Photography Walkabout
In Februrary, during one of my occasional photography-sprees, I exhausted all possible routes from my office to North Sydney Station and felt the hunger for more subject matter. I hatched a crazy plan to walk all the way to Waverton (the next stop homeward) before boarding the train and continuing home: It was unexplored territory, it was raw suburbia, it was a pretty nice neighbourhood so I was unlikely to get mugged, and so I went for it, and got some pretty nice results if I do say so myself. I decided I wanted to do it again, but then daylight saving ended, and I got distracted by other things, then my camera got stolen... but when I got my new SLR, I jumped back in and rode to Waverton then walked to Wollstonecraft, followed by Wollstonecraft to St. Leonards, St. Leonards to Artarmon, and so forth. Most of my daily Flickr posts for the past month or so have been from these journeys.
This evening was to be the final leg of my journey, from Warrawee to Wahroonga (I’d done Wahroonga to Waitara years before), but as I was walking out the door I saw an unusually grey sky. “An odd time of day for fog”, I thought...
When I got outside, rain was bucketing down. Most of my path to the train-station was covered, but I still got noticeably damp. After zipping northward for half an hour, I reached Warrawee with the skies still overcast and the occasional tumble of thunder rolling across the sky, but it wasn’t actually raining so I got out, unfurled my camera and got to work recording that curious lilac thunderstorm lighting. “How lucky I am to have arrived just after the rain stopped!” I thought. Then I looked down at my feet and realised the ground was still dry...
About fifty metres further on, I felt something splash on the back of my hand, and it was all I could do to get my camera stowed and the umbrella deployed before I got seriously drenched. I trudged onward, marvelling at the bombardment of the road and the instant, swirling streams in the gutter, but too afraid actually try photographing them.
I made it to Wahroonga as the rain eased up, and just as a train pulled in to take me home, so it worked out alright - I just didn’t get many photos, that’s all. There have been a few other off-days where the sun set halfway through my walk, or it was overcast and I didn’t have enough light, so I’m tempted to start over again from scratch and see if I have better luck next time around... but there’s also lots of Sydney I haven’t photographed yet. We Shall See!
This evening was to be the final leg of my journey, from Warrawee to Wahroonga (I’d done Wahroonga to Waitara years before), but as I was walking out the door I saw an unusually grey sky. “An odd time of day for fog”, I thought...
When I got outside, rain was bucketing down. Most of my path to the train-station was covered, but I still got noticeably damp. After zipping northward for half an hour, I reached Warrawee with the skies still overcast and the occasional tumble of thunder rolling across the sky, but it wasn’t actually raining so I got out, unfurled my camera and got to work recording that curious lilac thunderstorm lighting. “How lucky I am to have arrived just after the rain stopped!” I thought. Then I looked down at my feet and realised the ground was still dry...
About fifty metres further on, I felt something splash on the back of my hand, and it was all I could do to get my camera stowed and the umbrella deployed before I got seriously drenched. I trudged onward, marvelling at the bombardment of the road and the instant, swirling streams in the gutter, but too afraid actually try photographing them.
I made it to Wahroonga as the rain eased up, and just as a train pulled in to take me home, so it worked out alright - I just didn’t get many photos, that’s all. There have been a few other off-days where the sun set halfway through my walk, or it was overcast and I didn’t have enough light, so I’m tempted to start over again from scratch and see if I have better luck next time around... but there’s also lots of Sydney I haven’t photographed yet. We Shall See!