My photography on Wikipedia

Originally posted on hachyderm.io, posted here with minor edits.

I release a lot of my photos under the Creative Commons Attribution licence. It’s fun to see which of them have popped up on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, although it doesn’t line up with my favourites among my own photographs.

Wikipedia: Crown Sydney and a few variants in other languages make heavy use of photographs I took of the Crown Sydney construction site, or at least of its surroundings. (Most of them are cropped down to the construction site by the editors.)

Construction at Barangaroo Barangaroo towers Barangaroo construction at sunset

This photograph of the Eastern Suburbs viaduct is used in two articles related to it, Wikipedia: Eastern Suburbs & Illawarra Line and Wikipedia: Eastern Suburbs railway line:

Eastern suburbs rail line, from Sydney Tower

This, cropped and brightened by a Commons editor, is used on the Wikipedia: New South Wales Rural Fire Service article. Not discussed in the article: that truck is delivering Fire Santa, who visits kids at farm gates in the leadup to Christmas.

Fire Santa cometh!

The next two are I think the only two I have inserted myself, and appear in Wikipedia: Raging Waters Sydney. At the time I took them, the only Commons photographs of Raging Waters (then Wet ‘n’ Wild) were during construction, so I took a camera there to photograph the completed rides for Wikipedia. The first of the two also appears in Wikipedia: 2013 in amusement parks.

Tower 1, Wet'n'Wild Sydney: Bomborra and Tantrum Wet'n'Wild Sydney: H2Go Racers

This photograph is used on the Ukrainian language article about Bay Area Rapid Transit (Wikipedia: Метрополітен Затоки Сан-Франциско):

BART arriving

I extensively photographed the University of Sydney jacaranda a few years before it blew over, and this one appears on both the English and German articles about the tree (Wikipedia: Jacaranda, University of Sydney). It’s something of an exception to the “my faves don’t appear on Wikipedia” experience, I do like this series.

Jacaranda carpet, Sydney University

A cropped version of this photograph from a plane is used in both Wikipedia: Sierra Point (Brisbane) and Wikipedia: Dakin Building, neither of which I could have told you anything about when I saw them from a window seat in 2016.

Bay Area from above

Finally, it is honestly quite an honour to have this used in Wikipedia: Sydney Harbour Bridge, in both the English and Spanish articles:

Aboriginal and Australian flags above Sydney Harbour Bridge

Quite a few other photos of mine have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, although not used in articles. All of my Creative Commons licenced photography (around 4000 photographs) can be found via this Flickr search.

366 days / 1775 days

I started uploading photos taken in 2020 to Flickr on February 27, 2020, including these:

6th birthday cake Alice in Wonderland cupcakes

Later in 2020 it became A Thing to count every day as part of March 2020 (ie, today is the 1773rd of March, 2020), In that spirit, today is the 1775th, and also the last, day of 2020 in terms of my photo processing.

Fittingly, today’s final upload features these “2020 SUCKS” cupcakes my kids decorated on December 31:

2020 sucks cupcakes

2020 retrospective

Fires

New Year's Day, 2020

More (and, December 2019)

Rain

By the time I was uploading my mediocre videos of heavy rain from January and February of 2020 (this one was uploaded in January 2024), it was becoming a little hard to remember why I was so excited about it.

Rain at Victoria Rd and Darling St, Rozelle, time lapse

Video

March/April COVID-19 lockdown

Adore Pharmacy Rozelle entry warning, March 2020

More

Autumn, Japanese maple edition

Backlit Japanese maple

More

Autumn, there are in fact other varieties of tree edition

Last light on autumn leaves

More

Autumn, Auburn Botanic Gardens edition

Backlit leaves

More, bonus snake

Autumn, morning walk after rain edition

Autumn leaves on windscreen

More

Winter rains

Wet leaves

More

Blue Mountains getaway

Backlit shrubs

More

Bay Run at night

City lights reflected, Bay Run

More, September at sunset

Spring rains

Tulip

More

Boxing Day storm

Boxing Day storm front

More

Bay Run after sunset

July 2020

The last sport my son was willing to play other than cricket (always willing to play cricket) was a season of AFL. I used to cycle the Bay Run circuit in the dark while he trained under the brutal lights of the football oval.

These are phone photos, but don’t argue with .

Bay run at sunset City lights reflected, Bay Run Moon reflection, Bay Run Moon, Bay Run

Snake

May 2020

From the same outing as the pretty autumn leaves, a suburban snake:

Black snake, Auburn Botanic Gardens Snake, Auburn Botanic Gardens

Snakes aren’t as common as the Australian mythos in which we fight a Sisyphean battle against them daily, armed only with our teeth and in some cases our Irish ancestry, but they’re also not as rare as some folks would like to be assured either. I’ve never run into one in a suburban backyard, but seeing them on farms or in the wilderness is not a surprise, and this is the second black snake I’ve seen in a botanic garden; evidently botanic gardens are just big and wild enough to sustain some non-curated predators.

This one in Auburn was definitely the most active snake I’ve ever personally seen though, it was absolutely gunning it across the path and up the hill on whatever hunting mission it was on. I wouldn’t have backed myself trying to outrun it. We paid a lot less attention to the canopy and more to the forest floor afterwards.

All photos.

Auburn Botanic Gardens

May 2020

This album comes via a quick detour to update Wikipedia so that I understood how school reopenings worked in New South Wales in 2020, specifically:

From 11 May [2020], students returned to school one day a week with a plan for a phased return over several weeks. From 25 May, the phased return was replaced with full-time schooling.

Wikipedia: COVID-19 pandemic in New South Wales (2020)

I had decided in advance that when school went back — it was remote for seven weeks, and two weeks of Easter holidays — that my spouse and I would then immediately take a week off work. Thus, the week of 25 May, we went somewhere each day in Sydney to explore, of which the most photogenic was Auburn Botanic Gardens in late autumn colours.

Fallen autumn leaves
Backlit leaves Leaf litter Japanese Garden, Auburn Botanic Gardens Cape Barren geese, Auburn Botanic Gardens Swamp wallaby, Auburn Botanic Gardens Reflected branches, Billabong, Auburn Botanic Gardens

All photos.