Peace Fair

The International Day of Peace - Peace Fair celebrations, held in the Brisbane Square on the 21st September 2007 included a number of multicultural dancing and singing activities. Unfortunately I missed the introduction to this performance, however the kimono and fans suggest something Japanese. The movements were slow but stately, full of grace and I suspect extremely meaningful from a cultural perspective.

Music Lesson

Music Lesson, originally uploaded by Martin~.

Wandering up to Brisbane Square, as I often do most lunch hours, I came across these gentlemen with what appeared to be an end blown flute. Having dabbled with Irish penny whistles and and an old school fife (circa 1970), curiosity got the better of me and I was politely informed that the instrument is a Turkish ney. Kindly consenting to be photographed during their music lesson I learned that the gentleman on the right was responsible for both crafting the instrument and was also providing his pupil (on the left) with instruction on its use. From what I could hear of the sound it reminded me of the lower range of notes my daughter produces on her traditional flute, low, haunting, but beautifully melodic.

At the time I thought this would be a tricky exposure given the dark coat worn by the subject in the foreground and the back lighting from the sky, thus the image was exposed by spot metering the subjects' hands. The original image has been mildly sharpened and converted to monochrome using a third party pseudo channels plug-in compatible with Photoshop Elements.

City Smart

City Smart, originally uploaded by Martin~.

Today saw the official start of the Brisbane City Council's CitySmart program, by the Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Campbell Newman.

The program is an amalgam of strategies designed to encourage the residents of Brisbane to self assess individual energy usage from a number of different perspectives. CitySmart also provides Information and links to practical advice concerning sustainability at the household level, according to the philosophy that encouragement to act locally will bring about changes globally.

Human Battery Cage

Human Battery Cage, originally uploaded by Martin~.
An unusual protest conducted in the Brisbane Square today. A number of students highlighted the plight of battery hens by undertaking to be caged in a like manner. It was interesting that earlier in the week; the evening news reported definitional loopholes that result in more “organic” eggs being packaged and sold than growers are actually producing. Naturally the Australian Egg Corporation denies widespread egg substitution is occurring. (Not eggsactly good publicity).

It does make you wonder as a consumer though about the legitimacy of egg marketing generally. Are those eggs really from happy go-lucky free range or barn reared chooks?

False Alarm

False Alarm, originally uploaded by Martin~.

A very common site in the Brisbane central business district are fire-engines responding to false alarms. That they are false (malfunctioning) I think has to be a good thing, although in terms of the recurrent adrenal rushes, I don't suppose that it can be all that good health-wise for the firemen (and firewomen) who attend.

The observant will have noticed this is the third consecutive image I have posted in colour. I am having a lot of fun at the moment getting a feel for my wife's Finepix S5600. For the uninformed it is a pseudo SLR style 5.1MP digital camera, quite compact, and therefore very suitable for my small hands.

It's a Gas!

It's a Gas!, originally uploaded by Martin~.
In a flurry of publicity, the Brisbane City Council recently showcased one of its newly built natural gas powered articulated buses. In addition to a number of officials, there were several journalists and camera persons shooting footage of the new bus. Whilst I am not exactly a fan of buses, I thought I would use this as another opportunity to take pictures of people taking pictures.

This is also the first "street" photograph I have posted in colour, although I have desaturated the image somewhat to the point where I think the hues add to the image without overwhelming it.

Ship's Prow

This is an exterior photograph of the library space depicted in Spaceship Earth, and in fact, the two "viewing ports" in the top left quarter I think are reconcilable with those visible in the earlier image. The smooth hard chines of of the external fascia and angular join are very reminiscent of the view of a ship's bow as it cuts through the ocean. In this instance the ocean represented by the vastness of... space, the final frontier, these are the voyages...

Oops! (postscript 15th May) After making the comment about the above windows I was rather perplexed and confused that on closer inspection they do not appear to be the same as those depicted in the interior shot. In fact the window on the RHS of this exterior shot is slanting the opposite way to what I thought was its compliment in the interior shot.

Well after revisiting both locations I have finally realised that the exterior shot is from the same "box" section but is a different corner!

Push

This image was an unplanned candid grabbed as I was standing around trying to figure out a half decent viewpoint from which to photograph the exterior of the new Brisbane Square building. These two individuals gleefully photographed each other trying to move the immovable. As a result, I'm seriously contemplating a project involving taking photographs of people taking photographs, (they just seem to do it so well).

Spaceship Earth

The futuristic interior of the Brisbane City Council's newly completed flagship library (Brisbane Square), boasts a decor that always suggests to me the passenger lounge of an intergalactic spaceliner. The floor to ceiling viewing ports (windows) canted at odd angles and unusual use of coloured internal lighting are just the passenger comforts I'd expect, hurtling as it were to a distant star, (whilst whiling away the time with some Heinlein).