Moving Pictures

I helped dismantle Channel 9 today. Not in a “death to the capitalist media overlords” way – sadly – but with a screwdriver.

Yes, the Bendigo Street studios of GTV9 are closing and everything must go! The building was originally a piano factory, then a cannery, but from 1957 it’s been Television City. The glamour of Graham Kennedy, Don Lane and Sale Of The Century clings to the walls like a poorly-cleaned toilet. Some say Bert Newton haunts these corridors and he’s not even dead.

But Channel 9 is moving to Docklands, so they’re having the world’s biggest car boot sale. They’ve auctioned their equipment online and when a friend went to pick up a Umatic tape machine I said I’d go along. In my head this would involve visiting Richmond, selecting a carefully-marked box, and going home for biscuits.  How wrong I was.

Tilt-Shift Photography: Exactly Like Where You Are Right Now…

I was having lunch with my friend Roy. He was explaining why he should be allowed to legally marry his iPhone, and I was staring out the window, thinking about kittens. Suddenly I heard the words “tilt-shift photography”.

“Hang on,” I said. “That isn’t a product made by Apple. It doesn’t even start with an “i”.”

Roy then explained that Tilt-Shift Photography is a technique used to make images of real life look like pictures of models. For example, here’s an image from Photography Jam of Melbourne’s Southern Cross Station:

It looks fake, but it’s real, just like Kerri-Anne Kennerley. Here’s some images of Melbourne by Ben Thomas: