is this it?

West Gate - Melbourne Photography XV

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A morning of photography walking the streets under the West Gate Bridge. Here the Yarra River meets Port Phillip, and petrol terminals line the shore.

Port Operations Control Tower. Melbourne city skyline in the background.

Petrol terminal road.

Cold air & sunrise.

Yarraville Terminal.

Walking around the edge of the terminal.

West Gate Bridge.

Silo.

Terminal.

West Gate looking west. A since-reclaimed dock.

Broken boardwalk.

Under the bridge, looking up the Yarra.

Dead space.

The internet, probably.

Other end of the broken boardwalk.

West Gate Bridge.

Caltex Terminal.

Photographs shot on the Hasselblad 500CM with the 50mm and 80mm lenses on Fomopan 400 film.

I metered exposures with my app, Analog Photography Assistant .

Analog Photography Assistant - 1.3.0

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Analog Photography Assistant (APA) is a free, ad-free, privacy-first android app for film photographers. I have just released v1.3.0 with a bunch of new features and updates. The greatest hits are listed below, otherwise read the changelog for more detailed notes.

Light Meter

Aperture Sets and Exposure Compensation have been added to the Light Meter.

Aperture Sets allow you to define named collections of f-stops you want to see in the light meter. This came about as a feature request from an APA user who wanted to meter for their pinhole camera. During development I added f/256 and f/512 to the list of apertures displayed in the light meter, but it seemed like the wrong UX because no 35mm or medium format shooter would ever use those values. The next iteration was to allow the user to edit the list of f-stops displayed, but that had a predictably similar problem for multi-format shooters.

I settled on the concept of Aperture Sets. Users create named sets of apertures for each of the camera systems or lenses they shoot on. Only one Aperture Set is active, meaning it’s displayed in the Light Meter. This results in the APA Light Meter only showing the user the information they can act on. A default aperture set ships within APA, which will suit the needs of most 35mm shooters. I’ve defined one set of common apertures for the lenses I shoot on my Nikon 35mm camera, and another set for the Hasselblad V System medium format lenses.

Light Meter Screen

Light Meter Screen - Config

Exposure Compensation, with an optional notes field, has also been added to the Light Meter. Exposure Compensation is par for the course on electronic film cameras. Aside from the standard uses of adjusting for filters, or intentionally deviating from the metered exposure to adjust for lighting conditions, it can also be used to calibrate/compensate the APA Light Meter to a different light meter. The notes field is there to record not only what and why you used EC, but also to remind yourself when you need to use it.

Reciprocity Failure Calculator

By request, I’ve added a bunch more films.

Fomapan

100 Classic
200 Creative
400 Action

Fujifilm

Neopan 100 Acros II
Provia 100F
Velvia 50, 100

Harman

Phoenix, Phoenix II

Kodak

Ektacolor Pro 160, 400, 800
Ektapan 100, 400, 3200
Kodacolor 100, 200

Rollei

RPX 25, 100, 400

Reciprocity Calculator Screen

Reciprocity Calculator Screen - Select Film

I’ve also improved the reciprocity failure algorithm so that it is accurate to manufacturer datasheets (where they publish). APA will now display a message if you are attempting to calculate a exposure that is outside of what a manufacturer officially supports, but will extrapolate from the exposure formula to give you a best-effort result.

An example of this is Fujifilm Velvia 50. The longest exposure value on the Velvia datasheet says that a scene metered for 32 seconds should be exposed for 64 seconds, taking into account reciprocity failure. If you metered a scene that had a 40 second exposure, APA will display a warning, but also extrapolate and provide an 86 second exposure, extrapolated from data in the Velvia datasheet. The data structure I use in code is:

FilmReciprocityProfile(
    "Fujifilm - Velvia 50",
    ReciprocityRule.ExposureTable(
        points =
            listOf(
                ExposurePoint(1.0, 1.0),
                ExposurePoint(4.0, 4.0 * 2.0.pow(1.0 / 3.0)),
                ExposurePoint(8.0, 8.0 * sqrt(2.0)),
                ExposurePoint(16.0, 16.0 * 2.0.pow(2.0 / 3.0)),
                ExposurePoint(32.0, 64.0),
            ),
        outsideRangeWarning = ReciprocityWarning.ManufacturerNotRecommended,
        warningAtOrAboveMeteredSeconds = 64.0,
    ),
    FUJIFILM_VELVIA_50_SOURCE,
),

Download APA on the Play Store or read more on the app website .

