My Kind of Landscape » - urban landscape photography

…and the backlog has been cleared! Yay! Not that I’m complaining – but I kinda miss looking at just one image and talking about it… can you imagine how long I’d have images stored up if I had been doing that in the last couple of weeks?! Background of these ones: Pink door – third time lucky (wrong light! every. time. and I stood there in the blaring sun waiting patiently for a cloud like a weirdo, and then had to stand in the middle of the road to take the photo. maybe I am a weirdo?!). Red wall – I’ve been trying to take this one for weeks as well… and again, bad light. This day? Perfecto – and better than I think it was the first time I saw it! The others are just glorious discoveries! Two orange + blues – two completely different businesses, and in two very different parts of Brisbane… just in case you were wondering. Which I’m sure you weren’t.

I’ve been taking a lot of portrait oriented photos lately – I’m not sure if it’s just because the subjects tend to suit it, or if it’s just my subconscious relishing freedom after 365 days of predominantly landscape ones?! Yay for colour – I’ve been stalking it, and seem to have a thing for orange and blue at the moment. Odd! One of these images has been on my list for longer than I care to remember (yay for public holidays when no-one is at work!) and the rest are just happy discoveries… mostly. The red/yellow/blue fire hose reel is a pain – I’ve been back three times to try and photograph it in the light I first saw it in (but didn’t take a photo – argh! There were people standing nearby)… this is at 7am, and I needed to be there earlier than that. I’ve also been there at 6:45, but it wasn’t right either! To get there is a 6km /10 minute drive, so I’ve given up for the time being. Oh, it’s a tough life as a perfectionist! (!!!)

There were two ‘firsts’ the day I took the majority of these – both strange ones, and I definitely thought I was more towards the end of ‘firsts’ this far into this little journey! First #1: see that second last photo in this group? The door alcove with the shadows? I’ve been here before. And – it was actually one of my 365 photos: Day 334. Have a look – it looks completely different, but I guess it was pretty obvious it was being in the process of being changed last time! I figured I could break my ‘can’t photograph the same place twice’ rule for this one. First #2: it was insanely bright outside – really, really, really bright. I can’t use my camera and sunglasses at the same time, and I was in a empty industrial car park – surrounded with white cement. I joke quite regularly that I can’t see when it’s super sunny, which is true. This day, I went one better. I cried. Completely involuntary, and it sure wasn’t at the glorious pink of that wall – it was just so bright that my eyes *ahem* watered. A lot! My husband (who was wearing sunnies and parked in the shade – smart man) just looked at me and shook his head. Poor man.

I went through all my ‘newbies’ on my computer (of which there are quite a few!) – and it’s kind funny to see the progression from city – neutrals, greys and lots of shadows to industrial – colour, shadow, more colour and a bit more colour! I’m madly scrambling to cross off my list – yesterday I planned my route, and went out with a piece of paper with a list that I actually crossed off as I went. Don’t let anyone ever tell you I’m not an organised kinda gal! Not everything was crossed off, though – wrong light, bad timing etc… and I’m busting to take a photo of a purple wall that just happens to be the entrance to an adult shop. Which just happened to be open yesterday, so there was no way in hell I was loitering in their car park to try and capture that one – imagine if I was mistaken for a suspicious female hanging out to capture evidence of the shop visitors?! I’ll keep that spot for another day when I’ve psyched myself up a bit more…!

My photo-taking has caught up with me when I wasn’t looking! I don’t like posting a million images at once, so I’ll have batches (like I’ve been doing) for the next few days, I think. Last week of holidays, so I’m on a mission to make sure all (!! whatever, I know it won’t happen) of the places on my list are crossed off… faster than I can add on new ones, anyway! Sometimes I wonder if I’m going to have a ‘list’ for ever onwards – I’m not a big fan of this idea, but I’m not quite sure how I’m going to avoid it!