SUNDAY BEST #408 - IN THE CLOISTERS

Welcome to the meme, "My Sunday Best", which is a photographic and creative meme that allows you to showcase your talents in imaging. Every Sunday, you can post here showing an image you have created using your camera, (and/or) image processing software, and/or painting and drawing in the conventional way and have scanned in.

The rules are simple:
1) Create your image and post it up on your blog;
2) Put the "My Sunday Best" logo image link somewhere on your post so people can click and come by here;
3) Leave a comment here once you have posted
4) Visit other posters' blogs and be amazed with their creativity.

Please do not use this meme to advertise our goods or services. This is a creative meme and any inappropriate links or comments shall be removed immediately.

An architectural embellishment in the cloisters of the University of Melbourne's Old Law Quadrangle.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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Last week, Rupam Sarma in India posted this wonderful B&W image. Please visit his blog for more great shots.

SUNDAY BEST #353 - UNIVERSITY

Welcome to the meme, "My Sunday Best", which is a photographic and creative meme that allows you to showcase your talents in imaging. Every Sunday, you can post here showing an image you have created using your camera, (and/or) image processing software, and/or painting and drawing in the conventional way and have scanned in.

The rules are simple:|1) Create your image and post it up on your blog;
2) Put the "My Sunday Best" logo image link somewhere on your post so people can click and come by here;
3) Leave a comment here once you have posted;
4) Visit other posters' blogs and be amazed with their creativity.

Please do not use this meme to advertise our goods or services. This is a creative meme and any inappropriate links or comments shall be removed immediately.

The old Law School Cloisters and Quadrangle at the University of Melbourne. The east and west sides of the Quadrangle Building were completed by October 1855 and the imposing north wing in 1857. The vaulted cloisters of the east and west wings were not added until 1930 and the quadrangle was not fully enclosed until 1969.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Last week, Csuhpat1 in the USA posted some great photos of the Ocean. Please visit his blog for more great shots.

THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND, NZ

The University of Auckland is New Zealand's pre-eminent research-led University. Established in 1883, it has grown into an international centre of learning and academic excellence and is New Zealand's largest university. Its mission is to be an internationally recognised, research-led university, known for the excellence of its teaching, research, and service to its local, national and international communities. It aims to be a vibrant and intellectually challenging place of learning, nurturing a community of scholars who share a passion for discovery, the advance of knowledge and human progress.

Seen here is the signature building of the University is the Clock Tower, which is a wonderful Victorian confection in white, reminding one of a wedding cake bedecked in icing sugar filigree decorations. The campus is quite extensive and is an agglomeration of modern and Victorian buildings, beautiful parks, gardens, roads and pathways.

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Travel Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.

UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE

The University of Melbourne (informally Melbourne University, Melbourne Uni or simply Melbourne) is an Australian public research university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Times Higher Education ranks Melbourne as 33rd in the world, while the QS World University Rankings places Melbourne 31st in the world. According to QS World University Subject Rankings 2015, the University of Melbourne is ranked 5th in the world for education, 8th in law, 13th in computer science and IT, 13th in arts and humanities, 14th in accounting and finance, 14th in dentistry and 18th in medicine.

Melbourne's main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb north of the Melbourne central business district, with several other campuses located across Victoria. Melbourne is a sandstone university and a member of the Group of Eight, Universitas 21 and the Association of Pacific Rim Universities. Since 1872 various residential colleges have become affiliated with the university. There are 12 colleges located on the main campus and in nearby suburbs offering academic, sporting and cultural programs alongside accommodation for Melbourne students and faculty.

Melbourne comprises 11 separate academic units and is associated with numerous institutes and research centres, including the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research and the Grattan Institute. Amongst Melbourne's 15 graduate schools the Melbourne Business School, the Melbourne Law School and the Melbourne Medical School are particularly well regarded.

Four Australian prime ministers and five governors-general have graduated from Melbourne. Seven Nobel laureates have been students or faculty, the most of any Australian university.

This post is part of the Outdoor Wednesday meme,

and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,

and also part of the ABC Wednesday meme.

IAN POTTER MUSEUM MURAL

The Ian Potter Museum of Art has gone through a number of name changes and has been housed in different locations on the University of Melbourne's Parkville campus. First established as the University Art Gallery in 1975, it was located in the centre of campus in the Old Physics Building. Additional accommodation was found on Swanston Street for it in the Physics Annex in 1988.

This space housed both the Ian Potter Gallery and the Art Conservation Centre and together with the University Gallery were known as The University of Melbourne Museum of Art. In 1998 a purpose-built art museum designed by Nonda Katsalidis and named The Ian Potter Museum of Art, opened to the public and is now considered one of the leading university art museums in the country. The Potter, won the Royal Australian Institute of Architects ‘Project of the Year’ award on its completion in 1999.

Bursting through Katsalidis’s sleek facade is the immense 1993 sculptural mural, "Cultural Rubble", by the Australian-born sculptor Christine O’Loughlin, now based in Paris. She used fragments of classical statuary, architecture and pottery cast in white fibreglass from plaster moulds of originals in the Louvre to evoke the tension between Australia’s European heritage and its future.

This post is part of the Weekend in Black and White meme.

SYSTEM GARDEN

The System Garden at the University of Melbourne was designed by the University’s first Professor of Natural History, Frederick McCoy in concert with architect Edward Latrobe Bateman in 1856. The garden is unusual because unlike a botanical or ornamental garden, the plants were selected and planted according to an evolutionary system of classification – hence its name, System Garden.

