GX GARNERINGS

Dunno if the fair donut lady is why the American Doughnuts  has managed to keep customers lining up during the weekends when the Victoria Market in Melbourne opens, but she caught my eye.

Post-processed for the latitude There have been lots of exciting news and launches of compact serious cameras lately. Nikon's P7000, Sony's a55 (sort of compact), Oly's E-5 (to be launched on 14 September), Samsung's NX100 .... While Nikon says it is moving towards the development of new concepts in its future cameras, with or without the mirror, Canon has shown its capability to produce cameras which can shoot exceptionally high-resolution movie (and the implications for still shots?). Sony's new translucent think for its a55 is also a heartening news for the photography community. The directions are going to be diverse, it seems. So, what is next after all these expected and suggested new cameras become reality? Maybe cameras which can see highly contrasty scenes as the human eyes see'em, and take photos using the lights invisible to the bare eyes? Let's keep our fingers crossed that the camera makers focus less on the gimmicks. The shot today was p...

"Flutterby" is the wild-guess origin of the word "Butterfly" but some think the suggestion erroneous.  Whatever the word Butterfly came from, the insects are always intriguing to admire just as when pondering on the mystery of the word origin.  These photos were taken with the EVF attached to the GX200, which allowed the photographer to stabilise the camera at a slow shutter speed.  The camera was turned to the digital macro mode.

Painting on photography has long been one of the ways of photographic expression, if not a genre in its own right. With the advent of digital photography and photoshopping, it is being experimented, expanded to new territories and becoming more popular than ever. If the core of photography leans towards "recordability" of a scene, painting centres more on its readability. Readability is higher when the painting is more heavily loaded in terms of artistic conception. Painting-like photos should therefore set at a higher artistic ground than those for other photography genres. The adoption of Chinese ink-painting techniques in photography holds my interest more. For that matter, the artistic conception can be heightened by the strength of tone and blanks, the reason being that Chinese ink paintings employ only varying shades of grey. Tone can express the dimensions and distances of subjects while blanks can, among other things, complement the shades of grey and make th...

Flinders Street Station is the main city terminus and interchange station for the railway system in Melbourne which is now administered by the MTR Corporation from Hong Kong. MTR is the short form for Hong Kong's underground railway system. Some twenty years ago, the Melbourne railway system was associated mainly with the heritage of the UK systems, namely inefficiency and regular strikes. The locals tell me that the MTR people has improved the train service a bit but the whole shebang is too old to be really remedied. It needs an overhaul. This shot has a mysterious quality to it which reminds me of the surreal sci-fi movies by Bruce Willis like Surrogates or the Fifth Element. The two men dressed in suit on the platform at either edges through the window could be some sort of special agents. It took just ten seconds from the moment I spotted the scene, turned on the camera to shotting the image. Otherwise, chances were that the train would have left the station or the pass...

Took a train to Richmond in Melbourne where the trendy shops are.  But more interested and somewhat puzzled by two scenes.  One is of the train station showing a slightly exaggerated depth, as if the two platforms in the background were mirrored images. The second one is of the two ladies in the cafe: Mirrored? Twins mimicking each other?

No casualties. That's close. This is Sunday. Enjoy, and beware of the weekend drivers.