Panda Monium

The Suspense Was Too Much To Bear

Photographs copyright: DAVID McMAHON

Okay, I have to admit I had a smile on my face when I saw this poster on Wednesday morning. I was in the underpass at Flinders Street Station when I noticed it and even though I had my camera bag on my shoulder, I knew it would be futile to try and take the shot immediately.



Why? Because it was peak hour and there were hundreds of commuters hurrying past it. And there was an added degree of difficulty. You see, this was one of the special scrolling posters that are so popular at Melbourne train stations. Each hoarding displays three posters – each of which is on view for just seven seconds before a roller mechanism pulls it swiftly upwards and replaces it with the next one.



I’m game for anything, generally speaking, when it comes to a good photo. But I wasn’t going to stand there and wait for a brief moment of opportunity while city workers surged past. So I kept walking. But the smile grew bigger on my face.



I sort of liked the idea of teeming humanity, just because of the reality of the shot. So I figured it would be best to go back to the same spot at lunchtime, when the rush started again. There’s nothing like a ``complicating factor’’ to introduce a bit of a challenge to a simple photograph.



I had the 70-300mm Sigma lens on the camera – so in order to get the whole poster into my lens, I had to back a few metres away, into an alcove/ walkway. For the first shot (above) I took a clean version of the poster, with no interruption.



For the second version (below) I had to wait a few minutes to get a passer-by frozen slap-bang in the middle of the poster. For this shot, timing was everything. No confusion, just Kung fusion.





And for the last version, I had to wait once again to get just one person into the edge of the frame, with the panda still visible. It made for a very interesting fifteen minutes, all up.



I always tell my kids that if I had to write ad blurbs for movies, I would have called Finding Nemo "A fish called wander". I guess I could write one for Kung Fu Panda as well. Hmmmmm, how about "King Kung"?





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