Vivid Sydney at Taronga Zoo

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My son’s birthday coincides nicely with the Sydney Vivid festival, where “art, technology and commerce intersect” – three weeks of light shows and sculpture that brighten up the city during the cold (and sometimes wet) winter here.

Taronga Zoo has put on an event for the last few years, with wonderful light sculptures that look like giant stained-glass animals. Needless to say, an afternoon at the zoo, followed by a trip through this surreal landscape after dark has become a favourite.

(Click on images in gallery to see full size).

  • Australia – where the spiders kill the poisonous snakes
  • Lanterns
  • The pangolin
  • The bamboo shoots make a rather nice abstract with the tiger in the background
  • Tasmanian devil
  • Croc
  • Bilby
  • Redback spiders
  • Duck-billed platypus
  • Lion cubs
  • Bejewled lizard
  • The big blue elephant

Parramatta, city of the future

/ Mike / 1 Comment

Sydney is one of the most expensive cities in the world to live and work in, with sky-high property prices. The population is expanding, mostly to the West, and hence, so to is the attention of property developers. Parramatta is a suburb in the western sprawl, and the city council have announced a $1.6 billion investment in new buildings – offices, apartments and retail. And so, Parramatta starts its transformation.Paramatta - city of the future-1Paramatta - city of the future-2Paramatta - city of the future-3Paramatta - city of the future-4Paramatta - city of the future-5Paramatta - city of the future-6Paramatta - city of the future-7

Taken with my new Fujifilm X-Pro2 and 35mm f2 lens.

The road to San Francisco

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The typeface, that is, not the place. Apple designed a new font for their watch, aimed at being legible on small, high-resolution displays. They later brought it to iOS and OS X, providing consistency across all their devices. Nick Keppol has written a two-part article that explains typography basics and then takes us through the design decisions that went into creating the new typeface. It’s fascinating for a typography nerd like me. Feast your eyes and brain here.

The Fujifilm X-Pro 2

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Fujifilm have announced their new ‘Pro’ camera, and it looks pretty fantastic. I have loved the Fujifilm dedication to their own vision of what a camera should be – small and light, but with high quality design and manufacturing that combines wonderfully “traditional” style handling (i.e. good ergonomics and manual controls instead of lots of menus) with some ground-breaking technology. Not only do their cameras take good photos, but the experience of using them is very natural and harks back to the classic 35mm film cameras that we remember fondly.

I’ve started up an X-Pro 2 resource page, which I will continue to update as I discover more.