a cemetary where i marry the sea

so maybe i love pictures of the beach far too much; and people dressed in ridiculous outfits for strange athletic events. which makes me feel a bit copyright Rennie Ellis; oh dear.
but where else can you find such inspiration as on the beach? urban landscapes are waaay overdone. i suppose people are always a good thing to shoot. sometimes i think Australia bores me, i really should try and find the beauty in it... but that can be surprisingly difficult in a place you've spent the last 10 years in. i mean obviously not Australia as a whole (wow that would be a gross misrepresentation!) just maybe Mount Waverley. i keep trying to revisit the awe i felt on first arriving in Mount, so i can appreciate my home more. cold winter air, concrete jungle, Safeway. that's always fun.

so we went to chelsea beach with the family. Darren took the picture above of me in front of the playground. it was accidently double exposed with this picture i took of the laneway leading up to the beach so the playground ground now looks like a really shiny swimming pool.

the playground at dusk, with its little faux lighthouse and the shining brick outline.

there were a lot more birds on this line when i initially took the picture. probably would've made it much more effective too; did you know that if you feed a seagull panadol it'll blow up? or something like that...

darren in his little straw fedora in front of the re-occuring playground scene. i thought this was a picture from the sri lanka lot that had shown up heaps later cos its so reminiscent of a little old man with this straw hat walking along the side of a road begging, hitchhiking or trying to sell freshly cooked fish. all it needed was a bullock cart.

oh the abandoned pink bicycle. there would've been a certain air of childhood innocence about the bike if not for my ridiculous shadow peering over it. i didn't notice it until after the picture was developed and now that i think about it, all the shadow adds is a creepy pedophilic vibe to the picture. or maybe a sad atmosphere, like the little girl walking away from her childhood. i hope the bike was indeed abandoned, otherwise a little girl would probably have been a bit concerned by the fact that someone else was taking a photo of her bike.

which brings me to a rant: why is it that in the present day everyone is so concerned about creeps? i always fear when taking pictures in the street, of people on the beach, of little abandoned (hopefully) bicycles like above^ that people will misunderstand my motives as creepy. you always have to ask people now to take photos of them, privacy issues and all. if you look adoringly at a really gorgeous baby their parents are bound to be a bit concerned. of course its easier for me as im a girl and we're allowed to gurgle over children, but it'd really suck to be a guy trying to capture the beauty of his surrounds when the people inhabiting it are so hostile and anxious. all the time.