Standing Tall

High And Mighty, In The Last Hour Of Daylight

Photographs copyright: DAVID McMAHON

It was just one of those days when you never know what the light is going to do next. It had started out as a fairly cold morning, no more than a chilly four degrees before sunrise. Then daylight took the sting out of the wind and by the time I got to the river’s edge late that evening, it was positively balmy.

There was only about half an hour between the time I shot the first image in this series and the last. Strangely enough (no, it wasn’t planned) the very first and last shots were taken within a few metres of each other.


To start with, I noticed that the sun, about forty-five minutes away from the horizon, had thrown some interesting light over the Rialto, the second-tallest building in Melbourne. That’s when I shot the first of these images. Then I meandered around the area of Flinders Street and Federation Square for about half an hour, before making my way back towards where my car was parked.

The sun was long gone, but the mottled sky had a few flashes of silvery-gold. I could not resist the chance to switch the camera back on and take one last image for the day.


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A Is For Angel

This Melbourne Landmark Is Larger Than Life

Photographs copyright: DAVID McMAHON

So, did you spot the angel in the photograph above? No, don't look in the sky. The large sculpture by the riverside is called "The Angel". One of Deborah Halpern's signature pieces of art, it was commissioned 22 years ago, in 1987, for Australia’s Bicentennial celebrations the following year.

This sequence of images was shot exactly two years ago, on an icy cold Melbourne winter day. And just in case you're looking at the image above and thinking the trees don't look like our normal Aussie gum trees, you're dead right. They're actually English elms, planted all along the Yarra River by the early settlers.


I was standing at the area of parkland known as Birrarung Marr, photographing Deborah Halpern's masterpiece when I realised that if I stood under the 30-foot tall (almost 10 metres) work of art , I could actually use its shape as a triangular frame for the cityscape.

Angel's first home was actually the south moat of the nearby National Gallery Victoria, or NGV, but it was moved in 2006 to its present spot at Birrarung Marr.

This shot (above) was taken under the work of art, looking directly across the river. A few second after I took that frame, I wondered if I would somehow be able to find an angle where I could actually photograph Princes Bridge.

The short answer was yes. As you can see from the image below, I was able to compose an asymmetrical shot to include not only all three spans of the prominent bridge, but even the surface of the Yarra, as well as the towering Rialto. It used to be Melbourne's tallest building until Eureka Tower (visible in the second frame) took that distinction when it opened in 2006.


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It's A Wing-Wing Situation

I Guess It Just Dawned On Me

Photograph copyright: DAVID McMAHON

My project a couple of days ago was to try and shoot a seagull at dawn, against the backdrop of a Melbourne landmark. Not so easy. You try working out which way a seagull is going to fly! I had about six to eight attempts and came up with nothing tangible. Either the gull would fly too low, or too high, or it would wheel around, or it would not fly in the vicinity of the dawn colours. I was just about to pack up when I spotted this gull. He was about 70 metres away, so I unwound the 18-125 lens, tried to guess where he was going, tracked the camera in front of him and fired off this shot - just as he flew into the frame. On the right is the Rialto, which was until recently Melbourne's tallest building, easily identifiable by its blue glass exterior.