morning light and shadows, high UV afternoon day 2

I packed my slr and made sure I caught the early tram yesterday, so I could walk about and capture some more CBD scenes in the beautiful morning light and shadows.

After work I made a beeline for one of my favourite locations, the former Lonsdale St power station redevelopment site, and I also caught an image of Southern Cross that evokes some of the dynamism and abstraction I feel there.

I hope you enjoy the gallery – please click on the thumbnails to enjoy all the detail.

Oh, and have a Happy New Year!

high UV afternoon – City light and shadow

This “portrait” gallery is for my friend @bookshopaddict. He was one of my first fans, and told me he liked the “portrait” images of our city. As it is, I left work after a draining day, much in need of a creative outlet, and the high UV afternoon, with blue skies and bright sunlight was perfect for some quick captures en route to my homebound tram…

back to work – City light and shadow

The view above may be familiar to dedicated followers of Melbourne scenes on facebook – albeit with pedestrian and vehicular traffic more akin to a Sunday morning.

Back to work today. I wanted nothing more than to spend another few hours in bed, or on the couch. At least the streets were quiet, with so many commuters on leave. I spied many photo opportunities from the tram window, and made a note to pack the SLR tomorrow morning, and go in earlier to capture some of what I saw.

Here are a couple from the corner of La Trobe and William, and have a look at the afternoon’s bounty in the gallery afterward

abandoned house, Rosebud

I saw this house as we were driving to visit friends in Rosebud West and couldn’t believe my eyes… I reached for my camera and started shooting.

afternoon light on Northcote Plaza underground car park

I was glad I parked underground; sure, I had to push the trolley further to return it to “tha ghettoe” Coles, near K-Mart, but on the upside, the car was much cooler, and I got to capture this scene.

I could stay here, become someone better

Please forgive me if you’ve heard this one before. The title of this post is a line from Cat Power’s song “Colors and The Kids”, from her Moon Pix CD. It’s one of my favourite songs by one of my favourite artists, and its wistful tone is perfect to my ears.

It’s a recurring theme, and if my internal editor wasn’t on leave, well, this piece wouldn’t find its way into this blog, with its primary focus being a visual record of Melbourne’s urban decay. But here it is anyway…

I have long imagined my life story – or the semi-autiobiographical story I intend one day writing (both are interchangeable for the point of this piece) – finding some closure with the protagonist’s retreat from the City (and its urban decay), and return to the beach (nature).

Sunday night, Rosebud

After just two nights away, staying an hour and a half out of town, I feel recharged. I found calm, a natural peace of mind I can’t easily attain living in the City. I suppose I could find a version of it via meditation or yoga. But what I love about stepping onto the beach, sinking my feet into the sand, seeing the water meet the sky on the horizon, and hearing the surf, is the unconscious and immediate way it happens.

Day one, at Rosebud beach, was fun. The beach is ideal for young families, because it is so shallow for such a long distance out. And being on the bay side of the peninsula, there is barely a ripple to break the surface.

Seeing the girls so happy, so carefree was good. Barefoot shopping at the Rosebud Plaza was a relaxed change for me.

Today we drove to the ocean side of the peninsula, to Gunnamutta Ocean Beach. The scenery outside Rosebud, the lush seaside greenery and rolling hills are beautiful. The beach itself, in all its elemental rawness, impressed the girls as much as it did me. Rosebud is one thing, but this was a whole level above.

I know any real estate down here is expensive, I’m not that foolish. But the dream is not about a main street ocean view, or sumptuous mansion, complete with telescope and floor to ceiling tinted windows. My vision is escaping into the elements: a timber cabin or shack, buried in the hillside somewhere on the ocean side of the peninsula. And in this environment, I honestly believe I could create my life’s work. Not that I intend setting writing aside until then – this piece is pecked out on the iPhone’s Notes app, in our cabin. (I’ll step outside when I’m ready to publish, so I can pick up some 3G coverage).

My two girls, not just ocean kids, and maybe one day surfers too. But Star Wars fans too – both of them. This is enough to make me smile.

After we ate, they asked to make another visit to our beach (Rosebud) to see the “islands” left by the receding tide… where we discovered two kids, a brother and sister, digging for crabs. They had a collection in a can, and when I asked what they would do with them, the sister told us she knew how to take care of them, she knew what they ate (the inside of clams).

Maybe now, working for the bank, I have the means, the key. Maybe if I play my cards right, maybe in ten years time I can make it real. And it’s a dream Mrs H and I share.

