Walking Through Adelaide - Photo Fun Pt 1

Well today I'm stuck at home getting over a cold, and feeling like taking it easy in front of the computer for a little while. I've just realised how little I've been posting of late - mostly due to some pretty insatiable work demands that have been consuming most of my time. And what time I've had left has been pretty well devoted to family time. As it should be.

Still, I'd like to push out a few more of my photos from the other month... a trip into the heart of Adelaide... where I just had one thing on my mind. Experiment taking photos. Well - these photos aren't exactly experimental, but they were fun for me to do. And the one thing I've been experimenting more with is B&W photography (care of some simple filtering in Picasa).

One of the more interesting sights in the city centre - and quite at the other end of the historical spectrum - is the Rundle Lantern. This was a light-sculptural feature that was built to hide one of the ugly car parks in the city and has now become a very the canvas for a quite interesting light show that plays every night (one evening I'll have to come down and take some video of it... but in the meantime have a look at this video by Martin Whipp).

Statue to Sir Ross Smith, who along with his brother Keith and Jim Bennett and Wally Shiers, were the first people to fly from England to Australia in 1919 (took 28 days and 135 flying hours!). He actually was one of the original Anzac's that landed in Galipoli back in 1915, and was also a WWI fighter ace... and was even the pilot for Lawrence of Arabia (of all people). These days we often forget the people that have forged such remarkable places in our history. Now you can find his statue, almost secluded alongside the Adelaide Oval.

Adelaide has some great architecture that dates from the late 19th century and early 20th century. And some of the best examples can be found along North Terrace with the Museum, Art Gallery, and Adelaide University in particular. Today I was more interested in the details rather than the buildings - plus I already had my 50-250mm lens on... The somewhat unusual tone work was just achieved using a very simple colour B&W filter which can really add some nice subtle textures especially against the sky blue tones.

I'm a sucker for some good old neo-gothic architecture, and Adelaide's architects were apparently too... And Adelaide University's Mitchell Building (built around 1880) is a classic Gothic Revival style that you can see spotted throughout the city.

With just a little tweaking of the filter, you can add some very nice tones to the B&W images... or at least they please my eye.

An almost B&W photo... I'm sorry I couldn't resist my tribute to Shindler's List symbolism... ok.... it wasn't that good a tribute. Unfortunately I didn't have much time to frame the shot, or wait for the cars to take off from the traffic lights... and it was hard to get the focus right to get the reflection in the water feature. Did it work... not quite, but it was worth a try.

And a couple of near-monochromatic photos for good measure. North Terrace has a number of Plane Trees  along it's wide boulevard, which make for a beautifully green walk in summer. Coming out of winter however, they also have these amazing seeds that look almost like dried Christmas decorations. Adelaide has a strange relationship with it's native and introduced flora. These Oriental Plane Trees were originally planted in Adelaide in 1910.... that's over a century of historical significance.

A little bit of a boost from the saturation on this photo brings a very different look and feel to the masonry on this tower detail from the Mitchell Building (see above).

Anyway - that's one more off my list of posts in a steadily growing backlog.