The Mum and Judy Show, May 2023

By Matthew Davidson, 22 May, 2023
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A photo of Judy taking a photo of the Yarra. Mum looks  on.

I do so enjoy taking photos of people taking photos.

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Judy taking a photo of the Yarra, Mum squinting up at the sky.
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Mum and Judy taking photos of the Yarra.
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City skyline from the water at Port Melbourne.

On the water with Melbourne River Cruises. To the left is Salome, one of Wallenius Wilhelmsen's roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) vessels. It says here that it can carry up to 6004 cars, if the first 6000 shuffle up a bit. You can follow it's progress around the world here.

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City skyline from Port Melbourne.
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Princes Bridge and Southbank from the North side of the Yarra.

Most of these photos have been tampered with in some way because I was shooting into the sky with the light coming from somewhere other than directly behind me. On my phone, at least, this results in practically everything in the foreground being completely in shadow. You can rescue this by adjusting the color levels in GIMP, but then it gets all washed out. In turn you can fix that by turning up the saturation, at the risk of making the resulting image look like one of those hand-colourised postcards from the middle of last century. This photo is one of the worst offenders.

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A Puffing Billy Railway steam engine drawing a train across a wooden trestle bridge over a road.
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Lust green Dandenong Ranges hillside as seen from the Puffing Billy Railway.

I like the way my phone inadvertently focused on the tree right in front, giving the photo a tilt shift effect, so I didn't feel at all guilty in turning up the colour saturation to make it look even more artificial.

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One of the Puffing Billy Railway's steam locomotives sitting at a station, steaming away sans carriages.

Sometimes you get lucky. I don't think I fiddled with this one at all:

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Deciduous trees with their top leaves turning crimson and orange.
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Looking between two rows of trees to a house on the neighbouring hillside.
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Yet another idyllic Dandenong ranges hillside, mountains in the background just skirting the underside of clouds.
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Rolling green hills studded with trees, near sunset. An abstract sculpture in bright glossy colours in the foreground.
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Two rather distinguished ladies discuss their purchases in a chocolate factory gift shop.

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