon.

This is a view of the city at 9pm. There's still plenty of natural light left in the sky.

I then took the 50-200 SWD and zoomed right in to the front of the stadium. I was fortunate that the breeze is quite slight today, so even with a long focal length (240mm equivalent), the image was pretty sharp. Try doing that on a windy day and I'd guarantee you that you'd be cursing the weather elements ;)

After 20 minutes, the sky has a deep purple hue which accentuates the light from the buildings and streetlamps. Although most cameras have no autofocus issues, it is extremely imperative that you get focus extremely spot on. Of course some highlights will be blown out (unless you do HDR), so getting the right exposure is also essential.

As the prayer of proper pixel placement goes:

Darks on the left
Lights on the right
Greys in the middle
And Lord help us preserve the holy highlights
Amen

As a final treat, here's a panorama of the scene.

I hope these windless summer evenings continue for some time.

Cheers.

Photowalk 29 Dec 09

Sometimes as a photographer, it's better to put down your camera instead of missing out on all the fun. I had that compulsion two days ago to drop by a friends place to play Wii for an hour and then leave for some evening shots. Instead I stayed on for the next 12 hours for poker, cooking instant noodles, youtube-ing and making a make shift bed using 3 chairs! Wow, that's a blast indeed.

Anyways, I headed down Dudley St from home yesterday towards Docklands for my first evening photo walk in 2 weeks.

The weather was beautiful - a little windy, yet not too hot.

A closer look at the railway yards.

The city bathed in beautiful golden sunlight.

Interesting building facade at Docklands.

Docklands is all geared up for the New Year's eve celebrations. The metal barricades are all up.

Lots of boats parking in Docklands nowadays.

The stumps represent some victims of ferry related incidents, or something like that.

Here are some other images from Swan St Bridge which I just got down to editing them today. I took them two weeks ago.

Thats's all folks! Cheers.

ps: whoops, I almost missed this out:

The internet is great for sharing photos. It's a revolution in itself. It's convenient, democratic, robust, vibrant. I'm not saying it isn't any of those things, so please hold the complaints! But the problem is that it's a Great Pacific Garbage Patch of pictures. That's its nature. There are billions of photographs on the web. One person cannot look at all the photographs on one big photo-sharing site—I mean cannot, it is not possible, even looking at three pictures per second all day long as a full-time job—and there are thousands of sites.


So what's missing? Editing. Winnowing. Sifting. Curating. The creativity of culling. The imposition of a viewpoint. Redaction. Call it what you will.


Now, let the culling begin!