Melbourne Candid Series #1210 Lonsdale St

 

Along Lonsdale’s measured lanes he rides,
A muted engine humming time and need;
Steel wheels trace the city’s patient tides
Where lines are drawn for motion, not for speed.

His helmet seals the weather from his face,
A visor holding back the urban glare;
The jacket bears the scuffs of constant pace,
The marks of work repeated everywhere.

Behind him, boxed and bound in canvas square,
Tomorrow’s meals and moments wait their turn;
The city eats, and he must ferry care
From door to door where lights and kettles burn.

No fanfare greets him as he slips between
The kerb and traffic’s unrelenting flow;
Yet Melbourne’s pulse, efficient and unseen,
Moves partly by the miles his tyres know.

O Lonsdale Street, your verses hum and roll
On battery and breath and borrowed time;
In one brief pass, a rider makes you whole
A working line within the city’s rhyme.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1057

Melbourne Candid Series #1209 Lonsdale St

 

Along Lonsdale where the noon light pales,
He walks the narrow margin of the day,
Stone walls to one side, traffic’s distant tales
Unspooling where the city bends away.

The footpath keeps his measured, solitary pace,
A quiet drum beneath his steady stride;
Head bowed not in sorrow but in grace
Of thought absorbed, the world held close inside.

A plastic bag swings low with common needs,
Bread for the night, the ordinary fare;
No anthem here but headphones whispering seeds
Of private worlds no passerby can share.

The city does not pause to learn his name—
It rarely does, and rarely needs to know—
Yet in this frame, unchanged, unnamed, he claims
His moment as the streets continue to flow.

O Lonsdale Street, in monochrome and stone,
You hold a thousand lives like this in trust:
Each step a verse, each passerby alone,
Each day composed of habit, will, and dust.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1056

Melbourne Candid Series #1285 Swanston St

 

On Swanston Street, the light waits at amber,
a held breath between steps.
Trams murmur somewhere out of frame,
steel singing to steel,
while the city keeps time in crossings and bells.

He moves through the monochrome morning
as if the day has chosen him for its measure
hood drawn close, shoulders squared
against the ordinary weather of thought.
The word Nomadic rests on his chest,
not a claim, but a question.

Glass and stone blur behind him,
history smoothed to a soft hush.
Signals hang like small moons,
deciding nothing yet.
His stride answers for him:
forward, unhurried, exact.

This is Melbourne in a minor key
coffee steam lifting unseen,
lanes waking to their own names.
Each footfall writes a line
no map can keep.

And in the brief truce of the crossing,
before the city resumes its argument,
he carries a private horizon with him,
moving through Swanston Street
as if the street were moving too.

Sony A7RV

FE 50mm f1.2 GM

Check out Candid 1042

Melbourne Candid Series #1280 Latrobe St

 

Three figures move in parallel lines,
A small parade of human kind
Two men, one girl, side by side,
Their steps in sync, their climates wide.

One shivers in a thin short skirt,
Bare legs braving the wandering breeze,
Another wrapped in winter’s dirt,
A fortress built of wool and sleeves.

The third walks easy, neither nor,
Just weather-ready, calm and plain,
A quiet witness at the core
Of this strange thermal daisy chain.

Three bodies tuned to different heat,
Three stories told in coats and skin
How curious that along one street,
The seasons shift from person to person within.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1037

Melbourne Candid Series #1279 Nicholson St

 

A woman in tight-cut city stride,
Coffee warming one sure hand,
Her phone a glow she will not hide,
A compass she alone can understand.

She walks the street without a glance,
Skipping the world before her feet,
Lost in her screen’s unfolding dance,
Threading through the urban beat.

Traffic hums and footsteps blur,
Yet she moves on, absorbed, alone
A modern wanderer wrapped in her

Small bright kingdom of glass and phone

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1036

Melbourne Candid Series #1276 Flagstaff Garden

 

In the hush between drumbeats,
a dancer leans into the trembling air
silver tassels shivering along his shoulders
like a whispered prayer in metal.

Paint shadows his face,
a mask half-myth, half-memory,
as though he is stepping out of some older world
and borrowing our sunlight for a moment.

Around him, the crowd softens into blur
a ring of breath, of waiting,
their modern jackets folding quietly
against the ancient thrum of ceremony.

He holds something small, fragile, smouldering
a ritual ember, a thread of smoke
curling upward like a spirit
seeking its rightful sky.

Behind him, another dancer rises
in a crown of feathers,
a living echo of winds that once
swept untamed across continents.

