Last night, I (with my family and 300,000 of my friends and neighbours) descended on Melbourne’s CBD for the inaugural White Night Melbourne event. It’s an all night party celebrating the arts running from 7pm Saturday to 7am Sunday. The organisers had hoped for 100,000 people so they must have been a little blown away with the final estimates.

From shortly after 7pm, people on foot took over the streets. The trams weren’t running. Cars had nowhere to go. People lined the streets from side to side.  For us, with two young kids, the crowds were a little overwhelming. The performers and the art installations were a little hard to see. If you looked hard and watched the crowds, there were gems to be found like the performer pictured above. He was the voice half of a duo making some great music in Flinders Lane. How happy is this guy!

I don’t know if it’s going to be an annual event now, but we might have to leave the kids at home next time so we can be more mobile and stay out later.

 

Here’s a variation on slow photography using a slow(ish) shutter speed, but with a moving subject. Using my variable ND filter, ISO 50, and f13 I was able to get this shot down to 1/5th of a second. By panning with the runner I was blurred her arms and legs keeping the body and head relatively steady. The bright sun reflecting off the bay provided a great opportunity to turn the runner into a near silhouette.

I tried longer exposures, but with the bright background, the runner’s arms and legs were largely lost in the light and almost didn’t register in the image. The notion of a head and torso hurtling down the beach didn’t really work with the image I was trying to create…

 

 

I know, it’s just an ostrich right, but I quite like the background so I’m sharing it!

Looks like it’s back to work for me tomorrow. This was my last day of summer vacation. It went fast, but we had a good time. With all the travel earlier this year it was nice to just stay local, visit with friends, go on picnics, go on bike rides, enjoy time by the beach and some quiet days at home with the family.

The challenge now will be to keep up the blog while working. I’ll do my best!

 

Yesterday, I mentioned we took the kids to the zoo. Now, some might argue that’s just an excuse for me to bring my camera to the zoo.

Justifications aside, here’s one I caught of a spoonbill having a wash. He kindly put on quite a show as I waited and watched. He looks a bit cross and ready to charge, but I’m not convinced he even noticed I was there.

Today was a hot one in Melbourne – temperature hit 41C in our neighbourhood. It’s now 10:30pm and it’s still 36C out there. Thank goodness for air conditioning, but with the age of our air conditioner, I’m not looking forward to the electricity bill! I hid inside most of the day, but not before going for a 20km bicycle ride this morning. I had to call it quits when the temp hit 34C – roughly coincided with me nearly bursting into flames…

 

Just a few days ago on the beach, taking this picture, I was wearing a fleece hoodie trying to stay warm in a cold southerly wind. Today it’s 36C! Despite the heat, we took the kids to the zoo for a few hours before it got really hot. Tomorrow … 41C. Going to be chasing the air conditioning…

Anyway, the picture above is another long exposure. This one was 30s at f16 with the variable ND filter cranked up. Again, the water was pretty rough, but the long exposure smoothes it right out.

 

 

Another in the slow photography category. The sun was still up for this one so I used my new(ish) Marumi variable ND filter which goes from a single stop to about 8.5 stops (ND2-ND400) by including two linear polarizing filters that rotate 90 degrees from parallel to perpendicular. When the two filters are aligned, the light goes through with just one stop of light blocked. When the two filters are rotated 90 degrees to each other, the combination blocks a lot of the light coming through. I used to do this with two linear polarizers back in the old days before most polarizing filters were circular. Thankfully though Marumi was prepared to trade me some of my hard earned dollars for this handy filter.

With the sun still firmly up in the sky, I closed down the variable ND filter to its darkest point, then dropped the ISO to 50, closed down the aperture to f22, and squeezed out 13 seconds of exposure before the highlights were getting too out of hand.

Today, I’m pleased to share my first image from Melbourne since we arrived in August. I captured this image on Saturday night in a suburb called Middle Park in Melbourne. It’s right next to the much more well-known and more popular St. Kilda. The sun hadn’t quite set yet, but it was low enough for me to shoot this at f16, ISO 100 and 30 seconds. The water was quite rough, in fact it was spraying up over the end of the pier (hence all the water), but the long exposure smoothed it right out. This view is looking south out across Port Phillip Bay.

Hopefully this will be the first in a long series of much more frequent posts this year. It’s all easy while on vacation… I’ll see if I can keep it up once I’m back to work!

Sorry, but I’ve left the post very late tonight so for once, it’s just the picture.

There’s a privately-owned zoo southeast of Edmonton that’s been in the news a lot lately. It’s part farm, part animal sanctuary and part zoo.

Unfortunately the reason it’s been in the news is that the conditions in the zoo sound like they’re fairly poor – reported as being below minimum government standards. As a result, the government is shutting it down. Even zoo supporters acknowledge that the conditions were less than ideal. An important question at this stage seems to be – what happens to the animals? The zoo owner has suggested (hopefully just to make a point about the challenges of animal placement) that he will give them to a taxidermist.

My feelings on zoos are mixed. I like to be able to see and photograph the animals and I like taking my kids to learn about animals. At the same time I feel for the animal that is being kept in captivity and I’ve definitely visited some dodgy zoos. And yet I understand the role they play in supporting broader education and protecting endangered species. I’m not against zoos, but I do think they need to meet appropriate standards.

I captured this image of a gorilla at the Melbourne Zoo.

During my time in Australia (from 2004 to 2010), the state of Victoria was suffering from a persistent drought. In Melbourne, we had significant water restrictions in place and on-going campaigns to reduce water usage. Thankfully, the drought seems to have broken in the past year.

In 2007, in the thick of the drought, I drove a couple of hours north of Melbourne with the goal of photographing Lake Eppalock, a local water catchment. The lake, at that time, was at just 1.3% capacity. When I got there, I was astounded by the sight of this massive dry lake bed. I’d never seen anything like this before. All the trappings of lake life were still there. There were boat launches, picnic areas, signs with boating rules, and infrastructure for lake management. Of course, there were no boats and all the buildings were locked up tight.

The ‘lake’ had been reduced to nothing more than a narrow creek snaking its way through the middle of the lake bed. The tree in the above photo sits at the edge of that creek. The tree is there because the lake is man-made, formed by the damming of the Campaspe River. When the lake is full, it covers an area of over 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres).

I took this photo at the bottom of Lake Eppalock. Were the lake at full capacity, this tree and I would have been under about 50 metres of water. Thankfully, since then, the drought has broken and it has done so in force. The lake is now full again, and this scene is a thing of the past.