Bike the Bay was designed to provide some insight into the delight that can be had from a slow bicycle trip around the shores of Corio Bay.  On the way, visitors will learn a little of the city of Geelong and its history, and issues that are currently in the news.

The city of Geelong is situated on Corio Bay, with bike paths, walking tracks and road access to most areas.

This website also provides a showcase for my photographs of the bay, and demonstrates some of the photography skills I have developed as part of my visual arts degree at Deakin University, which has a Waterfront Campus in two old wool stores on the waterfront of Geelong.

The brief for this project was to produce an Online Identity.  My Online Identity is Corio Bay, as seen in a virtual tour around the shores of the bay entitled Bike the Bay, with a mixture of still photography, animated gifs and a short video.

Photography

All the photographs in the website, with the exception of the Max Dupain photograph of Eastern Beach, were taken by me.

The animations were produced in Adobe Photoshop.  The video is a compilation of still images produced and set to music in Windows Movie Maker.

Why are there night photographs in a site about cycling?

This ride can easily be undertaken after dark.  The lights of the bay make a wonderful backdrop.  The section of the ride between Limeburner’s Point and Rippleside Park can be undertaken completely on bike paths.  Local cycling clubs often organise full moon rides.  As the central business district of Geelong faces east across Corio Bay, the cyclists can watch the full moon rise in the early evening. 

In fact, any time of day or night the shores of Corio Bay makes for wonderful cycling.

For night riding, cyclists need to have lights – a white front light and a rear red tail light.  These can be flashing lights, but, if you intend to cycle to Point Henry, or north from Rippleside Park, some sections are quite ill-lit and you will need a bright enough headlight to light your path.

Acknowledgements

Max Dupain, 1946, Eastern Beach, retrieved from The Geelong Art Gallery website, October 1, 2013.  http://collections.geelonggallery.org.au/emuwebgag/pages/gag/Display.php?irn=4276&QueryPage= (This image featured in the gallery’s 2013 exhibition Impressions of Geelong.)

Idris and Evan Jones, 1970, The Pushbike Song, recorded by The Mixtures as a 7″ single.

The Maps

Google Maps and Google Earth were used to produce maps.

The cycling route maps were produced using Map My Ride.

The Animations

For technical information about how the animated gifs were produced, go to my other website Smoke and Mirrors: The Camera DOES Lie.  

The bike animation

The bike featured in the cyclist animation and my avatar bicycle is a custom built Bike Friday Pocket Rocket Pro.  Once you’ve ridden a Bike Friday (named for Man Friday in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe), you’ll never want to ride any other type of bike!  The colour? – Power raspberry!

The wordpress platform: Twenty Eleven

After some research, I decided to use the relatively simple platform of WordPress for my website.  While multiple themes are available, after testing a number, I chose the Twenty Eleven theme as it allowed for a photograph background, various formats for pages, and setting different headers for each page.  (For some reason, the photographic header for the What’s New? page does not appear.)