[Photo walk] Along Bourke Street #2 (35mm only)

It is week two of shooting at only 35mm (23mm on my mirrorless APS-C camera) and I did not have a very successful photo walk.

There just weren’t as many people walking along the stretch of Bourke Street where I was – the bit that goes from Southern Cross station to Swanston Street. There was a good crowd of people from Elizabeth Street onwards, but by then I was tired and in a bit of hurry to go home so I only got a couple of decent people shots before I caught the train from Melbourne Central.

Oh well.

Bourke Place tower in the Melbourne CBD

Photo looking up at the rounded corner of a tall, 46 storey office tower located at 600 Bourke Street in Melbourne. A large AMP logo has been installed at the top of the tower.

Negative space

Photo looking up at the blue sky above a medium-tall office building on a sunny day. The photographer is standing at an intersection in the central business district. Behind, to the left, and to the right are all very tall office buildings. The only corner of this intersection without a very tall office building is the one in front of the photographer.

Everyone else was looking down at just their smartphones

Photo of a woman sitting on a stone bench with a metal back support next to a tram stop in the middle of a city. There are several people walking and standing around the tram stop. The woman is working on a Windows tablet with an attached keyboard that she's placed on her lap.

Waiting for the next delivery order to come through

Photo of a food delivery driver sitting on an electric bike on a wide footpath in the middle of a city. The driver is wearing a bike helmet and a bright yellow high visibility jacket. Attached the the carrier on the bake of the bike is a large, neon-yellow, insulated food transport container. Attached to the front of the bike is a smaller insulated container for transporting cold items.

Next week I’ll make my way quickly to Swanston Street (which is always full of people) and then spend a good amount of time taking photos along there.

Will I stick to 35mm for a third week though? Probably not.

I know I haven’t spend enough time at 35mm to get a good feel for this focal length, but I also want to keep moving through the exercise so that I’m done by the time we get to Boxing Day and the lenses I want to buy go on sale.

So next week I’ll move to 40mm. That way I’ll cover 40mm and 55mm in November, and then 85mm in the first half of December. That’ll leave me with enough time to repeat a focal length or two before Boxing Day comes around and I need to make my decision.

Also, I want to spend more time at 40mm than 35mm because my preference is to get a pancake lens and Fujifilm only offers those at 27mm (18mm in the APS-C system) and 40mm (27mm) for their X System cameras.

I already find 35mm a little awkward to shoot at (mostly due to lack of experience) so I’m dying to see how comfortable (or not) I feel at 40mm!

[Photo walk] Along Flinders Street #2 (35mm only)

This week I moved on from shooting at only 27mm to shooting at only 35mm (which is moving on from 18mm to 23mm in the mirrorless APSC-C camera world.)

Of all the photos I’ve shared on this blog since I got my new camera in December last year, only 5% have had a focal length of around 35mm. So as expected, shooting at only this focal length was a lot more challenging for me!

For example, there were a bunch of things I wanted to photograph that were just too big to accommodate within the frame. Like Seafarers Bridge across the Yarra River and the historic Polly Woodside ship.

Collage of two photos. One of a bridge with large, white metal arches and one of a large, historic sailing ship moored to side of an urban river. The arches on the bridge are very close to the edge of photo frame. And the tops of the ship’s sails have been cut off by the top of the photo frame.

In both those cases I wasn’t able to step back (or to the side) to get the whole-object-in-context composition that I wanted. At least not without falling into the Yarra River or standing in the middle of a busy bike path! And obviously I wasn’t able to zoom in to focus on any particular detail either.

What I’ve learnt from this experience is that the skill I need to develop the most is the ability to focus on just one part of a larger object, and then to tell a good story with this composition. Like I do with the Melbourne Aquarium sign photo below. Or the photo in which I juxtapose the scar trees with the skyscraper (also below).

Even though I struggled a bit on this photo walk, I was still able to get at least a couple of nice shots.

Pigeon outside the Crown complex

Close up photo of a pigeon standing on a wide concrete wall along a suburban river.

Old Melbourne Aquarium sign

Photo of a large, blue neon sign in the shape of two stylised fish. The sign is held above the top of a building via two tall white poles.

Scar trees in Enterprize Park

Photo of the Scar Project artwork installation in Enterprize Park in Melbourne. The installation consists of 24 vertical timber poles, somewhat like trees, that have artwork on them by eight Indigenous Australian artists. This photo is taken from inside a brick archway that's next to the installation.

Scar trees vs Eureka Tower

Photo looking up at several scar trees that make up the Scar Project artwork installation in Melbourne. In the background of the photo, and seen between the scar trees, is the 91-storey Eureka Tower building.

Eureka Tower reflection

Photo of a large puddle of water underneath an elevated train line that reflects the Melbourne skyline, with the Eureka Tower building being centered in the puddle.

The Best Banh Mi at Flinders Street station

Photo of an open store front with a large glass counter and several food preparation and storage machines. A large orange neon sign above the store front reads, in all capital letters, “The Best Banh Mi” and “Vietnamese Hot Bread”.

To get the most out of this one-focal-length-at-a-time exercise, I am alternating the spaces in which take my weekly photo walks: in the first week I take photos in a wider-open space, in the second week I take photos in a relatively narrower space.

Which means next week I’ll be walking through the city centre once again. And with things closer by, it should be easier for me to isolate my subjects within the frame at 35mm. I look forward to seeing how that goes.