(My) Photo of the day

I had grand plans for today's photo. As I have previously mentioned, I was scheduled to present at a conference today. My thinking had been that I could take a photo from the lectern, and share with you a presenters-eye-view. Alas, by the time I took the stage, the light in the room was all on me, thus rendering any photograph very poor.

Despite a throbbing headache and intense tiredness, I'd like to think that I offered a solid performance, with a rising crescendo to end. In cricketing terms, think of a number five coming in after a few quick wickets, constructing a solid half century, followed by some lusty hitting off a tired attack to take me to 85 not out by the close of play!

But all of this self-aggrandisement had left me no closer to having a photo ready for you today. Thus, I was left with one last task as I dragged myself from the conference venue back to the bus mall. Despite the darkness, I felt that I owed the world a photograph from today.

Thus you get this. The Hobart General Post Office has looked better, but I've not featured it on this blog yet, so it seemed a worthy subject. The heritage listing is positively gushing: "The General Post Office, constructed in 1905, is an imposing public building of historic, social, aesthetic and design significance." Reading the full write-up, you do get a fuller sense of why the building is one of the most notable in Tasmania.

Back to the conference tomorrow, and I promise to endevour to get some interesting 'Hobart conference action shots' to whet the appetite that everyone seems to have at the moment around the public policy around alcohol!

Comments

Mary Stebbins Taitt said…

A lovely night photo, beautifully captured and lit. :-D

29 April 2008 at 03:49

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

This will hurt me...

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