Wet Trip to the City

An Instagram trip into the city today.

The view outside the train window.  It was wet and I wasn't looking forward to walking around the city in it.

This is the view we saw after we got up the escalators at Melbourne Central, the shot tower.

These doors were so cute.  They were in Melbourne Central and opened up the store Peter Alexander, famous for Pajamas.

I couldn't resist taking a photo of the lovely baked goods in a Chinese bakery in Bourke Street, around the corner from the Chinatown.

Some of the views on the train when we were leaving the city.  These are the old Housing Commission flats, I believe they are getting rid of a lot of these.

This is the back of the Collingwood Town Hall.  You see it on the train line I have to take to get home, it is an amazing building.  Would love to go inside one day.

This is a strange photo, also taken from inside the train, as the previous two were as well.  I love this station.  I have never got off at it, but I like the way it is on a bend.  West Richmond Station, for anyone who wants to know.

There you have my instagram day in the city.  Hope you had fun on yours as well.

Revisiting the Past

Earlier this year, on my birthday actually, I went to the city for lunch and I took my camera.  I tried doing some HDR images, but at that time I only had photoshop.  Since then I have purchased Photomatix and I thought today I would try redoing some of the images I had done from that day.

I thought they were too grey before.  It was a very overcast day, and the light was very bright, as is to be expected in early January.  However, whilst I still think this is very grey, there is still lots of splashes of colour here and there.  I do think it is vibrant.

This was one of my favourite images from that day.  I compared this image with the original HDR I did with Photoshop and this is a lot better.  The colours really pop.  There isn't a lot of colour, but what there is really stands out.

Under the train lines.  I don't know if this one is better, it is certainly more realistic.

I haven't done this much.  That is turn an image into black and white during the HDR process, or rather in Photomatix.  I don't mind it and thing it works well with this image.

What is your favourite?

Phillip Island Nobbies

On Saturday I took some photos at the Nobbies.  I showed the photos on my other blog, here.  I thought I would show some here as well, though, I wanted to see what they would be like if they were black and white.

Sometimes when you make images in just black and white in makes the viewer concentrate more on the mood, and you don't get distracted by the colours.  The ocean has many colours in it, but in these images I want you to look at the waves, because when we were there at the rocks, that is all we look at, the waves.

The sea was angry and the rocks were being pounded, over and over by the waves.  It is not very often you them like this.

The waves were huge, and every now and then one of them would go so much higher than any of the others.  This image works better in black and white because I found the corner in the left bottom too distracting.  It is all green, now you just look at the wave.  Well, I hope you do.

Wind surfers, must have been a great day for them  It was so wild.  I don't know how these guys were doing it.  They must have been having a lot of fun, but they must have been so cold as well.  I was freezing.  The wind was so chilly, felt like it was coming straight off the Antarctica, probably was.

Would you go wind surfing in this weather?

Photos at Phillip Island

Yesterday I went to Phillip Island to photograph some cycling that was happening on the Grand Prix Circuit.  Here are a couple of my favourites.

And.

It wasn't a great day for taking photos and not sure that the ones I've chosen are that great.  I did take a couple of the weather.

A very dark cloud was heading our way and we thought for sure it was going to bring a massive amount of rain, luckily, it went right over and rained somewhere else.  Well that one did.

Then it would all break up and the sun would come out.  Such strange weather.