On 18 January 2010 I took a photograph. A photograph with the wrong settings. The next day I decided to begin a PAD project to try to stop myself from ever doing that again. Not that I have, but in theory I mean. Since then, every year on that date (or as close to it as the weekends allow, for I was not doing a 4 hour round trip just to take a photo) I have returned to the spot of that first photo and taken the same shot again.

And so here we are. One whole half decade later. "Where do you want to be in 5 years?", the less imaginative HR 'droids still ask. And we all think that 5 years is too far into the future, a virtual eternity away, for us to have any way to see that. But we're sure that we'll have achieved many great things in that time. It's 5 years, right? Half a decade! So much time!

Hang on... NOW is 5 years after then. Some things have changed greatly. But the thing that brings me to Pyrmont has not. I expected to have done much more in 5 years than I have. This is one reason why I always avoid New Year celebrations; they're generally more of a reminder of what hasn't been achieved than what might be.

I documented the history of the past shots last year so I won't go through that again. Last year the sky was cloudless for the first time, this year completely clouded for the fist time. The weather was warm but not as hot as it had been since the clouds had brought forth a great deal of rain overnight.

One change is that this was of course the E-M1's first outing for this shot. Another is the position that I took it from. The very first year I did this a flowerbed ran just behind a railing fence at the top of the escarpment that looks over the park. It had only just been planted and there was plenty of space to step through it. The trees in front of my view, on the level below the top one, were healthy but not excessively tall and allowed a decent view over the park. By this year the spot that I took the earlier shots from had been fully overgrown by thick plant stems, and the trees on the level below had grown significantly affording only glimpses of the park. I therefore accepted that this was no longer a place that I'd be able to do a decent shot from without it being more "Lunch Time In The Trees", packed up and walked down to the next level down, in front of the aforementioned trees. Unfortunately that one has a very tall vertical metal fence running along it, so I had to shoot between the gaps (which also explains why the bow of the Pacific Pearl over on the right is missing).

So I've been able to continue the tradition for one more year... kinda.

This is of course a pano stitched from four separate images.

The series is shown below:

2017


2016


2015


2014


2013


2012


2011


And Where It All Started