Walking during the pandemic allows me on occasion to capture rare moments in odd places. This is no exception. We have been confined to our homes and a 5 kilometre radius for what feels like an eternity now. Most of the time I have been busy working from home. The school term break was slightly different. I think these last two weeks I have walked more kilometres than in the last 2 years combined.
These freight trains a regular sight in Sunshine, however this is North Sunshine a section I rarely wander. As is often the case all I had with me was my Phone so I snapped off a handful of pictures, after processing them in Luminar 4, I chose this one.
I have Luminar “partner” account code. Clicking the above link helps me with some rewards. It’s a great replacement for Photoshop in my opinion.
Flickr river is a site that taps into the flickrapi and offers some interesting feedback. It created a randomly generated series of my “most interesting” pictures. Most interesting is generated by an algorithm. As an algorithm it has little to do with the visual quality of the images and may draw on other aspects of my activity across the flickr website.
Flickr river has been around as long as flickr itself and over the years the developer has added interesting features.
A week or so ago, I made some pictures of the houses in Wright Street Sunshine that may disappear in the next few years. With one empty block and 2 for sale signs in a strip of a dozen or so house this makes for some big changes afoot. What I neglected to mention or perhaps didn’t recognise was that most of these buildings follow a similar style and appearance. I’m guessing that at some point a government agency was involved with these house’s construction.
Former RAAF base in Tottenham marked in red, in relation to my house on the extreme left.
Thirty years ago there was an active RAAF base on a site that is now light industry and shopping centre a couple of Kilometres down the road. The site was sold to private developers in 1983(1)
There are some existing buildings of a similar style near the old site and they share similar characteristics to the ones I photographed in Wright Street. The common denominators that connect them are the materials. Fibre Cement is common. Small footprint and tiled roofs others.
The current formula that seems to be being applied to these old buildings, is the old houses are demolished. Then if the site permits several small units are built in their place. While these new units are dotted around the suburb, the danger of a homogeneous streetscape looms large.
Given that Wright Street is an arterial road then I doubt there may be that much new development going up. Keeping an eye on planning permits and council notifications will enable me to track these changes. Thereby producing a meaningful record of the suburb as it changes.
Footnotes
(1) Moca, P. 2015, Forty years ago May 28, 1975 Sunshine’s town clerk, Mr Bill Deutschmann,…[Derived Headline], Airport West, Vic.
In 1966, Ed Ruscha photographed ‘Every building on the Sunset Strip‘ in Los Angeles. It became a book and the original is highly sought after. I have seen the copy the NGV has in its collection. Such a simple and elegant idea. The book is one long accordion type book. It is small but intriguing. I have attempted my own version of the idea twice now. Once in Yarraville with a small stretch of houses that have since been demolished, for the Regional Rail Link. The ‘album’ is on flickr it is entitled Buckley Street Seddon. It took approximately 40 minutes to make those pictures.
I did the same recently, only this time I walked along Wright Street, Sunshine, from Stanford Street to Hampshire Road.
I started at the Stanford street and walked West, the numbers on that side of the street are even numbers. I excluded the corner houses. The photography component took all of 20 minutes.
There was one empty block primed and ready for redevelopment. And two other blocks with for sale signs on them. Big changes are indeed afoot. What form shape or size they will take remains to be seen I guess?
If you are like myself and many other creatives who use and rely on software to get the job done. You may well be sick of Adobe’s new licensing model? I have always been a proponent of alternatives to the mainstream and prior to 2002, there were several much better software programs out there that left Photoshop in the dirt. Fast forward now to the next century and somehow Adobe has become the Microsoft of the creative industries.
the editing panel of Luminar 4
Have no fear there ARE alternatives. One such player is Skylum software’s Luminar 4. I have been paying for this software for a couple of years now and when version 4 arrived with DAM built-in I was ecstatic. Luminar 4 has several features that beat the pants off Lightroom. These features are great if you are a novice digital photographer and want to get up to speed using software to enhance your raw files. At about $90.00 AU it’s a steal for the current version. [If you click through on this link it helps me with discounts moving forward].
the processing screen show the before and after preview
I won’t repeat what has been written other than to say the fact that I do not need to import images into the software to work means a lot. I expect version 5 of Luminar to knock Lightroom off its perch. Currently I use the two packages side by side, and given my approach to software generally, I should give the AI features in Luminar more of a go.
The info tab of the interface
Other features that both Lightroom and Luminar have that are useful are the option to review/preview edits. Luminar’s online help looks more succinct and direct than Adobe’s I feel too.
A fog shrouded bike path with signs indicating flooding, I walked here on Friday to exploit the uncommon weather.
As part of my ongoing pc3020 project, I left the house early enough to spend some quality time along my favourite walking path. I walked for nearly 2 hours along the Kororoit creek path. The sights and sounds were eerie. I passed several walkers a jogger and a bicyclist. I even managed to notice some new features of land abutting the track. This I found surprising as I have walked here regularly since moving to Sunshine in 2000.
Melbourne is undergoing several major infrastructure projects right now. The West Gate Tunnel, The Metro Tunnel, and the Melbourne Airport Rail Link to name just three. All of them impact on the roads and environment I use and photograph regularly. This crossing on Dynon road has been added for cyclists to use to cross the road. The bike path and associated underground tunnel has been closed while construction work is underway.
I spent a pleasant Sunday afternoon walking from Arden street to Dynon road and back following Moonee Ponds Creek. I shot about 1 and a half rolls of 120 film and about 50 or so digital pictures. The light was very good as it often is this time of year. The light was the main impetus for me going out to begin with. Having driven past a few times I had noticed some changes. In particular the 2 new bridges built for pedestrians and cyclists. I wanted to capture the state of things as they are. They will I’m sure revert to some form of their original state once the projects are completed.