July 2026

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve made some changes to a couple of photo albums on the website. southern-mountains features the same grainy black and white photographs from the South island taken in 2024, but I’ve re-edited them to add more punch.

Along Hall Arm.

The photographs are shot on Ilford HP5+ film, which gave me a film negative with a wide exposure range but fairly flat look. My original editing technique was to change the digital scan as little as possible. When reviewing the photos this year I liked the compositions but felt the overall edits were a bit boring. Along Hall Arm hangs on the wall in the lounge.

Ben Ohau.

Maniototo is my current project and contains photographs I’ve taken on the Maniototo Plain, Strath Taieri, and surrounding ranges and valleys. The earliest photographs in the album go back to 2020, from a day cycling on the rail trail from Hyde. Most come from trips earlier this year. All going well, I’ll head to the South Island later this year and extend both albums.

Taranaki Gate, St Bathans Downs.

A few months ago I bought an inkjet printer to print more of my photographs. Until then I was getting them printed at a local print shop which cost me an arm and a leg, and reduced my experiment/correction edit process to a very slow loop. Now I can print up to A3+ size, which I have done for my favourite prints.

Up the Rock and Pillar.

Ida Valley II.

Hawkduns II.

Separately I’ve printed the entire Maniototo album in A4 and assembled it into a book. I wanted a book that I could add, subtract, and re-order photographs, and that would also lay flat on a table so the photographs could be enjoyed. This gave two options: ring binder, or a screw post book. The ring binder gave me flashbacks of high school, while the screw post book certainly seemed more of the vibe I was going for. I found a company in Melbourne that sells them, and set off printing my images in A4.

To get the “book look” that I was going for, I needed to print the images with an identical left, top, and right margin spacing. The prints themselves go in A4 sleeves, and it’s the left of the sleeve that has the punched holes to go on the screw post. I imported my edited digital files into Affinity and laid out the pages with margins. I printed them on Ilford Pearl paper. It’s a semi gloss paper which gives a bright finish to the photograph. I tried some on matte paper but found the result just too dull in comparison.

I’m quite happy with the result. A hardcover book that lays flat on any page. The photographs display well, and the plastic sleeves mean one doesn’t need to be too precious when turning pages.

Manuherikia River and Hawkduns.

–

View my photo albums:

Maniototo
Central Otago, NZ
May 2020 — et seq.
20 photographs

Southern Mountains
South Island, NZ
September 2024 — et seq.
39 photographs

Pine Smoke
Western Tasmania, AU
April 2025
57 photographs

Hydra
Hydra, Greece
October 2023
54 photographs

–

Maniototo Landscapes II

Sat, 02 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Sutton.

Sutton Railhut.

Up the Rock and Pillar.

Loganburn.

Lammermoor.

Waipiata.

Hamiltons I.

Hamiltons II.

Hamiltons III.

Kyeburn.

Danseys Pass I.

Danseys Pass II.

Hawkduns I.

Hawkduns II.

Hawkduns III.

Moa Creek I.

Moa Creek II.

St Bathans Downs I.

St Bathans Downs II.

St Bathans Downs III.

Sutton Sunset

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Sutton landscape summons me to Rohan in The Lord of the Rings. Golden grasses and jagged schist cover the landscape. These seemingly go on forever, until they hit the Rock and Pillar Range in the northwest which always stands in shadow at this time of the day.

Sutton.

I wanted to be at Pukerangi to shoot the railway shelter illuminated by the last rays of the setting sun. Pukerangi (then Barewood) was a railway stop that opened in 1891. It later became important as a signalling point to control traffic through the Taieri Gorge. In the 1990s the majority of the once-great Otago Central Railway rails were pulled up, and now Pukerangi serves as the last stop of the Taieri Gorge Train.

