Two trains, one level crossing

Two trains pass each other at a level crossing.

One train goes left-to-right…

Photo of a Metro Melbourne train going down the tracks at a level crossing. The photographer is standing only a short distance away from the tracks. The train is in clear focus, while the rest of the photo is artistically motion blurred.

One train goes right-to-left…

Photo of a motion-blurred, blue coloured train zipping down the tracks at a level crossing. The photographer is standing only a short distance away from the tracks.

Both photos were taken with a Pixel 6 Pro smartphone. The first photo used the ‘action pan’ camera feature, while the second used the ‘long exposure’ feature.

Pixel 6 Pro + trains

The down side of working from home during the pandemic is that I haven’t had the opportunity to walk around the city taking photos with my (still relatively new) Pixel 6 Pro phone camera system. Which is why you mostly get snaps of Maggie either at home or in and around our neighbourhood. So here are a few train photos I’ve taken over the last few weeks.

Here’s a long exposure of a V/Line train arriving at Southern Cross station. That was taken the last time I went into the office before my year-end break.

Photo of a train pulling into a platform across from the photographer. The photo is a long exposure, so the moving train has motion blur and is slightly transparent.

Here’s one of a train zipping along the tracks from Newport to Laverton stations. I’m really enjoying playing with the various motion photo features available in the Pixel 6 Pro camera.

Photo of a Metro Melbourne train running down train tracks behind a line of trees.

And here’s one of a freight train running down that same bit of track at the southern end of Newport. This time I’m making use of the zoom lenses available on this smartphone.

Photo of a freight train running down train tracks behind the tree line at the end of a residential street. The phrase ‘MULTI-FRIEGHTER’ is written on the side of a the khaki coloured boxcar that’s visible through the trees.

I expect to be going into the office at least a couple of days a week from early next year, so I’m looking forward to taking and sharing more photos then.

Impressive Pixel 6 Pro camera performance

Whoa. The Pixels 6 Pro’s forward-facing camera really is excellent!

This photo was cropped slightly, but is otherwise completely untouched.

Selfie of a smiling man standing on an outdoor deck on a sunny day, with a residential garden behind him. The man is bald and has a trimmed, salt-and-pepper beard. He is wearing glasses and a t-shirt with the original book cover of Phillip K Dick’s book ‘Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep?’ printed on it.

Also, compare these two untouched (again, only cropped) selfies.

The Pixel 6 Pro (right) does a much better job than the Pixel 3XL (left) that I just upgraded from.

Collage of two selfies of the same man in the same location. The man is bald, has a salt-and-pepper beard, and is wearing glasses and a pair of black wireless headphones. He is standing in a residential garden, with the sun behind him. The photo on the left, captioned 'Pixel 3XL', clearly shows the bright environment he’s in, but his face is shadowed and the clouds in the sky aren’t well defined. In the photo on the right, captioned 'Pixel 6 Pro', his face is well lit and you can see some of the details in the clouds.

Oh, and in case it isn’t bleedingly obvious by now, I bought Google’s latest and greatest smartphone: the Pixel 6 Pro :)

An excellent introduction to TikTok

If you’ve been around the internet for a while you’ll know there used be an app called Vine that let you make six-second long videos. It was hugely popular but, after being purchased by Twitter, was discontinued in 2016.

TikTok is considered by many to be the spiritual successor to Vine. But, like with Vine, if you don’t know what it’s about and what’s happening in that space, it’s a bit difficult to get into.

So a couple of weeks ago Sally Kuchar started a fantastic thread on Twitter that showcases some of the best TikTok videos and memes. I highly recommend you check it out!