This post is part of the Friday Greens meme,
and also part of the Scenic Weekends meme,
and also part of the Shadow Shot Sunday meme.

RED TORCH CACTUS

Trichocereus (Helianthocereus) grandiflorus, the Red Torch Cactus, native to Argentina, forms clusters of stems to 40 cm in height with beautiful clear red flowers to 10 cm diameter. Over the years, many hybrids of been developed in cultivation, resulting in flowers of nearly all the colours of the rainbow. Colours now includes yellow, gold, white, pink, light pink with rose midstripes, orange, red, and purples. Some flowers are actually bi-coloured. In a some cases, flower size has increased to 20 cm in diameter, rivalling some of the Epiphyllum or "Orchid Cacti".  Very few cacti can surpass the flowers of the T. grandiflorus hybrids for sheer flower power!

Through hybridisation, the actual appearance of the plant as changed as well. The stems of the type species are somewhat slender, and sometimes become a bit prostrate. Many newer hybrids have thick, cylindrical bodies to 30 cm in diameter, with offsets forming specimens that span over a metre in diameter. This can be quite an awesome sight, with large, brilliant flowers open on each stem!. Porous cactus soil with adequate drainage should be used. Bright light is needed. Water thoroughly when soil is dry to the touch. Protect from frost.

This specimen is growing in the System Garden of the University of Melbourne and is a naturally occurring non-hybridised species, which nevertheless is very beautiful.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

PONDERING & REFLECTING

This is one of the ponds at Latrobe University in Bundoora, Melbourne, Australia. At the weekends especially it is a great place for locals to meet and have fun - not to mention their dogs.

This post is part of the Weekend Reflections meme,
and also part of the Weekly TopShot meme,
and also part of the Scenic Weekends meme.

GARDEN REFLECTIONS

In the System Garden of the University of Melbourne, the Botany Department buildings fittingly reflect the gardenscape outside...

This post is part of the Geometric Friday meme,
and also part of the Weekend Reflections meme.

GARDEN ITERATIONS

The first shot is a straight out of the camera image taken in the School of Botany's System Garden of the University of Melbourne. I then Photoshopped the image, taking it through several passes via a sepia filter so that the colour was almost completely neutralised. This is image 2.

I then used the saturation and colour balance commands to try to regain some of the colour, emphasising the orange and green. These are the third and fourth images, which have also been enhanced with some of the filters in the Photoshop art filter gallery. The last image shows the effect of more fine tuning of colour and an oil painting filter.

This post is part of the Monday Mellow Yellows meme,
and also part of the Mandarin Orange Monday meme,
and also part of the Nature Footsteps Inspiring Photography meme.

LATROBE UNIVERSITY LAKE

Last Sunday was a beautiful early Summer's day and we went to the LaTrobe University Campus in Bundoora. Lots of people about enjoying the lawns and the lovely lakes.

This post is part of the Waterworld Wednesday meme,
and also part of the Outdoor Wednesday meme,
and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,
and also part of the Wild Bird Wednesday meme.

RMIT SWANSTON ACADEMIC BUILDING

The Swanston Academic Building (SAB) is an RMIT building designed by the architecture firm Lyons and is located on Swanston Street, Melbourne, across from other notable architectural landmarks: Peter Corrigan-designed building 8 and ARM’s Storey Hall.

RMIT University has three campuses in Melbourne, Australia, two campuses in Vietnam and a centre in Barcelona, Spain. The University's student population of 82,000 includes 28,000 international students, of whom 17,600 are taught outside Australia (almost 7,000 at RMIT Vietnam).

Construction of SAB began on September 2010 and was completed in September 2, 2012. The budget for the SAB was $200,000,000. The new building contains 35,000 square metres of floor space, is 11 storeys high (including basement) and provides 6 large lecture theatres for students.

The building has state of the art facilities for students and also has a 5 star green star rating, meaning the building is very environmentally sustainable. The extremely colourful building is intended to reflect the cities surroundings in the façade. “The idea is to wear the ‘cloak’ of the city”.

Adrian Stanic (Lyons Architectural Director and RMIT alumnus) said in a media release (22/10/2010): “We saw the site as a focal point of the city and looked at how the SAB could create a dialogue with the other landmark buildings that define Melbourne. The process involved mapping lines from the site to these buildings. Using these lines we then created a computerized algorithm that generated the three-dimensional shapes and form of the building. We also put a boom lift on site and hoisted architectural photographer Dianna Snape up to photographically capture the vistas from the 11 levels of the building. The best viewpoints then became the location for the student ‘portals’ on each level that connect student activities inside the building with the surrounding cityscape. In this way we have created a design that integrates the building into the very heart of Melbourne architecturally, but also reflects and embraces the broader architectural legacy of the city.”

This post is part of the Geometric Friday meme.

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

The National University of Singapore (Abbreviation: NUS) is a comprehensive research university located in Singapore, being the flagship tertiary institution of the country which has a global approach to education and research. Founded in 1905, it is the oldest higher learning institute in Singapore, as well as the largest university in the country in terms of student enrolment and curriculum offered.

The university's main campus is located in southwest Singapore at Kent Ridge, with an area of approximately 1.5 km2. The Bukit Timah campus houses the Faculty of Law, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and research institutes, while the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore is located at the Outram campus.

The statues seen here represent "Wealth" and "Contentment" and they are the work of Singaporean Ng Eng Teng (1934-2001), sculpted in 1974. They are part of the art collection of NUS.

This post is part of the Weekend Reflections meme,
and also part of the Weekly TopShot meme,
and also part of the Scenic Weekends meme.