With Pukerangi in mind for the target, I turned off the highway onto Pukerangi Road. Shortly before the shared road and rail bridge I came across this railway hut catching the sun. I made a few compositions, all with the sun lighting the hut, trying to capture a few different ideas.

I started by making explicit the hut’s connection with the railway. The railway becomes a strong element and vanishing point, and as a bonus of the wide focal length we see some of the Sutton landscape around it.

Hut I.

My next idea was to make as simple a composition as possible. Here the shot looks northwest towards the Rock and Pillar range. I like the simplicity, however there is nothing to link this hut to the railway. Without the context, the hut looks out of place.

Hut II.

I then attempted to unify the two ideas. Show rail, but make the composition as simple as possible. I find this the weakest composition of the three because of the dead space in the left of the frame. The cloud just adds clutter.

Hut III.

Back in the car, I continued down the road to Pukerangi rail shelter. This is the subject I had in mind for sunset. I played around with the scene, but sun rays limited me to shooting from a single direction.

Pukerangi Shelter.

I wasn’t happy with that shot and the sun was getting lower. I walked around for other subjects. Nearby was a farmhouse (perhaps once upon a time a railway house) that sat metres away from the rail line.

Farmhouse.

Sunset at Pukerangi.

Sunset at Pukerangi II.

Sutton II.

With the sun now behind the Rock and Pillar, I drove back along the road I had come in on. It was dark on the ground, but the cream paint of the hut was reflecting the smallest amount of ambient light from the sky. I got out the tripod and took this four second exposure. Of the night, this was my favourite. It has the compositional elements that I wanted (hut, rail, mountain), while the clutter in the scene is hidden by the low light. The long exposure adds a softness to the scene which best represents the look and feel of when I was there.

Hut IV.

The Taieri River Tunnel

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Taieri River diverted through the tunnel.

The Taieri River starts in the Lammerlaw Range, flows north through the Maniototo Plain, before taking a sharp turn south down the Strath Taieri and Taieri Plain into the Pacific Ocean. The 1860s brought a gold rush to Otago, and while sites along the Taieri River didn’t pay as much as those along the Manuherikia or Clutha rivers, gold was still found.

Panning, sluicing, and eventually dredging was done in the upper Taieri near modern day Styx and Serpentine. Further downstream, and up on the hills from the river, at Hamiltons and Hyde remain tailings that are still visible today. While these tailings are slowly overgrown by grass and trees, it’s near Hyde that we see a permanent fixture cut into the landscape. At a place where the Taieri River flows around a small ridge to make the shape of a horseshoe, a tunnel was cut to divert the river and expose the sand, silt, and stone of the riverbed for mining.

Location of the tunnel circled in red.

In researching history about this tunnel I find no primary sources. Old newspaper records document the mining, sluicing, and water races constructed in nearby Hyde, but I find no mention of the construction of this tunnel, or the mining that was presumably done on the exposed river bed. The story generally told is that the tunnel was blasted after the Hyde gold boom had ended (no earlier than 1865), possibly by Chinese miners who recently moved into the area. The river bed was likely mined, as mullock heaps are visible beside it.

Elsewhere in Otago a similar river diversion, the Oxenbridge Tunnel , was constructed on the Shotover River in 1906 to expose the river bed for mining.

Tunnel Intake.

Tunnel Intake II.

Tunnel Outlet.

The area is accessible to walkers with a marked track down to the tunnel intake from the Rail Trail. To get to the tunnel outlet you need to walk around the river bed and bush bash through gorse and rosehip bushes in places where water makes the river impassable. It looks like water still runs through this stretch of the river so after heavy rain or during spring snow melt there may be no option to walk around the bend.

Note the mullock mid left of the frame below. It may be from mining the river bed, but could equally be from mining the hills above.

The path down to the river bank. Tunnel intake is out of shot, to the bottom left. The Tunnel outlet is at the bottom right of the frame.

