I know what you're thinking... "How much of a desperation shot is this?"

Not exactly. Granted, this wasn't my original idea; I was going to use my ND filter to do a long exposure capturing people walking past here ghost-like, but I couldn't get a good angle to do that from. (And using autofocus with an ND filter? Fuhgeddabout it, it has to be manual.) However I still wanted to take this not for the artistic effect, but the social commentary one.

Rhodes was once a "dirty industry" site. It's since been redeveloped into blocks of modern home units, many with water views, others within gated communities, intended to attract the young professional types with discretionary income to spend. The Rhodes shopping centre was developed accordingly; Ikea, upmarket furniture, consumer electronics, manchester, ski apparel, kitchenware, games and hobbies etc stores... and of course a camera store. No mid-range homewares stores like Big W or Target, no fast food chain stores like Maccas or KFC.

But with housing costs eating up so much of household budgets, it didn't quite work out as planned. The upmarket furniture store closed a few months back. The HMV music / video store has recently closed to be replaced by a "Dollar Shop". The "holding to the upper end" strategy was abandoned when a Target was moved in just recently. It's not a dive to the bottom, but a more realistic balance and I doubt that the last of the upmarket stores has closed. And the camera store?

You're looking at it.

It used to be that camera stores had an ongoing business selling film, chemicals, processing etc. Now, someone spends a grand and a half on a DSLR. If they get hooked, they may spend the same on L Series lenses or equivalent. But they don't do it every week, while the rent and wages still need to be paid. So this isn't the first, and won't be the last, suburban shopping centre camera store I've seen close. Some stores, which have keen prices and embrace the web, or have a range of services with well respected staff, will go on but probably not in the suburban mall. For the rest, I see camera sales being made through furniture / home electronics discount barns where the staff wouldn't know an f/stop from a hole in the lens, and care even less.

(Update 24-Jul-10: I went to Rhodes for the first time in about 3 weeks this morning and noticed that the games store, Socrates, had also closed. So it was predicted, so is it coming to pass.)

(Update, 02-Aug-23: It looks like Urban Spa was around until at least 2016, based on the group's Faceplant posts. However I cannot find any record of it after that. I have no idea what's there now.)