Neon Sanctuary

Another neon sign from California in America in a tourist spot. Felix the cat- not necessarily one of my favourite cartoons as a child I think that humour was a level above my little toddler mind. I liked the neon signs of that place and the way there were all together and the giant American flags are car dealers and balloons of colours red, blue and white.

El Capitah

The tiny little size of this photograph doesn't do what I saw in Hollywood justice- the intricacy of the lights and detail on the signage of the El Capitan theatre needs to be seen in person or at least viewed with a better size quality (click photo). When all my exams are over I am going to have a Disney movie binge session and watch childhood movies from my generation that I never saw or don't remember. Maybe do some drawings and chill out for a few months.

Wombat Stew

Wombats taking shelter from a Melbourne day full of on-off rain and wind. They all looked so cute snuggled up together underground in their burrow, not that the sand and ground looks very comfortable but at least it's dry! My boyfriend played the role of my photography spotter, pinching my arm and pointing out interesting things for me to shoot. What a sweetheart. I did take some nice photographs of the wombats here but I missed the one on the far left rolling over and scratching itself and the flash gives a very different colour of the fur of the wombats compared to those taken without the flash. I always have a lot of fun with him when we go out to tourist places and I get to bring my camera along and he doesn't mind. What a shame he doesn't like to be a show pony and pose for me.

Kings of Neon

I love taking photographs because it's like a reminder you can keep for your memory; I haven't thought about this photograph for a while since I looked through my photographs taken on my holiday at the start of January 2011 for two weeks. A tourist spot was a lot of shops all clustered together close to Universal Studios all light up with neon signs everywhere and as far as the eye could see. As I remember, my friends and I ate at Johnny Rockets and the burgers were big and mean with a whole lot of flavour.

A city full of light

It may not be the city of lights Paris itself but when we travelled around by limousine and stretch hummer around the gorgeous city of San Francisco on our last day of staying in America and stopped at a few different places to swap vehicles, a few trees were strung up from root to branch full of gorgeous fairy lights. There were more decorations of them then a Christmas tree set up in the city for the Myer windows back home at Melbourne. 

A water fountain light up by lights brought a lot of attention to the dare devil boys among the group; daring to run across the width of the water feature and risking getting soaking wet for the next hour and so and putting up with the shame and soggy trophy of wrinkled clothes.

Skippy

I was absolutely thrilled when I went to the Melbourne Zoo with my boyfriend- it was my choice of location for the date as a way to make up for being an hour late for the last date. I don't make a very good girlfriend sometimes though; if there's a camera around my neck I'm asking him to open up sealed bags of 120mm slide film that I can't manage and I generally ignore him until a.) I run out of film using an analogue camera and b.) the batteries on my digital camera give out on me. 

He's lovely though and manages to put up with me when I'm being a pain in the butt, as a good boyfriend should be. These photographs are from our mosey around the native Australian animal exhibits so there were lots of kangaroos and emus. 

Another wonderful thing my boyfriend does when he's with my and I have the camera around my neck is that he will gently tap on my shoulder and point in front of my nose- I nearly missed a great big brown kangaroo that was right behind us and casually hopped past and under the fence. You can see the arm of my boyfriend in the photograph with no zoom, it was that close to us. He was worried that it would take an interest to our bags since we had brought food from home that we had made in the kitchen with us. The kangaroo didn't seem very interested though, he was really laid-back. There were kangaroos of all shapes and sizes there, even some little grey coloured joeys were out and about. Although there wasn't a lot of sunlight for them to enjoy and bask in.

Swan

There's has to be something said about the beauty of a swan upon dark, inky black murky water. This was taken at the Melbourne Zoo and I don't think it was a proper exhibit, more like letting some of the birds have a wander and swim across the various patches of water that are located all around the zoo. Ripples created by the faint rain that threatened to hammer down when thunder struck scaring the baby elephants. I was prepared and brought my poncho from Seaworld in California and my boyfriend was smart and brought an umbrella which I'm sure he would have shared if I needed it. He got sick from that date because it was cold and windy and we decided to eat sandwiches and food we both brought from home while sitting in a low, fat branched tree. No one bothered to tell us of though and it was funny to watch children come towards us and climb the tree. Kids say some of the funniest things.

Jaws

The thing about movie sets is that they can seem large when you shoot at various locations but some of the more important places where the action takes place can be really small; all about effective use of camera angles and shots to create and bring to life the creative imagination of the director I guess. One of the favourites of mine on the Universal Studios tour was the Jaws set, but my timing was off for some of the photography where I've missed the shark snapping at our tour shuttle and only gotten the tale. The one that got away in a manner of photographic and maybe fisherman senses. I was feeling a little sore about that but the fantastic colour and distortion effect of the explosion and fire using natural gas is one of my favourites since all the colours are bright but the silhouette of the oil drums and stuff on the deck gives it that unnatural industrious mood to it.

Fishermans Wharf

Considering we were down at Fishermans' Wharf in San Francisco, I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of colour I could find around me and the contrast. The carousel with the the red topped tip and stripey cover like a circus tent. The bright orange of a crab on a sign as well as the three dimensional statue for a restaurant of a one armed, one eyed pirate frying up a mint coloured fish with a beard. It's always nice to be delighted in places where you expect everything to be boring.