Looking back now, I thought I’d stop and compile a list of the best stuff, and what I think sums up the character of the city. So, if you’ve never been, here’s what you’re missing!

Melbourne is a beautiful city, and has a justified reputation for being one of the world’s most liveable too. Whatever your cup of tea is, be it food or fashion, art or sport, Melbourne has you covered.

Royal Botanic Gardens

The Royal Botanic Gardens is a short stroll from the city and St. Kilda Road, making it a popular spot during lunchtime. On weekends you’ll find joggers, picnickers and people just out for a stroll. The Moonlight Cinema makes for a great night out under the trees in summer.

Birrarung Marr

A relatively recent makeover has turned the area between Federation Square and the Olympic Park sporting complex, now known as Birrarung Marr into a fantastic space containing many art installations, and catering for touring events such as Cirque du Soleil.

Southbank

Southbank lies on the south bank (funny, that) of the Yarra River, and features a promenade lined with cafes and bars, as well as fine dining and retail precincts with specacular views back towards the city. Southbank is also home to the Eureka Tower and Crown Casino.

Federation Square

Though Federation Square was for a long time considered a bit of a white elephant, the city has now embraced it for what it is, a fantastic piece of urban planning that brings together several areas of the city. It is home to the NGV Ian Potter Centre, ACMI and many hugely popular restaurants and bars. Federation square has become a focal point for the city, hosting free public events and acting as a meeting place for Melburnians.

Stay tuned, in the next entry we’ll explore some of Melbourne’s other iconic areas.

-Rick

the first non-Aaron photo-taking-guy. I also don’t have a title yet. Photographer is OK, it fits the bill, but it seems too mundane for something as outrageously cool as Panedia.

As Aaron said, my background is in commercial photography, and I come to Panedia from RMIT University, where I was a student and more recently the photography department technician. Now THAT was an inadequate job title, I tells ya. Basically I fixed stuff what needed fixin’, and that meant I picked up a few basic engineering and electronics skills along the way, which I will be bringing to Panedia in the form of some cool gadgetry to help future photographers do their job faster and more accurately, as well as my hopefully self-evident photographic talents!

At the moment I’m working on our vast backlog of images from the recent Fraser Island junket/meet-and-greet/Panedia team-building exercise ‘08, polishing them up ready to be put through the Panedia production line.

One of the issues Aaron and I have encountered along the way thus far now that photography is coming in from different streams, is how do you keep things consistent in terms of the overall ‘look’ of the images. As photographers, we all have our own ideas about what constitutes a nice-looking image. It’s open to interpretation at the best of times, but with something like Panedia it is vitally important that the look and feel of the imagery is relatively consistent.

Over the coming months we will be developing a ‘look book’ that contains presets for the basic conditions we will be shooting in, which should lead to being able to shoot in a multitude of different lighting scenarios, and being able to produce a panorama that will not look out-of-place alongside panoramas that have perhaps been shot months ago by a different photographer in different conditions.

So keep an eye out for a bunch of my photography coming online shortly, and I’ll be blogging here about anything that takes my fancy, photography, gadgetry or travel-related.

In the meantime I leave you with a lovely shot of the TSS Maheno wreck on 75 Mile Beach, Fraser Island, QLD. Click through for the pano.

-Rick

flickr stream

what I’m listening to