Melbourne Part 4

After seeing the Shrine of Remembrance, we headed back through the city to the hotel, stopping for soup at The Soup Place (Degraves St) and hot chocolate at Koko Black. I had a stunning sunset flight home to Brisbane.

See part three...

Melbourne Part 3

We turned around after dinner at Split Point, where the lighthouse is. They filmed the classic Australian TV show "Round The Twist" here. Then Hannah, Simon and I wandered Melbourne on my third and last day. I managed to get a few good street photographs in. More photos to come.

See part two...

See part four...

Melbourne Part 1

I booked flights to Melbourne this year on a whim without any actual plans. What came together was one of my favourite weekends down there so far. I was still relatively sick with a cold on the first day so I wandered around, caught up with a friend then went back and slept the night off.

The next day I caught up with Genevieve and her friends before heading down the Great Ocean Road for a short road trip with Connor, Simon, Hannah and Lana. It was wild and raining at times but beautiful. The next post will have more of that.

See part two...

Experimenting With VSCO's Fuji 800Z Colour

With a few weeks break from street photography comes some subtle changes in my routine. I've been using VSCO's Kodak Portra 400 for any colour photography for a while, but I've been feeling like I needed something different so today I'm giving their Fuji 800Z colour film preset a go with a few pictures. It's a little less "clean" than Portra 400 and has an interesting feel. What do you think?

Why A Photo Blog?

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This photo blog has been incredibly inspiring for me over the last year and it feels like I could contribute to it for the rest of my life, given my desire to shoot a lot of street and personal photography these days.

I was inspired to create it after purchasing my Fujifilm X100s camera and I quickly worked out a consistent style for the pictures I publish. In particular, I had been following the blog of Severin Koller for a while and it just made sense to create something in a similar vein.

But why post to a photo blog?

Let Off Steam

Perhaps the biggest reason a photo blog helps is that it can be the vessel that drives the process of shooting. Street photography is especially applicable to this because it is about as free form as photography gets. You just pick up your camera and walk out the door. There is no shoot preparation, no bundle of gear in a large bag to carry, and you can easily tie it in with coffee and catch ups.

Every creative person I know has an innate craving to create new work, whether its every day or every month. For me, I've found it takes about a week for me to recharge but when you get into a rhythm of shooting every weekend, it really becomes a cathartic process and let's off steam.

Practice, Practice, Practice

Every time I contribute to my blog, it involves practicing my craft beforehand. It helps you become proficient with your camera, focusing techniques, as well as being able to efficiently compose a shot in a fraction of a second. It also helps you become more objective at selecting your final choice of photos.

The more you shoot and the more you edit and discuss your work with friends, the better you'll get, even if it takes a while to be noticeable. Practice doesn't just involve using a camera, but processing and choosing your images as well.

Consistency

It's an excellent reason to practice consistency in both the making of photographs but also your editing of photographs. Almost every post I've made to this blog has been a horizontal 35mm focal length photograph in black and white. Only on rare occasions has it been anything else.

It has taught me that I can make strong photographs using only one orientation, one focal length and one processing style. It teaches you to prioritise the subject matter and composition of your photographs before anything else.

As an added benefit, it also creates a strongly connected body of work with which to draw from after months go by. It's the reason I want to create a book at the end of the year. All of these photographs share a single, consistent style.

Ship Often

And finally, it teaches you to make decisions about your work. Posting that final selection of 5-10 photos after a day of shooting is the end of the process and lets you get back to the other things in your life until you go out and shoot again.

Many people tend to sit on photographs for a long time or never post their work and can become apathetic to their work. I'd rather shoot, edit and put them on the table for people to see then go have dinner and work on something else.

Your opinions of yours or others work will always be evolving, you can't help it.

Conclusion

If you're wondering what to do with your photographs, and feel like a photo blog is the way to go, don't hesitate. It's been a wonderful outlet for my work, regardless of the size of my audience. I'm not worried about likes or clicks anymore, and neither should you. Shoot, publish and grow.

I'd love to hear from other people who also run a photo blog and their thoughts on how it has helped them...

Working On A Book

Whenever I print out my street photographs or read another photo book, I get a different sense of appreciation for the photographs than looking at them on a screen.

I decided to put together a book of some of my favourite street photographs so far and see how the layout and print quality looks for later on down the track. My intention is to spend at least this year building up a large library of work to choose from, particularly centered around my experience within Brisbane, where I live and produce a more complete book, even if just for myself.

I had 22 10x8" premium matte pages printed as a book through Blurb.com and here's some of the results. You can buy a copy of this test book at cost price for around $25 excluding postage.