And in that suspended second,
between steps, between heartbeats,
the street becomes a timeless corridor
where the past returns not as ghost
but as pulse
steady, defiant, beautiful.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 1033

Melbourne Candid Series #1272 Fitzroy St

 

Under the corrugated awning,
shadows fold themselves neatly
along the footpath
a long ribbon of tables,
empty, waiting for stories
to sit down.

The sign reads Viet Rose Bakery & Café,
its letters faded by years
of passing weather and passing people.
Beside it, Yeshi Ethiopian Restaurant
leans over the walkway,
a quiet guardian of spice and memory.

A woman in dark glasses
walks alone,
coat trailing like a soft echo
behind her.
She moves through the street
as though following a rhythm
only she can hear.

In the window,
two men eat
their reflections layered
with cars, bicycles,
and the old brick façades
across the road.
Mouth mid-bite,
conversation paused,
caught between hunger
and a passing thought.

A poster of a bánh mì
fills the glass with its hunger
bread split like a smile,
herbs scattered like confetti
from a quiet celebration.

Above all this,
the wires, the rooflines,
the city’s unhurried breath
a small moment held open
on an ordinary street,
where everything is familiar,
and somehow still singing.

Sony A7RV

FE 24mm f1.4 GM

Check out Candid 1028

Melbourne Candid Series #1252 Flinders St

 

A bearded man, like Potter grown,
With city dust his cloak and crown,
Walks Flinders Street, the noon aflame,
Yet calm, as though the world were tame.

Beside him moves a lady fair,
In white, with sunlight in her hair,
Both veiled in shades, both cool, composed,
Their steps in quiet rhythm closed.

Trams hum by, the pavements gleam,
The air is thick with city dream,
And for a breath, the crowd makes way—
Two figures passing, bright as day.

Sony A7RV

FE 50mm f1.2 GM

Check out Candid 1008

Melbourne Candid Series #1251 Flinders St

 

A man in shades on Flinders Street,
Crouched mid-step, in pose discreet,
A fist beneath his sculpted chin,
As if deep thought were caged within.

Beside him walked, with mirrored eyes,
His blonde companion, cool, precise,
Her stride unbent, her silence sleek,
The sunlight glinting on her cheek.

The crowd flowed past — a restless stream,
Yet they moved through, a frozen dream,
Two figures framed in city glare,
Half in fashion, half in air.

Sony A7RV

FE 50mm f1.2 GM

Check Candid 1007 and FACE OFF

Melbourne Candid Series #1250 Exhibition St

 

Two large ladies, side by side,
One in pants, one skirted wide,
No laughter shared, no word, no glance,
Just silence in their steadfast stance.

At Exhibition Street they wait,
The red light hums, the hour late,
Beside them, old man, lean and spare,
Clutches his strap with practiced care.

His cap pulled low, his gaze ahead,
The city murmurs, faintly fed,
He braces, poised for the signal’s gleam,
Green will cut through this heavy dream.

Three still figures in the rain of sound,
Each earthbound, yet unbound,
Melbourne holds its breath a beat,
Before the lights release their feet.

Sony A7RV

FE 50mm f1.2 GM

Check out Candid 1006

Melbourne Candid Series #1249 Elizabeth St

 

Among the crowd on Elizabeth Street,
two ladies — one wide, one thin 
walked side by side in easy rhythm,
their laughter woven with the din.

My camera caught their fleeting glance,
a moment framed between our gaze 
they pointed, smiling, half in jest,
half curious at my quiet craze.

The traffic hummed, the sunlight slid,
past tramlines tangled, silver, near 
and in that instant, brief yet bold,
the city’s heart drew gently near.

Sony A7RV

FE 50mm f1.2 GM

Check out Candid 1005

Melbourne Candid Series #1248 Bourke St Mall

 

A chap in shorts, legs crossed with ease,
sits on the iron bench, sunlit, at Bourke Street Mall 
the noon warmth paints his knees with gold,
the city hums, a tram bell calls.

Shadows drift like passing moods,
a breeze tugs softly at his sleeve;
around him, shoppers flow like tides,
but he — he stays, content to breathe.

Melbourne glows in tempered glass,
and time, for him, forgets to move 
a chap in shorts beneath the sun,
at peace with nothing left to prove.

Sony A7RV

FE 50mm f1.2 GM

Check out Candid 1004

Melbourne Candid Series #1247 Bourke St Mall

 

He stands beneath the wide city sky,
cap pulled low, T-shirt loose,
hands alive upon the electric keys
a melody rising above the noon.

Shoppers drift like quiet waves,
trams sigh past in steel refrain,
yet his voice threads through it all
a bright pulse woven into motion.