Looking downstream from the tunnel outlet. The line of willow trees on the left mark out the diverted river bed.

Melbourne Photography XIV

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If I told you I was trying to focus on the central leaf you may not believe me.

Two rolls of black and white film and two ideas: shooting a lens wide open at f/1.4, and double exposures.

Shooting the Voigtlander 58mm lens at f/1.4 gives images a unique look. The images lack contrast, transitions between in and out of focus areas of the frame melt together, and the bright and high contrast areas have a distinct glow. This characteristic is common in lenses manufactured in the 1960s and 1970s, but has largely disappeared from modern high end lenses. Modern lenses are built to be sharp and usable at all apertures.

Low contrast images aren’t a problem when shooting black and white, as contrast can be (and here has been) added back in post-processing. The ‘glow’ is prominent where direct sunlight hits the scene – at the top of the next image, or in the transition between tree and bright blue sky of the following.

Inherent in photographs when shooting at f/1.4 is the very narrow depth of field. A narrow depth of field means the photographer has to be precise in setting the focus point, else the desired subject may be relegated to some out of focus area of the frame. I don’t trust myself to hit focus at anything wider than f/2. These photographs back that up, but I enjoy the result where some slightly out-of-focus areas interact with that glowing characteristic.

Sun on the needles, and the transition of different areas of the frame to be in and out of focus.

Out of focus, but nice glow.

In focus, and nice glow.

Footscray bicycle graveyard.

rip.

sky.

gardens i.

gardens ii.

The second technique I wanted to try was double exposures – a method in which the same strip of film is exposed to multiple images. Both images are exposed at about a stop of light under what would normally be used, in order to ensure that if bright areas double up they don’t come across as over exposed.

I set off around the botanical gardens with an idea in mind. The first exposure I would fill the frame with some texture or pattern – leaves, a bush, grass, etc. The second exposure would be of a sun-lit subject that I’d place in the middle of the frame.

The photograph below is the cleanest example of this concept. The others are a bit messier, and in some cases it looks like three or four different exposures hit the same part of the film.

double i.

double triple i.

double triple ii.

double ii.

These last few are in my house.

double iii.

double iv (reversed).

double v (reversed).

Analog Photography Assistant - 1.2.0

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Home Screen

Light Meter

Analog Photography Assistant (APA) is a free, ad-free, privacy-first android app for film photographers. I have just released v1.2.0 which introduces a Depth of Field Calculator . With this you can calculate:

DoF from the film plane — The nearest and farthest points that will be acceptably sharp, measured from the film plane.
DoF from the subject — How far the zone of acceptable sharpness extends in front of and behind your focus point.
Hyperfocal Distance — Focus at this distance to keep everything from half the hyperfocal distance to infinity acceptably sharp.
Hyperfocal Near Limit — When focused at the hyperfocal distance, this is the closest point that will be acceptably sharp.

Depth of Field Screen - Enter camera settings and see DoF relative to both the film plane and subject.

Depth of Field - Calculate hyperfocal distance, and see where the closest point of focus will be.

APA v1.2.0 also adds explicit support for Android 16. The minimum required version is still Android 9.

Download APA on the Play Store or read more on the app website .

–

A few weeks ago I was out shooting at f/1.4 and needed to understand the depth of field to get two subjects in focus. My 35mm camera has a split image focusing screen. Looking through the viewfinder, you see two images projected. You adjust the focus ring of the lens until the two images line up, and the lens is now focused at the focus point (labelled focus distance in the screenshots above). Lenses have a depth of field. Some areas in front of and behind the focus point are also in acceptable focus. Split image focusing screens are designed to achieve precise focus at the focus point, but would present all other areas of the image as “out of focus” as the two images would be unaligned.

