Wednesday night saw Justine and I heading out to St Kilda to see Grinspoon live at the Prince of Wales. As the band will be releasing their first new album in three years, they are doing a quick whirlwind tour before a larger tour later in the year.

In addition to the album being the first in three years, it was also the first time Grinspoon had played as Grinspoon for three years (at least according to the lead singer, Phil Jamieson, who looked either drunk, high or stoned out of his mind during the course of their hour onstage).

Melbourne group Children Collide (who are obviously not important enough to have a Wikipedia page) supported to a very small number of overly-excited fans. The group is obviously quite new, though I have heard one of their tracks on Triple J in the past couple of months.

You’d have to look hard to see a more diverse group of people than Children Collide; it’s almost as if the three had left different gigs from other bands (one an indie grunge band, one a 60s punk rocker and the other a 50s Hitler-lookalike) but they played loud and hard, and seemed to have a blast on stage.

To be honest I rather enjoyed their music, though I had no idea what the majority of their lyrics were. The drummer appeared to be reminding himself what to play by miming something-or-other, which I found amusing.

A ridiculously-long wait later, and the lead act finally appeared on stage. As mentioned earlier, Phil Jamieson was about as whacked out as one could possibly be while still being able to perform on-stage; at the time I assumed he was back on whatever substance he’d recently gone to rehab for but on second thought he was probably just (very, very) drunk.

Though they did play a large number of older songs, the band played neither of the songs Justine and I wanted to hear (”Just Ace” and “DC X 3″ respectively); a few new songs from their upcoming album were also played.

As we left, I noticed that my legs were extremely stiff from having been standing in the one spot for over three hours. It must be a by-product of getting old.

Grinspoon at the Prince of Wales, Melbourne
May 30th, 2007

Last weekend, Trav and I visited the PMA Australia Imaging Technology Expo; besides drooling over all the fancy technology we couldn’t afford, we also attended a Shelton Muller seminar on travel photography.

The two main points I took away from the seminar are relevant to photography in general:

• Get up early
• Take photos of people

Unfortunately for me, these two points are things that do not come easily to me. So, Trav and I arranged to wake early and head somewhere that a lot of people congregate, since it would make it less daunting to aim a camera at total strangers.

Yesterday, we woke early and braved the chilly morning weather and made our way to the Queen Victoria Market. I only took my prime 50mm lens with me, as my intention was to give myself no choice but to get close to my subjects.

We met up near the centre of the market, and began strolling around the periphery. While in the car park, I caught a woman’s eye and nodded towards my camera; she shouted “no photos!” a couple of times and ran in the opposite direction. Not a good start.

Fighting my natural tendencies the point the camera in a direction other than a living, breathing stranger, I persisted and continued to look down the barrel and press the shutter.

To my surprise, most people either didn’t notice or didn’t care that I took a photograph of them. The majority of the people that did notice were easily disarmed with a smile and a nod or quick “thank you”. This is in stark contrast to the reactions I was expecting and to be honest it’s much more enjoyable than using a telephoto lens to “spy” on people.

I also found it more satisfying to take candid photographs of people and thank them afterwards as opposed to asking their permission. The small number of times I asked first and the people mugged for the camera. Not what I wanted at all.

I’m thinking it might be a good idea to make a one-page website which explains why I’m doing street photography and have some good examples. That way, I could have small “business cards” which direct people to the website.

Yes, a number of people either waved me away, or shied away, or gave me gruff looks. I was even approached by a man later who wanted to know why I was photographing people and — more importantly — him. My answer “because I enjoy it” seemed sufficient.

Moving away from the market, Trav’s camera battery breathed it’s last, which stopped us from getting more experience photographing people in the street, as opposed to a busier environment. We made our way to Degraves St and enjoyed a cooked breakfast. The crispy bacon I asked for could in no way be considered crispy.

The small amount of interaction and excitement of pursuing a different style of photography was exhilarating and I can’t wait to try it again. Most of the shots I snapped were portraits, even though that wasn’t my intention, so there is a lot more room for experimentation.

Even though I’ve overcome some of the anxiety of photographing total strangers, I think I still need a few outings yet before I’ll be comfortable with this style of photography.

Right, well it’s been three weeks since I’ve last blogged. Looking at this month it appears that I haven’t posted for longer, but rest assured, it’s only three weeks.