Having the dream, the goal together is the first step, isn’t it? I hope you have the courage to believe in your dreams, and may they come true for you too.

Big Box my derriere

I was ready for the day to end when I boarded the tram to work this morning, and after a day of problem-solving, negotiating and troubleshooting with exasperated callers, then getting home in the 38 degree plus heat, the last thing I had in mind was making a trip to Northland. But, through negotiation with Mrs H, it was determined that I had to make a visit to Target tonight, to exchange the doll I had purchased on Monday for Littlest Miss H’s Christmas gift.

Just One Fix

While the idea of an excursion across town to Chaddy in the wee hours tomorrow morning – during their 24 hour pre-Christmas trading – has some appeal as a consumer fantasy, I drove off in the heat to the loud accompaniment of Ministry’s Jesus Built My Hotrod, and though I have no idea what the traffic is normally like on a Wednesday night at 8pm, it was quieter than I expected, and once I arrived, I happened upon a car park in no time.

As a means of relaxation en route, I found myself taking a mental inventory of all the cars I’d formerly owned, and checking whether or not I could recall their license numbers. I estimated more than sixty percent I could. Then I gave consideration to the option of investing in air-conditioning for our front room, so I could use my imagined iMac there one day, or whether it would just be better to plump for a MacBook Pro, which I could use in our already comfortably air-conditioned rear living area. An idle mind, a lazy mind, or a mind whirring incessantly in some kind of escapist overdrive?

As I entered through the crowded food court, I spied the bright red and white of my aptly named target in the distance, and if the iPhone had a telephoto zoom lens, I would have snapped a picture for posterity. With my baby doll in hand, I made a beeline through the brightness of the shopping centre’s new extension, which makes it seem more like a carbon copy of every other recently renovated shopping centre in Melbourne, amid the drifting shoppers, with their sleeping toddlers in prams, and thumbsuckers being dragged recalcitrantly around the shops past their bedtime, past Industrie and the T Shirt Bar – where my eye strayed, even as I knew I couldn’t afford to buy any of their overpriced designs (besides, Mrs H had ordered me not to buy anything else there), and on top of that, surely a portly Dad such as I, fast approaching middle-age, would look somewhat mutton-like in such get-up…

I put the thought out of mind. In Target I waited at the Customer Service counter while the casual and part-time teenage staff manned the checkouts. My purchase was refunded without incident. While I explained that my daughter preferred to have a doll dressed in blue, and this one was in pink, I think my explanation fell on deaf ears. I imagined my attendant was a high school dropout. She seemed to have an absence of will. Of course, it could have just been heat-induced torpor, but the mall was air-conditioned. Nevertheless, her service was nothing but desultory.

“That’s it, no worries,” she told me, as she handed me the EFT slip with fingers bedecked with manicured acrylic inserts. I signed for the refund, and I left. I was in and out within half an hour. I was inspired to write, and for that, I was grateful.

Here come the regulars

It is Wednesday morning. They board the tram and sit opposite me. I have seen them before. He’s metrosexual, athletic, pock-marked, and stern. His black dress shoes look as if they were styled to suit cycling or cross-training. He’s reading the Good Weekend again, though I note it’s not the same 25th anniversary issue still. She’s in the same pink singlet, aerobics leggings and sneakers and she has a paperback – though, unlike most of Melbourne’s female Met passengers it’s not Twilight or New Moon.

She bends forward, rests her head on his knee. She hands him her book and he places it open, upside down, beneath his magazine supplement. (I wince minutely at the thought of the book’s spine being splayed like that).

He pats her back idly. She murmurs to him, her hand on his thigh. He coos something back. She opens her pack of Nurofen Plus and takes one, then sits back and opens her book again. He resumes his absorbing study of Saturday’s newspaper supplement.

a Monday morning in Melbourne CBD

Here’s my pick of the photos I captured on Monday morning, when I made it to the City, after my exploration around Brunswick St. The Southern Cross station pictures I had planned to capture never made the cut.

I hope you enjoy this essay as much as I loved making it!

Brunswick St, Fitzroy – a visual tribute

It was my rostered day off today, and I had planned to shoot a photo essay on Southern Cross station. I took tram 112 at the usual time – as if I was going to work – and got off at Edinburgh Gardens, then walked to Gertrude St. It was great to get up close to the sights I observe on a daily basis, as well as dig around to discover details I can’t usually see from the tram.

Here’s the pick of what I saw along the way:

And last but not least, here’s one of Melbourne’s top 100 influential people