Coins fall softly in his open case,
but he does not count—he sings,
eyes half-closed, body swaying
as if the music were wind inside him.

The city becomes his stage and choir:
awnings flutter, heels keep time,
pigeons turn slow circles overhead.
And for a moment, Bourke Street glows
each note a spark against the hum,
the man and the mall breathing as one.

Sony A7RV

FE 50mm f1.2 GM

Check out Candid 1003

Melbourne Candid Series #1246 Swanston St

 

A row of men in caps sit still
along the stone bench, shoulder to shoulder
a quiet congregation of screens.
Each head bowed,
not in prayer but in signal,
their thumbs murmuring in perfect rhythm.

The city swirls around them
trams clang, pigeons scatter,
light flickers across their faces
like water over stone.
They do not look up.
The world passes in reflections
on glass and metal and moving lips.

Time, too, seems to pause here
a row of lives humming softly
in their separate orbits,
united by invisible threads of light.
And in that stillness,
the stone bench holds them gently,
as if the street itself were listening.

Sony A7RV

FE 50mm f1.2 GM

Check out Candid 1002

Melbourne Candid Series #1244 Flinders St

 

The crowd flows both ways
a tide of shoes, glances, breath.
Flinders Street hums in gold and grit,
trams sighing, wind tugging at sleeves.

Through my lens, the city unfolds:
a tall young man ahead, scratching his hair,
lost somewhere between thought and motion,
his gesture framed by afternoon light.

Behind him—a chap and his girl pause,
their gaze caught in the circle of my glass.
For a heartbeat we share a secret:
the stillness that lives inside movement.

Pedestrians split and merge like water,
faces flicker, dissolve, reform
and I, unseen except for the camera’s eye,
stand in the river of human time,
catching one instant before it drifts away.

Sony A7RV

FE 50mm f1.2 GM

Check out Candid 1000

Melbourne Candid Series #1222 Elizabeth St

 

Off Elizabeth Street, the air hums with noon 
trams rattle, pigeons scatter crumbs.
A man stands easy, jumper looped around his neck,
glasses glinting like a second sun.

He props one foot upon the bench,
beside a quiet patron lost in thought,
their worlds just inches apart 
one resting, one mid-motion.

The city flows around them 
coffee scent, sirens, street chatter 
and for a breath,
the scene becomes a sketch of Melbourne:
casual, alive,
where strangers share a bench
and time forgets to hurry.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 976

Melbourne Candid Series #1221 De Graves St

 

A wicked smile flickers 
he wipes his lips with the back of his hand,
crumbs falling like careless words.
The mullet catches light,
a halo of defiance
under the café’s striped awning.

He leans back in his chair,
street laughter spilling past,
steam rising from cups and grates alike.
There’s swagger in his stillness,
a kind of rough poetry
in the way he owns the moment 
De Graves Street watching,
and he, unbothered,
watching it back.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 975 and FACE OFF

Melbourne Candid Series #1220 De Graves St

 

De Graves Street hums its midday tune 
cups clink, trams sigh somewhere near.
A woman in sunglasses leans by the café wall,
sunlight glinting on her hair.

She lifts a sandwich, slow and certain,
each bite a small rebellion
against the rush of office hours,
against the turning world.

Around her, footsteps weave and scatter,
voices blur like jazz in the lane,
but she is still —
a quiet rhythm in the city’s heart,
chewing, tasting,
letting Melbourne move around her.

Sony A7RV

FE 135mm f1.8 GM

Check out Candid 974

Melbourn Candid Series #1218 De Graves St

 

Two young blokes off Degraves Street,
where shadows curl and sunlight meet
one wears his shades upon his hair,
the other’s brim cuts morning air.

Their laughter drifts through coffee steam,
the lane alive, a waking dream;
tram bells sigh beyond the stone,
yet here they make the world their own.

So light their talk, so bright their ease,
the city hums in minor keys;
youth’s brief fire, unbound, complete
two young blokes off Degraves Street.

Sony A7RV

FE 50mm f1.2 GM

Check out Candid 972

Melbourne Candid Series #1217 De Graves St

 

In Degraves Street’s narrow hum,
where coffee steam and footsteps drum,
a couple waits before the door
of Jungle Juice — their quiet shore.

They sit, the morning half-awake,
as trams above the city shake;
two figures queue in dappled light,
their laughter blending with the bright.

The scent of citrus, mango air,
the hiss of blenders everywhere;
time slows—an amber, sunlit pause,
between the rush and urban cause.

The couple leans, their hands entwined,
as summer drifts through Melbourne’s mind.

Sony A7RV

FE 35mm f1.4 GM

Check out Candid 971