So, over the past three weeks I have:

• Had two new IT staff start at work.
• Had ten days off from work (including weekends).
• Played an awful lot of Neverwinter Nights 2.
• Eaten at the Box Hill Kimchi Grandma with Trav and Ange.
• Eaten at Coyote Cafe with Trav and Ange.
• Gone on a day trip with Justine to Healesville Sanctuary (some photos are on Flickr).
• Spent an afternoon with Dad and Cheryl where we ate roast chicken and cake (not at the same time).
• and probably more that I forget.

I hope this satisfies everyone’s need to know what I have been doing in this apparent time of idleness. Should you wish to know more about any topic in depth, please click the “Comment on…” link and ask.

Not having taken many photos over the past six months, I’ve recently decided that I want to have another crack at it; especially since I put a bit of money into it. I recently managed to reset my camera’s counter, which is a good start, but one needs to build up momentum rather than basking in such small successes.

So, on an extremely chilly Saturday morning, Trav and I met up on the corner of Victoria and Church Streets in Abbotsford. We wandered the suburb on what turned a very wet and cold morning — the temperature hovered around twelve degrees as we explored.

After an hour-and-a-half and easily over a hundred shots, we were cold and hungry. We stopped at a local Pho restaurant and each had a bowl of beef and chicken Pho for breakfast. Sure, beef and chicken might not sound like a normal breakfast, but the place filled quite fast as we ate and besides, we played it safe and didn’t order the soup with either brisket, tripe, fat, tendon or cartilage.

A tiny, cute old lady who must have been easily over seventy placed a small jar of what turned out to be extremely hot chillies on our table. The place wasn’t the cleanest or most glamorous place to eat, but the food was decent, cheap, hot and made for a good place to rest after a morning of shooting.

You can see the shots taken over at Flickr. I’ll be uploading them over the next few days.

A week or two ago, Justine and I went out to a local restaurant — Shine Cafe — where I had a jambalaya and Justine had fish and chips. The meals were well-priced, huge and tasted pretty good. A couple of days later I got a mild case of what seemed like food poisoning, but I couldn’t put it down to Shine (though I did have seafood from there, which is notoriously bad for food poisoning); it certainly wouldn’t stop me from going back.

On Saturday, we went to a small cafe — Coco Lounge — in the same local strip to have some lunch. The amount of food we received was so large that we could barely finish it; we should have ordered one thing between us!

And finally, on Monday night, we went to a fantastic Korean restaurant in Carnegie: Kimchi Grandma (they don’t have a website, but judging from their reputation they don’t need one). We arrived at 6:30pm, and the place was packed to the rafters, luckily we’d booked. After we’d ordered — BBQ pork for me and Teriyaki chicken (really traditional there) for Justine — the staff placed seven small bowls of various side dishes in front of us, Kimchi, cucumber, potatoes in a lemony sauce, eggplant, crab salad, and other stuff I forget. All delicious, and all fantastic. When the food finally arrived (it took a while) it too was delicious and disappeared far too quickly, even though I was more than full.

We’ll definitely be going back to Kimchi Grandma (they have restaurants in Box Hill and apparently the CBD too) very soon, except next time we’ll be getting one of their big arse casseroles to share between us; the casseroles sit on the table and cook while you graze on them. Brilliant.

I just realised that this is my first post for February, and the month is nearly half over. Justine and I joined Trav and Ange last night at Lygon St for dinner. Our only plan was to have Italian food and have it somewhere around Lygon St. The rest was up to fate.

One spruiker offeed us “two more bottles of that” (and pointing to the brown paper bag Trav was holding) and then retracting said offer upon realisation that the bag actually contained rum, not wine. Another offered us an “eighty dollar bottle of wine”, which was more likely to be the cheapest bottle on the street. We squished past a few more restaurants before quickly deciding on one so we didn’t have to continue our search. They did give us a “free” bottle of el-cheapo wine, which didn’t appear on the final bill, which was nice.

Sitting outside, the girls were in the passerby line of fire, not to mention the cigarette smoke line of fire, so we moved inside.

I had a risotto with mussels and Justine had a vegetarian risotto. Both had obviously been waiting under the heat lamp for a while as the outside of the rice was quite dry; inside it was alright but definitely not the best risotto I’ve had. With all the other restaurants on Lygon St, we probably wouldn’t bother going back to that one. I don’t even remember what it was called!