Only the brave face a cold Melbourne winter afternoon to chase the light and capture that desired shot. Yet, despite the odds and the conditions, we had an exceptional turnout to yet another Fuji X Aus photowalk in Melbourne. This one was organised by eager beaver member Daz with the guidance and support from Rena. The morning before the event, which was due to commence at 3pm, was cold and a little drizzle persisted. And, it was a cold day. Not terribly cold. But cold enough for a few layers.

Daz had mapped out our course for the afternoon and we met up on the steps of Parliament in Spring Street, Melbourne. Before long we had a really decent amount of members and it was great to see so many familiar faces. Also, great to see that newer memvers who attended our last photo walk came back for seconds. Glad we did not scare them off. A couple of members showed up a little later in the afternoon. I think that all up we had about 12 attend. Nice one Daz.

From the steps of Parliament, we made our way down Little Bourke Street to Chinatown. It wasn’t busy at all for a Saturday afternoon. But we all managed to check out some of the tiny side alleys and surrounding architecture. I love the colours and textures of the buildings in Chinatown. Chinatown has been there since the Gold Rush in the 1850’s. And a lot of the older buildings still stand in some form or another.

We made our way west to the intersection of Little Bourke Street and Swanston Street. And all of a sudden we were in the middle of peacful protest march walking down Swanston Street. Hundreds of protestors chanting along and waving banners and flags were before us. This is street pjhotography gold? Many of us took the opportunity to get in close and capture some shots. There were a lot of photographers doing the same – some from our group and other not.

Once the march had passed us, we made our way along Bourke Street Mall. It was relatively quiet but enough going on for some stret work. We took a tram West up Bourke Street to Southern Cross Station. From here we walked through the station and accross the pedestrian bridge to Marvel Stadium. There has been and still is a lot of construction going on in this end of the city and the opporrtunity to capture architectural shots was taken by most of us.

We finished our photograpic light hunting once we arrived at the waters edge of docklands. The light was fading fast but we were realy lukcy to get such a nice sunset. Mostly blue skys with scatterings of clouds that turned yellow and orange and pink. And being right next to the water, with the last of the light reflecting of the glass buildings, it was a great opporrunity to get some landscape shots in.

Our evening ended at a Chinese Restaurant not far along the docks. We had an amazing selection of dishes that we all shared while we talked gear and techniques and upcoming events. I love hanging out with this group. Leading up to the day I was feeling pretty flat and didnt feel like I would go. But once I got there and got into the groove of the event I was so relieved to have pushed myself out the door. This is my clan after all. Overall, it was a great event and it has been rewarding seeing everyones images being posted to our Faebook group. All of my images I captured with the Fujifilm X70. If you have been reading my blogs about Japan I have fallen in love with this little camera all over again and used it a great deal in Tokyo. At this event, I caried this in my hand with a wrist strap and had a spare battery in my pocket. That was it. No camera bag. No intimidating big set up trying to capture street images. Happy shooting.