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.

 

Taken on a borrowed camera, edited on a borrowed iPad, and uploaded using a borrowed laptop.

In this image, we have a makeshift game for the kids. Take a beached log and float it out perpendicular to the beach. Then challenge the kids to see how far out the log they can walk before they fall in. Lots of laughs and very cold kids.

 

More fun with reflections. This one is another camp fire.

Sorry about the sporadic posting, I’ve been finishing up processing images from a recent portrait session.

Here’s another wedding reception image. For some of the dance part of the evening, I wanted to use a technique that captures the motion and energy of an active scene. Note that the only post processing on this image was a bit of curves adjustment and a crop. I’m sure this technique is familiar to many, but just in case it’s a bit of a mystery, here’s what I did.

I used a simple approach where I had the flash set to second curtain synchronization, the camera on manual and used a slow shutter speed (settings were ISO 50, f2.2, 100mm, 0.3s).  With second curtain sync, the flash triggers at the end of the exposure rather than the default of triggering at the beginning of an exposure. When this is combined with a slow shutter speed, a moving subject will have a motion blur following them to a point of stillness.

In this image, the subject was not moving in a straight line, so the motion blur is in multiple directions. Also there were coloured strobes adding to the scene and freezing moments (like where her head is up and turned to the left). The technique creates a lot of misses, especially on a dance floor where there are lots of people moving in and out of the frame and flailing limbs appearing unexpectedly in your shot. I tried exposure times varying from 0.3s to 1.6s. The longer exposures tended to capture a bit too much chaos in a very active scene.

I think I came away with a few pretty fun shots that hopefully captured the energy of the evening.

I took this picture at a wedding reception recently. I had lots of images of the guests and wanted to get a different perspective; in this case, the perspective of someone on the outside looking in. It features neither the bride nor the groom (at least not so far as I can tell), but I hope it captures the notion of the party rather than any specific individual.

It’s been a little while since I shared one of my recent finds. I’m currently enjoying the photos of Alex Frank, especially from his recent trip to Japan. His most recent photo takes a slightly elevated perspective on the busy streets of Shibuya (in Tokyo) and captures the busy crowds in motion. Check him out!

Today’s image is quite similar to my previous post, but the images are separated by half the planet and a few years. It would seem there is something about boats reflecting in the ocean at sunset that catches my eye. The previous shot was on Canada’s west coast. Today’s image is on Australia’s west coast in the town of Busselton, a few hours drive south of Perth. This view is to the southwest. The line of land along the horizon is Cape Naturaliste.

This is a 4 second exposure which explains the movement in the mast on the left hand boat. The long exposure smoothed out the already fairly calm waters. At this stage, I was travelling without a tripod, so I believe I balanced the camera on a cement railing post and used the timer to avoid touching the camera.

I took this image on December 26, 2007 and it was hot. Really hot. The area around Perth had just experienced its three hottest days around Christmas. For three days in a row it was 45C to 46C (~115F). Hot enough to go in search of shelter in the middle of the day, but just fantastic for mornings and evenings at the beach.

That heat is another way this post is a world apart as we slide into winter here in central Alberta. Friday is supposed to be our first day where the high isn’t going to reach 0C. On the bright side, there’s still no snow yet.

As I took this 30-second exposure after sunset (about 9:30pm) on a Sunday night, everyone had gone home. The families had collected their kids and left an hour before. The couple had recently folded up their blanket and walked off hand-in-hand. Even my new dog-friend Jessie (see yesterday’s post) had reluctantly gone home. I had the beach to myself. Looks quiet, doesn’t it?

 

Unfortunately it’s just my blog that’s going back to Salt Spring Island, BC. Not me. I took this a few weeks ago. It’s the Ganges Harbour marina. I like the colours in this photo – they go nicely with the new blog theme don’t you think?

I was lucky for this shot. The water was very calm so there’s very little movement in the boats. This is a straight long exposure with no post-processing other than a little noise reduction to compensate for the 15sec exposure.

This turned out to be a good spot. I was across the street from one of the local hotels and some women on their way home stopped by to chat about photography. One of them was a photographer too and they gave me a great tip on a spot for sunset shots on the island. That gave me my destination for the following day and the subject for my post… tomorrow.

 

“I could live here” said my eldest daughter one sunny, Sunday afternoon on Salt Spring Island a couple of weeks ago. I couldn’t agree more. Salt Spring Island is the largest of the Gulf Islands in the Strait of Georgia between the British Columbia mainland and Vancouver Island. My wife and I have been visiting the island for the last 16 years. Her folks live there.

Island life is different from mainland life. Life is slower on the island, more relaxed, simpler. You can almost feel the tension seeping out of your body as you arrive on the island. My in-laws’ house is on the water, which may explain why I like it there so much. It might also be because I’m always on vacation when I’m on the island!

This photo is the view from their house. Here, you go to sleep to the sounds of gentle waves washing up on the beach and the geese chatting away to each other as darkness falls.

It never occurred to me that the kids would notice, but apparently they’d like to live there too.