No idea where this lovely pig is in the city but he had his own mud puddle – click to embiggen
Back in Sept 2010 I was in Melbourne for Worldcon – Aussiecon having a lovely time going to panels and readings, meeting authors and other fans and not getting near enough sleep. Up until 4th Sept when I was woken by a text early morning to be advised that Christchurch had just had its first earthquake.
Fortunately no loss of life but a fair amount of damage, and the citizens were, quite literally, shaken. It kinda took the shine of my holiday but I did spend a LOT of time walking the streets, seeing the sites and lugging my camera EVERYWHERE 🙂
It has taken this long but I finally feel ready to go back and start working on those images, so be prepared for a deluge of Melbourne based posts as I cover off all the places I went and the things I saw.
Starting with this handsome fellow, I have no idea where I ran across him but he was lovely and so photogenic with his mud puddle.
Amazing what 4 years more experience has taught me, now I would have composed the shot with much more space at his feet and tried to crop out the distracting grass in the top right corner. Looks like this is a good angle to get all his wrinkly detail.
Processed in LR, left exposure as it was OK, increased contrast and shadows, decr highlights, added black and white points, a smidge of clarity and vibrance and a faint vignette. Toned down some too bright spots with local adjustments. Pushed to Nik Silver Efex, added a Fine Art preset and slight lens falloff, back into LR for another light vignette addition and voila!
I hope you enjoy my Melbourne images, its been such a long time since I was there!
Learning to See Light 