The Beach Hut is a Melbourne icon. Having only lived here over the last few years, the precise reason escapes me. They’re small and kind of odd, really. Apparently they go for whopping amounts of money, in the order of fifty grand, which, for a few planks of perishing wood on a seafront, strikes me as a tad excessive. But there you have it.
They’re also a photographic cliche. And not surprisingly. As well as a cultural symbol and part of Melbourne’s soul, they’re visually a bit different, and best of all, they’re all sorts of bright vibrant colours lined up along the back of the beach. Some of them are distinctly quirky, too.
After taking some shots of a rather pretty little sunset over the bay recently, I turned my gorgeous new 16-35mm lens the other way. The ambient light coupled with the incredible amount of real-estate the front of my lens takes up meant that there was enough filtering through for me to be able to shoot hand-held at high ISO settings. Even on the 5D I still ended up with some pretty noisy frames, but I liked the effect.
In the near-darkness, the underexposed shacks took on a somewhat different air. I shot wide and low, adding lots of distortion, and the feel I got from the buildings was much more off-kilter and even a bit sinister. Because I had the aperture cranked all the way open there was lots of moody vignetting. There was even something a little ‘Alice in Wonderland’ about a couple of the shots, with the odd colours and skewed lines. But it was a fun shoot, and I really enjoyed pushing the camera to the limits of what it could do as well- amazing how much light it could pick up with that 82mm circumference…
Aww… I miss my 5D…
