I was lucky enough to head into Melbourne’s CBD to check out White Night, the free festival that Melbourne puts on where they project, colourise and generally sex up key buildings around the place. It was crazy packed and allowed me to get a couple of street snaps while out and about.

This year the key attractions were around Carlton and Alexandria Gardens and where by far the easiest to view, despite the crowds. The Exhibition Building, State Library, Town Hall and Flinders Street Station all had projections covering the entire frontage of the building, pretty rad but for the most part not hugely different from other years.

The vibe was pretty good for a walking even in the middle of the CBD. I didn’t really see too much evidence of dodgy dudes messing up the night for everyone, just a few kids smashing goon bags on the grass in the packs. Who amongst us can honestly say that they haven’t smashed some wine in a park? I thought so.

I took my Ricoh GR with me to take snaps and to push it’s night time limits, spending most of the evening at 1600+ ISO it’s decidedly not too shitty which was super surprising. I had fun trying to find pockets of available light, but admittedly didn’t do a great job with composition nor did I really find any decent street shots, but I’m terrible at night shots.

Being at night the little Ricoh GR stood up well, it’s ISO performance is fine and the shots at 800 were significantly sharper and useable than those at 1600, but that was to be expected. All in, I’m still digging the Ricoh and it’s versatility and pure performance really outweighs it’s size and cost.

Gear

The only gear used in this piece was a Ricoh GR, my MacBook Air and Lightroom.

Categories: One Day & Random RollsTags: aps-c, cbd, dark, event, gr, high iso, iso, melb, melbourne, night, photography, ricoh, ricoh gr, street, white, white night