P365 Day 14 - look up! (14/1/2011)

Whenever I’m going anywhere, I want to get there as quickly as possible. I hate it when people dawdle along on the footpath or meander all over the place, and I especially hate it when they stop suddenly in front of me.

Sometimes, when I’m in a rush and getting more and more frustrated, I think there should be express lanes through the city so that people who need to be somewhere can get there without obstacles in their way. Or that slow moving people should be banned from the city at certain times. Or something like that.

(Of course, some days I am one of those slow moving people – it’s hard not to be with a small child in tow – and then I find people in a hurry to be rude and inconsiderate as they rush past me. It’s all a matter of perspective. But I digress.)

The trouble with getting to where I’m going is that I don’t take in much of what’s around me. I don’t notice things that might be interesting. My focus stays at eye level.

A piece of advice I read a long time ago on how to find interesting things to photograph was to ‘look up’.  I can’t remember where I read it, and I’m sure many, many photography writers have said the same thing.

But the gist of the advice was that there is so much more to the world than what you see at eye level.

Things that most people don’t see, or ignore, because they’re not directly in front of them.

So look up, look down, get down and look up, get up and look down – change your perspective, shake things up a bit, make the ordinary into something different.

Elizabeth Street

When I’m walking through Hobart, I love to look up, beyond the shopfronts at ground level to the old facades of buildings that were constructed last century. (At this point, you will have to excuse my ignorance of all things architectural or artistic here, as I have no idea what anything on a building is called other than the roof, the doors and the windows.) 

I’m fascinated by the intricate work on the facades, the colours that they’ve been painted, the original names of the buildings and the dates they were built.

The Mall

I just love looking at them and imagining how much fun it would be to spend time wandering around photographing them and making a collage of facades. (I have no doubt this has already been done.)

And then, returning to ground level I think I’d like to explore the city further and photograph doors, door knobs, letter boxes, bolts, keyholes . . . things that I pass by every day and mostly ignore.

I’d like to photograph signs, single letters, numbers . . . there’s so much out there, so many opportunities in the main streets, the alley ways and laneways.

But for now, here is a little sample of the facades I find so interesting. (These were taken on my phone, on the run, in the rain this morning.)

Collins Street

I love the contrast of the old and the new buildings here (Bus Mall).

Law Society Building, Murray St