Mick my neighbour

Meet Mick my next door neighbour. Living next door to him sometimes feels like I am in a TV sitcom. We chat about the weather, the lawn and sometimes the other neighbours!
Mick worked for QLD Rail for over 30 years and has quite a train obsession. He has been collecting train sets for many years and his collection has grown so big that he moved out of the single garage shed attached to his house to a custom built double shed in his backyard just for the trains! The word has spread throughout the years, so people give him trains, bridges and all sorts of train memorabilia.
The whole train setting is several layers high with stations, cities, shops, Centre Point Tower, Burdekin Bridge and so much stuff that I can’t list! He has even had school groups and aged home facilites visit his train room.
I have never been one to get to close to my neighbours because I like my privacy, but sometimes I think by keeping ourselves shut out from those around us that we really miss out on feeling like we are part of a community. I watched a great series on ABC iview called ‘Slumming’ it (by Kevin McCloud – Grand Designs fame) about the slums in Mumbai. What amazes me is that 1 million people can live and work in one square mile of space! The sense of community was incredible and something that we could learn from.
I love photographing these ‘mini’ scenes with a really shallow depth of field so that the foreground is out of focus, middle ground is focused and background is out of focus… it gives such a perspective of depth. I am in love with the ’tilt shift’ lens that canon have which really accentuates this ‘depth’ feeling, but I am still saving up for that one. Photographer Adrian Brown does this sort of work really well. Check out his work here and look at the ‘diorama’ gallery section.
Honey