Flinders Street Station Facade

Flinders Street Station, on the corner of Flinders Street and Swanston Street in the heart of Melbourne's CBD, is one of the city's most photographed buildings thanks to its ornate yellow Edwardian facade, green copper dome and row of famous station clocks above the main entrance. The classic frame is shot from the diagonally opposite corner outside Federation Square, which gives a clean view across the intersection with the dome, clock face and arched entrance all in one composition and often includes trams passing through the foreground. The facade faces roughly north-west, so afternoon sun lights it directly, but the richest colour comes at blue hour, in the twenty to thirty minutes after sunset, when the building's floodlights switch on and warm artificial light balances against a deep blue sky before it goes fully dark. Clear autumn and winter evenings in Melbourne tend to give the cleanest skies for this contrast, while summer's later sunset pushes the best light past 8pm. The corner is one of the busiest pedestrian intersections in the city at any hour, so a completely empty frame is unlikely; photographers instead work with the crowd and tram movement as part of the composition, or use a slower shutter speed on a tripod to blur pedestrians into streaks. Tripods are permitted on the public footpath but should be kept close to the building line and out of the pedestrian flow, particularly at the Swanston Street tram stops. There is no entry fee to photograph the exterior since it is a public street corner, and no permit is required for handheld or lightly-set-up tripod photography; commercial shoots with lighting rigs would need separate arrangements with the city. Drones are not permitted over this section of the CBD.