Abhay Desai — Melbourne Street Photographer

A figure swathed in billowing orange-red fabric dissolves into cascading streaks of flame and cream, their face barely legible through layered planes of intentional motion against a pale Melbourne street.

The city’s subconscious, photographed in passing.

A dark silhouette crosses sunlit Melbourne pavement near a steel public toilet kiosk, long diagonal shadows stretching dramatically across marked bike lanes in the warm midday glare.
A red scooter blazes through a dark city street at night, its rider reduced to a smear of motion against streaked headlights and deep shadow, the scene almost entirely consumed by speed.
Two pedestrians — one in a blue turban and white jacket, another in amber — stride through a night street as orange and teal light trails weave sinuously around their blurred forms.
A hatted figure steps from the open door of a blue Melbourne tram onto a warmly lit platform, their form ghosted and doubled by the slow shutter into something between arrival and departure.
A figure in dark layered clothing drifts through a wash of burnt orange and cream, their body ghosted into overlapping translucent silhouettes against horizontal bands of glowing city light.
A traveller with luggage crosses a blazing amber transit space, the scene reduced to molten gold and dark silhouette by extreme motion blur and overpowering warm light.

Made on the way to work, while the rest of the carriage scrolls.

Lightroom Presets

The Inordinary
Cine Streets

Nine presets built from Melbourne light — overpass amber, tram-door teal, the particular gold of a street at the wrong hour. Ships with the twelve-step toolkit behind every frame on this page, for desktop and mobile.

See the presets