Closest Point                    Farthest Point
   in focus            │            in focus
     │                 │               │
     ▼                 ▼               ▼
─────┊─────────────────●───────────────┊────
                     FOCUS
                     POINT

Another use case is for landscape photography, or in situations where you want whatever is on the horizon to be in sharp focus. Intuitively you might turn the focus ring on the lens all the way to infinity. The split image focusing screen should confirm this with the far horizon being in sharp focus, and whatever is between you and the horizon looking slightly out of focus. This will give you the result you want however it leaves a large part of the DoF unused. Refer to the diagram above. If the focus point is at Infinity, then there is no “Farthest Point in focus” beyond it.

To maximise the amount of the image in focus, you want the “Farthest Point in focus” to be at Infinity. This means focusing the lens to a far away point before infinity. How do you know where to focus? Use the calculator to find the Hyperfocal distance and focus at that.

Landscapes of Giuseppe De Nittis

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

By the Ofantino channel (1866)

Crossing the Apenninesm - Memories (1867)

Along the Ofanto River (1870)

The Road from Naples to Brindisi (1872)

From the top of the diligence (1872)

The Arc de Triomphe, Paris (1875)

La place des Pyramides (1875)

Field of Wheat Shocks (1875)

The Train Passes (1878)

Westminster (1878)

Landscape (?).

Winter Landscape (1880).

Bin Laden's Bookshelf

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Books discovered in Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound that were previously redacted by U.S. Intelligence ^[1].

Start with Why - Simon Sinek
Lean In - Sheryl Sandberg
Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
Intentional: How to Finish What You Start - Chris Bailey
Atomic Habits - James Clear
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey
Indistractable - Nir Eyal
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - Mark Manson
How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
Good to Great - Jim Collins
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - Patrick Lencioni
Nudge - Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein
Grit - Angela Duckworth
Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything is Changing – Including You - Brad Stulberg

is this it?

West Gate - Melbourne Photography XV

Port Operations Control Tower. Melbourne city skyline in the background.

Petrol terminal road.

Cold air & sunrise.

Yarraville Terminal.

Walking around the edge of the terminal.

West Gate Bridge.

Silo.

Terminal.

West Gate looking west. A since-reclaimed dock.

Broken boardwalk.

Under the bridge, looking up the Yarra.

Dead space.

The internet, probably.

Other end of the broken boardwalk.

West Gate Bridge.

Caltex Terminal.

Analog Photography Assistant - 1.3.0

Link to this section Light Meter

Link to this section Reciprocity Failure Calculator

July 2026

Along Hall Arm.

Ben Ohau.

Taranaki Gate, St Bathans Downs.

Up the Rock and Pillar.

Ida Valley II.

Hawkduns II.

Manuherikia River and Hawkduns.

Maniototo Landscapes II

Sutton.

Sutton Railhut.

Up the Rock and Pillar.

Loganburn.

Lammermoor.

Waipiata.

Hamiltons I.

Hamiltons II.

Hamiltons III.

Kyeburn.

Danseys Pass I.

Danseys Pass II.

Hawkduns I.

Hawkduns II.

Hawkduns III.

Moa Creek I.

Moa Creek II.

St Bathans Downs I.

St Bathans Downs II.

St Bathans Downs III.

Sutton Sunset

Sutton.

Hut I.

Hut II.

Hut III.

Pukerangi Shelter.

Farmhouse.

Sunset at Pukerangi.

Sunset at Pukerangi II.

Sutton II.

Hut IV.

The Taieri River Tunnel

The Taieri River diverted through the tunnel.

Location of the tunnel circled in red.

Tunnel Intake.

Tunnel Intake II.

Tunnel Outlet.

The path down to the river bank. Tunnel intake is out of shot, to the bottom left. The Tunnel outlet is at the bottom right of the frame.

Looking downstream from the tunnel outlet. The line of willow trees on the left mark out the diverted river bed.

Link to this section Further Reading

Melbourne Photography XIV

If I told you I was trying to focus on the central leaf you may not believe me.

Sun on the needles, and the transition of different areas of the frame to be in and out of focus.

Out of focus, but nice glow.

In focus, and nice glow.

Footscray bicycle graveyard.

rip.

sky.

gardens i.

gardens ii.

Light Meter

Reciprocity Failure Calculator

Further Reading