tasmanian tiger sighting (32)

evidence of the proliferation of tasmanian ex-pats in the nation's capital. urban art project on city walk, civic. part of canberra's current community art & theatre project 'you are here'.

light camera action (31)

funky lighting at cube nightclub. this photo was taken exceptionally late into a long evening. well early in the morning in fact as i sat on a couch with my friend whelano for a bit of good old-fashioned & beer-fuelled ranting. yes yes yes i know i have been completely remiss with my photo a day commitment. i have no excuses, the reason is work has been completely mad and has sucked my will to live ... and take photos. i promise to try harder. i'm not sure i will be able to 'catch up' - is it cheating to post two a day to do so? probably. luckily i'm more than happy to live by my own rules :)

no fortune told in tea leaves (16)

rather i should say, reading your future into tea leaves is made somewhat impossible when you use a tea infuser spoon for your herbal green tea. although what future do i envisage regardless... getting into bed to read my library book a perfectly good family by lionel shriver (a good read ... despite a lot of somewhat discomforting and very astute family behavioural observations) to ease myself into a good night's sleep to give me the best start possible to tomorrow. sounds pretty good. let's hope it comes true. (by the way, this photo taken in 'negative' effect on macro focus using my mobile camera).

i'm sure it represents something incredibly deep (5)

this art installation that is. but i didn't bother to read the sign that explained what it all meant, i just thought it looked pretty. i saw it on my way to the library. my second visit to a library in about 15 years, the first being earlier this week to get a membership card. there are some books there i want to read that i can't get on my kindle and i am loathe to purchase any more books as i don't have the space. oh for one of those houses with super high ceiling where the walls are shelves and shelves waiting to be filled with books. anyway i took this photo with my mobile phone so i might go back with the DSLR to take a better one. by the way, the building in the background is the ACT parliament building. yes, very underwhelming isn't it!

acquiring a new focus (1)

i've always been serious about trying to take the best photos i could. now i finally have the equipment to take me much further on that journey, a canon 550d dslr twin lens kit. i've been meaning to buy a really good camera for years but kept on putting it off, until my sister asked me to take her wedding photos this year. so now i have four months to make sure i'm the best i can be, otherwise... well i don't like to think. unrelated to the recent upgrade prompt but upon hearing about my impending purchase, my friend siobhan challenged (or invited might be a nicer term) me to join her in the 365 project, which is about uploading a photo of choice every day. anyway this shot is #1. this challenge should help get me prepped for the april nuptials shoot, not to mention such an objective should (i hope!) help this blog to become what it was supposed to be from the start. wish me luck!

i would love a house with high ceilings

just for the opportunity to install some amazing lighting. like this installation - taken from directly beneath it in a bar in dickson. fancy.

collins street

printouts on paper glued to a wall to form murals in an alleyway off collins street in my home town, hobart.

amber lighting, amber fluids

the light swinging gently in the breeze above me as i sat in the open window at the front of the little creatures brewery on brunswick street, fitzroy on a roasting hot november afternoon enjoy some amber ales. bliss and relaxation.

knitting nazis

or rebels or renegades or something like that. a friend of mine does this kind of carry-on down in hobart. nice to know there are similar crazies in the nation's capital. i took a big detour on my ride from work this morning to take this photo. i was late to work. oh well. happy birthday jen :)

extra ordinary

this is a lovely bit of stenciled street art on a fusebox cover down at my local shops in lyneham. it's of aviatrix, nancy walton-bird. she was australia's first female commercial pilot - and a fully qualified pilot by the time she was 19, no mean feat given she was a female born in 1915. hooray for australian feminist pioneers.

i never used to like wicker

but i really love this ceiling lamp encased in the stuff. funny how your tastes change as you get older. funny how i like taking photos of lamps too. this is the fourth one for this blog that i can think of.

tongue & groove

a carpentry joint term. but also a canberra bar. to be honest it is a venue probably a little too sydney-esque and flash for the likes of me personally, with its too-cool-for-school-and-to-be-bothered-serving-you staff. it has a fancy false ceiling layered with about twenty large lamps (some of which are featured in this shot) which is lowered about five metres as the sun sets. not sure what that's about but it's the only thing i like about the place.

علاء الدي

always less than a thousand words, but oh that it could have been a thousand and one nights. this lamp adorned the entrance to our room - not a cave - in siem reap at the delightful golden banana. i will return to magical siem reap in the future.

accidental zen

i am not a believer in god(s) but sometimes i have a sense of greater powers or forces at work in the world. maybe it is just the magical concept of fate or meaningful coincidence. when i returned home from a trip to vietnam and was looking through the many many photos i took there for the first time on a screen bigger than the tiny one on the back of my digital camera, this was one which instantly became one of my favourites of the trip, it encapsulated so perfectly what the whole vietnam experience had come to mean to me. because the truth of this photo is that it was not carefully taken at all - but rather very carelessly out of the window of a taxi racing through the busy streets of saigon as i tried to capture the image of the clouds - only to truly accidentally and unknowingly, yet with perfect partnership, catch the word 'zen' in the same frame.

cartoon browns

another modified photo, this cartoon effect was in photoshop if my memory serves me correctly. it was a nice photo i took (camera held by me with arm outstretched as you can even see in the reflection of my sunglasses!) in the first place, if i may say so myself - but i like this cartoon result as well. simplified but still honest.... with no wrinkles or blemishes to be seen. an airbrushing of sorts ;) this photo is from way back in late 2003 when we went for a daytrip out to port arthur, this moment on the cruise out to isle of the dead, where a thousand people, mostly convicts and paupers, were buried in the early to late 1800s.

art comes in a spray can

i am a total fan of graffiti when it is not offensive, not watant vandalism. in fact i wouldn't even call it graffiti at all, i would call it street art. banksy does street art. stupid bored teenagers do tagging which is graffiti. one of the many reasons i love melbourne is that it has loads of awesome street art. i can't help but take photos of it every time i'm down there. this particular one was in a little alley off flinders street which i took while waiting for friends to go to a tapas bar. the character looks a little 'where the wild things are' max-like.

there's a mouthful of wine left there

this is a bit of an abstract one which is about my personal associations with the image. it's the end of a delicious christmas day lunch with a scrunched up and admitted un-christmassy-looking napkin, the end of a good glass of wine, and the start of a good (ie tasmanian) beer. you're full and content and sharing some good times with three generations of your family. you're making memories. it's been a good day and you're happy with your lot in life. or rather, i was :) 

city of contrasts

early on in our trip and by accident we came across a series of 'free' walking tours hosted in a number of the major cities in europe. they are a lot more interesting and quirky than the bog-standard bus tour packed with seniors ;) during the one we did in paris, we were taken into the courtyard of the palais royale, near to the comédie française and the bibliothèque nationale, where we saw daniel buren's 1986 installation of black and white pillars of varying lengths. this is something we probably wouldn't have come across otherwise and was a fascinating modern contrast to the renaissance-style architecture all around - somewhat similar to the glass pyramids outside the louvre.