Category: phototrip

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stranded in Melbourne

Things were working out fine in Melbourne.

The Melbourne Silver Mine Inc’s Unsensored11 exhibition had been hung, opened on Friday night at the Collingwood Gallery and opening night was a success. I’d seen the work at the Centre of Contemporary Photography and I was settling into urban photo exploration.

Southern Cross Station

Then my digital camera, wallet, credit cards etc, passport etc were stolen from the back of the gallery on opening night. It was a professional job. I was lucky that I still had the daily tram/train ticket in my pocket–its normally in my bag. So I was able to get back to my sister’s at Safety Beach on the Mornington Peninsula that night.

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returning to old locations

I’m off to Melbourne this week on the overnight bus with my exhibition print for the Melbourne Silver Mine Inc.’s exhibition of analogue photography at the Collingwood Gallery. The exhibition, entitled Unsensored11 opens Friday night.

I’m arriving Thursday morning and I’m staying on until Tuesday to do some large format urban photography, picking up from where I left off on the last visit.

Kings Way, Melbourne.

This particular picture wasn’t composed well. I was rushing because it was starting to rain and I couldn’t remember the digital image from the earlier trip. The negative also had bad light leaks.

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Brunswick St, Melbourne

One of the pleasures of my recent phototrip in Melbourne was walking around Brunswick Street in Fitzroy with a digital camera. It was liberating after the discipline of large format photography.

I was returning to old haunts, as I used to live in nearby Gore Street whilst studying at the Photographic Studies College in Southbank, and working on the Melbourne trams. I started learning how to do photography (then 35mm black and white) on the grungy streets in, and around, Fitzroy.

Brunswick St, Melbourne

This time I was discovering Brunswick Street afresh as a photographer— exploring a world I knew, yet didn’t know, because so much had changed since I’d lived in Fitzroy.

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urban foto exploration

When I arrived in Melbourne last Friday around 6am it was raining, and it rained most of the day. I did some urban exploration with an umbrella and inbetween the rain showers I took some photos. In the early afternoon I stumbled upon this scene from the open roof of a car park.

Melbourne: looking west

I took a number of scoping pictures before the showers sweeping across the car park became too heavy. I thought that I could return here on the Sunday with the 5×4 Linhof, when Suzanne was at her conference. It wasn’t that far from the Oaks on Market hotel where we were staying.

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…it rained and rained in Melbourne

I was in Melbourne for four days for the photo shoot and it rained three out of the four days. Sunday was the only fine day. On Friday the temperature was 17 degrees, Sunday it was 33 degrees and on Monday it was back down to 18 degrees. On Monday it only stopped raining as I was leaving in the bus at 8.30pm.

I found the 5×4 gear (pack and tripod) heavy to lug around the CBD. I was mainly shooting large format between the showers, or before the rain started, and the bad weather meant that I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked. I pretty much walked to a pre-selected location, set up the Linhof, take the pictures, then move onto the next one pre-selected location.

taxi hut, King's Way, Melbourne, digital, Sony

I did a 5×4 version of this on Monday, before the wind came up and the rains swept in. It rained the rest of the day–just like Friday, the day I arrived. A large part of the time on Friday and Monday was spent on urban explorations with handheld (digital and film) cameras.

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Melbourne photo shoot

I’m preparing to return to Melbourne for four days for a photo shoot in large format urban photography.

I’ll be with Suzanne but I will squeeze in some photography whilst she is conferencing. I’m taking the 5×4 Linhof Technika and tripod to reshoot some of the skylines that I took on the earlier trip.

Melbourne, rooftop, skyline, digital, Sony
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I’ll be travelling overnight to Melbourne by Greyhound bus. It’s years since I’ve travelled on a bus–I normally fly– but the bus is the most practical way to get the large format photography gear over to Melbourne. It’s excess baggage on the plane and that is very expensive these days. So I’m basically accompanying the camera gear on the bus. I arrive in Melbourne at 6am.

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along the seashore

The beaches at the foot of the cliffs west of Victor Harbor are mostly deserted outside of school holidays and public holidays so we can wander along them. When we are on a daily poodlewalk along the beaches around the cliffs west of Victor Harbor I’m usually looking out for interesting objects lying scattered on the beach. These are mostly seaweed, dead birds and shells.

Often I wonder what would these objects look like as a photograph.Sometimes I bring them back to Encounter Studio to do close ups. Other times I just photograph them on the beach and move on:

crab, shell, sand

This particular one was constructed. I’d seen the crab on the walk up the beach in the late afternoon, then on the return, I wondered what it would look like sitting atop a cuttlefish bone.

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photography + surveillance

When I was in Melbourne I used to board the train at Frankston and travel daily up the city to do my photography. Since it I took around an hour I used to take photos through the windows. I took the photo below whilst the train was at Frankston station. It was just before it was due to leave for Flinders Street station, stopping at all stations.

Frankston

It is a pretty ordinary photo of a banal shopping strip in Melbourne’s suburbia. Within seconds I was surrounded by 3 Victorian police wanting to know what I was doing. Taking photos in public is now a suspicious activity even when there is no obvious security buildings close by. I was placed in the position of having to defend what I was doing.

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returning to Ballarat

I plan to return to Melbourne for several days in October (21st-24th) with Suzanne who is attending a conference. In looking over the digital work I did on the last trip I’ve decided to take the 5×4 Linhof Technika to shoot the urban skylines in Melbourne around Chinatown from the rooftop of the car parks.

I’ve also decided to use the time in Melbourne to make a quick trip up to Ballarat in the train:

University of Ballarat

Some of the studies that I did with the digital camera when I was in Ballarat are suitable for reshooting with a large format camera.

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