Up up and away

Back in 2011 I was up in the air for a balloon trip across the Yarra valley at sunrise.  Thanks Penny for the great birthday present.  It was awesome

Falling rain

Back in 2018 I was walking through the Carlton gardens and saw this drawn on the bitumen.  When I got home I cleaned the image up and this was the result.

Madness

and I am not talking baggy trousers.  I went to an auction around the corner from home today.  there were more than 100 people in the crowd and perhaps 5 bidders.  The house sold for $1,401,000.  Surely the market will run out of steam soon.  That price is insane.  Image the auctioneer in the middle of the road extracting every last dollar.  

Rush hour

Or what rush hour used to be like.  I searched Google looking for the letter and it gave me this photo taken on the 28th of Feb last year.  It seems Google picked up the H in the upper right corner.

Live longer

Last year on this day I found this in my mailbox.  Just what you need in the middle of a pandemic lockdown.  I have no idea what was on it but there was zero chance of it going into my computer. Just a tip if you find something like this anywhere and you are not expecting it.  Do not open it as it is likely to be a scam of some sort.  At best you will lose some money at worst you could lose important data.

Laundry

Putting out the laundry at the World heritage listed 'Cascade Female Factory' in Hobart Tasmania. Pictured is the washing line and two steel cradles.

Laneway cafes

Back in 2018 I was on the way to work and snapped this image in one of Melbourne's many lanes lined with cafes.  This is the city of Melbourne's beating heart.  Part of my cinematic series.  Apologies that I haven't been posting for the last week.  I have a new job and it has taken a lot of my time.

Footprints

Yesterday Penny and I visited Rochester in country Victoria for a memorial service.  It was to remember Penny's brother Geoff, who passed away during the first lock down that we had here last year.  Because of this all who knew him were forced to grieve without others to help them through the process. 

The Geoff that I knew was an alcoholic, constantly in and out of rehabilitation and the footprints that I knew of him was the pile of discarded openers from beer cans on the chair near where he used to love to sit.

What I learnt at the memorial was that Geoff, was a teacher, poet, writer, musician and inspiration to many students that were in his care.  Nothing at all like I imagined.  The family buried his ashes in the roots of the apricot tree that he loved to sit under on warm summer evenings.  The real footprints he leaves behind are his children and the people that they have become.

In recent years I have been to a couple of funerals of significant friends and I must say that I much prefer this memorial service way of celebrating the life of those that are departed.  One year is enough time for people to remember the positive things about the person and the footprints that they leave behind

Vale Geoff,  sorry I did not take the time to get to know you better

Footprints echoes of a life well lived

Geoff's daughter Rebecca in a reflective moment under the Apricot tree
where his ashes now reside

Stuffed toys in his children's bedroom.  Untouched since they left home more than 15 years ago

Book ends

This image was created for a scavenger hunt back in 2018.  I had the idea to create an image in context with the word "Ends" that contains all the other words.  I completed the task in PhotoShop and include the original unedited photo for comparison.  It turns out it is quite difficult to replace text on the spine of a book and make it appear like it was always there.

Invisible man

During lock down last year Penny and I snuck out to a local park to shoot the word shoes for the scavenger hunt.  The image is a composite of two images.  The idea was to have only the shoes and newspaper in the image.  I have included the original images

The front approaches

Back in 2017 we had a massive cold front followed by heavy storm.  This was taken from the roof of my house

Dawn through the trees

Back in 2014 I was at Jells park on a foggy morning.

Oblivious

In 2018 I was practising my cinematic street photography.  I have three separate images of this girl and she is holding the same pose in all of them.  I took this while waiting for the lights to change.

Boomerang

Back in 2015 I was participating in a scavenger hunt and the word I was looking for was 'Curved'.  I decided that I wanted to do something with an Australian flavour.  One of the many ideas that I brainstormed was boomerang.  This got me thinking...  Where do you go to find a boomerang.  A quick Google search later and I had the answer in Rob Croll...  Former world boomerang throwing champion and current president of the Boomerang Association of Australia https://www.boomerang.org.au/.   It turns out that Rob lives in the next suburb to me. So I gave him a call telling him what I wanted to do and he was very happy to help.

Here he is demonstrating the type of wood that he uses to make a strong boomerang

To cut a long story short, I asked Rob if he had a favourite boomerang and he bought out this beauty... 

The boomerang above was given to Paul McCartney when the Beatles visited Melbourne in 1964.  They had them on the portico of the Melbourne Town Hall and he threw his into the crowd (The only one thrown into the crowd).  Here is a photo essay from the local paper on the visit (Herald Sun Beatles Photo Essay)  They have a photo here of John Lennon holding another with similar artwork.  It was quite a turbulent time here in Australia.  I was only three at the time so do not remember a lot.

Anyway this is the image that I created.  I basically overlayed the image on a background that I took in the local park and added a little spin to make it look like the viewer was moving with the boomerang

Connewarre

Or black swan in the local indigenous language.  Connewarre is a small town near Barwon Heads in Victoria.  Lake Connewarre which is at the mouth of the Barwon river has many there.  Yjos was taken at Jells park here in Melbourne.  I have never seen one there.  This time there where babies as well.

Change

Back in 2015 it was about the change in the seasons.  This was from a tree in our front yard.  In recent years it hasn't changed colour until much later in the season. I will post a picture of what it looks like today after the sun comes up.