Homeward Bound

(Note You can click on any of the photos for a full-screen shot.)

My life is full of so many

Photo of the week. I swear both the sky and those power lines were posing as the bus zipped past

journeys, most of which end up homeward bound after a time. Sometimes to a new home, usually to the home I’ve been away from for a while.

Then there’s the bus trip home that I do five days a week. I tend not to pay much attention to it. I don’t know anyone on the bus, so there’s no one to talk to.  Actually, I take that back – there is an odd woman at work who will not talk to me that rides my bus. What makes her especially odd is that I went on a cruise for a week last year, one that left out of Auckland and she was on the same boat. She pretended not to see me every time I saw her. That was weird. Especially that icky first time, when I was all friendly and waving, “Hi, nice to see you…” and her eyes glazed over and she pretended not to recognise me. She did – she was down to see my boss just a couple of days earlier and talked to me.

There's the bus - pulling up Victoria St. You can see the university clock tower at the end of the street.

Back to being on the bus – lately I’ve taken to napping – I have a nice large, woolen scarf I wrap around my legs to keep warm and I just cosy up and read for a few minutes before I doze off.  It’s nice – and since the ride can take up to an hour and twenty minutes, it’s good use of the time. In the winter it gets dark so early reading is tough after five. I might be the last person on the planet not wearing an IPod, but I have always hated the feeling of being shut off from the world that I get from headphones. I need to hear what’s going on.

Can't see this in sepia

In my continuing efforts to improve and challenge my photo making skills, I have brought my camera along for the last week. And it is a challenge – the bus is moving and it’s getting dark – so I can’t use a tripod and long exposures can be just a blur. I’ve just bought an Olympus E-3, a professional camera that will shoot at speeds up to 3200 ISO. This definitely helps. But even though the noise is not as bad as it was in years gone by, I find most of those shots end up looking best in black and white or sepia – which I have no problem with – other than it’s hard to capture the beauty of a spectacular pink sunset in sepia.

Of course the beauty of digital is that you can shoot as many photos as you want at no exxtra cost – I averaged nearly a hundred a day for several evenings – got some amazing sunsets:

A few interesting buildings including my favourite restaurant, The Mexican Cafe – good food, reaonable prices, good fun… and the regional government buildings with a monkey puzzle tree:

What surprised me most was the desolation of the bus depot. It’s really not that bad – I’ve waited for buses there geez, I don’t know – at least 1000 times in the last 15 years… but I’ve come to the conclusion that all photos of people in bus stations look desperate – especially in the evening.

The ride is made about 20 minutes longer each night due to construction. They’re working 24/7 to get the trains underground. Right now they run through, with a station adjacent to, the largest intersection in the area. Designed by someone who is in a special hell now – always a disaster, but now even worse. Still I find the works fascinating.Shooting them is another matter:

At last it’s too dark for picture-making – just another 20 or so minutes from home… But I couldn’t resist popping up the flash to catch this gruesome beast, which never fails to fighten me on that last little walk to my house.