a photoblog
Inspired by nostalgia for giving gifts of mixed tapes, I thought maybe we could do something similar, but with film.
in late august dee came up with this very cool idea. last week we met up on a gorgeous melbourne afternoon and swapped our images. there were lots and lots of amazing shots taken by the very talented msm crew. i shot for dee. this is just a sample of what she got …
i have been neglectful … of you all
sorry … i’ll try harder
it’s all because of this
well, not specifically this postcard of the city arcade in birmingham
but because of arcades – that’s what my thesis is on … and it’s frantic …
phds are rewarding but time consuming
the photo? a very cool present from a flickr friend in sydney … i was speechless with gratitude
it arrived today so i thought i should share.
click on the image for more info!
more about arcades later … when i have time
oh … i also got this:
it’s very cool too – and relates to a former research project
thanks to ben … for the helpful pointers, research and lovely vintage pics that i don’t have time to trawl ebay for myself
do you remember the cafe la poesía, that magic night in san telmo? buenos aires devised our meeting, so romantic and sweet, lulú
horacio ferrer, lulú
i have blogged this image before but recently i submitted it to shutter sisters’ one word project through flickr and they published it on the blog the other day. i was quite chuffed as i admire all the images i see on their site and find them inspirational.
the word of the month for shutter sisters was ‘story’ and of course you can see why i thought it perfectly fit. my talented and lovely friend nicole wanted to hear more about it and thought i should blog the story.
la poesía was a cafe i went to daily when i spent a month in buenos aires. it was beautiful and atmospheric … and had great coffee and food. i knew that there was a story behind it and thought that it must be a story out of 19th-century buenos aires bohemia, but it was only when i got home and researched it that i did find out that story at wander argentina.
it is a 19th-century building although the cafe la poesía (the poem) was only established in 1982 – but it was a bohemian enclave of musicians and poets at the time. it closed only six years later but lived on in the hearts of those who inhabited it. as the wander argentina page says:
it was here that the uruguayan poet and lyricist, horacio ferrer, mostly known for his work with astor piazolla, met the woman who remains his wife to this day, lucía micheli. The meeting is immortalized in his 1992 song, lulú
the cafe reopened in 2008 – only one year before i visited! being there i could have sworn that it had been open and trading for 100 years. this place was steeped in the history and atmosphere of 19th-century bohemia even though it did not exist as a cafe at that time.
just a random post pondering spam and an excuse to look through & post some old images.
i seem to be getting a lot more spam comments these days. is this actually a good thing? does it mean i’m getting more traffic or something (i don’t think i’m getting that much more). since my spam filter’s pretty good, not that much seems to get through … but i just wonder why it is now.
i hope you like these images from la paz from my trip a couple of years ago. it was such a great city to shoot. in fact i’d prepared a whole bunch of black & white film photos, which i also shot there, ready for your viewing pleasure. i was about to hit publish when i realised i really hated the scan quality. time to rescan!
so instead, here’s some digital colour ones. i so rarely post digital and looking back at these i just love the way that my dslr picks up the colours, light and shadows of la paz. such a contrasty light up there in the rarified atmosphere of high altitude. there are lots of pics … but i took lots more originally … now i was only going to choose a few … but i couldn’t decide so here they all are …
la paz from lowest to highest points of the city spans from 3000 to 4000+ m in altitude! it was such an amazing place to photograph. many of my digital shots reflect the film ones i did in the same city. i can’t remember whether i shot them on the same or different days however. but i promise that i’ll post the film images too, once i rescan them …
for those curious about the llama foetuses
probably a title that has no doubt been used many times. but it is so right for expressing me at the moment.
writing writing writing
writing my thesis
writing for the museum
writing for my research assistant work
writing my blog … when i need a break from academic writing
i don’t think i would technically call myself a writer, therefore i must qualify that i have also been
researching
kung fuing
exhibiting
photographing
travelling
socialising
loving
booking ( international flights!)
life is full and good …
but i will really enjoy that holiday when it comes
the grand bazaar of cambodia is how henri mouhot, french naturalist and ‘discoverer’ of angkor, described phnom penh, the capital of cambodia in 1863. he wasn’t very complimentary about it really but this little phrase just so perfectly encapsulates for me the buzz and activity that still characterises the city today. the image above is one of the first sights i saw from our hotel balcony.
we came here after being in battambang for five days. chris had been sick and we just needed somewhere to chill for a week before our flight home. on our first night we stayed in an average hotel by the river. but after settling in and walking out on to the balcony in the late afternoon, we admired the beauty of the riverside and the people taking their evening stroll, we definitely chilled.
phnom penh is probably not the first place you’d think of going if you want to chill but, from the second night, we holed ourselves up in a nice little boutique hotel with a pool and alternated lazing by it with walking up a storm in the city – despite the stomach bug i picked up on the third day.
we saw the royal palace; took twilight promenades along the mekong with hundreds of locals (a tradition left over from the french?); ate western food shamelessly in addition to local dishes; caught dozens of tuk tuks when we were too tired to walk; shopped at the markets; saw the crazy new developments by foreign speculators going up in some parts of the city; went to the museum; tried to drive a cyclo; checked out the backpacker area in boeung kak; had massages; hung out and drank cocktails in the colonial luxury of the foreign correspondants club; and just generally enjoyed the sights and being lazy.
i don’t know why so many of my film images are of bikes. i must have been fixated. i promise that i did take digital shots of other things!
today some more black & white film shots from cambodia. i’m so enjoying reminiscing about this trip!
after 10 days in siem reap we dragged ourselves away from its amazing temples and decided to travel to battambang along the river. chris had done it before and told me it was a fascinating four hour journey along the sangker river, leaving from the famous tonle sap lake and has been rather nicely described thus:
an interesting and very scenic journey along small rivers, the boats thread their way through numerous charming floating villages and past dozens of towering cantilevered fishing net installations.
it was all this and more. as we sailed along it was beautiful to daily life go by.
now, we knew that sometimes it could take a bit longer … our guidebook said four to seven hours … which we though would be fine. but the water level was horrendously low, meaning that it was a very very very very … very slow trip.
we got bogged many a time (yes in a river) and the crew used poles to get us out, the wooden seats felt like rock after about 5 hours, the diesel engine smell got quite sickening and then the engine broke down … twice.
but our ingenious crew pulled half the boat apart, bailed out some of the bilgewater, took stuff out of the engine and tinkered for an hour or so and we were on our way.
fourteen hours after we left our siem reap hotel we arrived in battambang. we stood up (thank god!) jumped in an airconditioned cab, checked into our lovely new hotel room with giant bed, showered and then went out and had a well deserved dinner with cold beer in the balmy evening air.
but you know what? after all the getting stuck & engine fumes & hard seats & broken engines. it was a magical ride along the river just as billed, an adventure that i’m so glad that i got to embark upon. really, in my book, these things make the journey exciting and unpredictable and are what it’s all about in the end. who always wants to always be comfortable and know what’s around the corner?
i’d definitely like to do it again … in wet season …
the other day chris brought me in a little collection of flowers from my garden. i thought it was high time i cracked open the impossible project px600 silver shade poor pod film i had stashed in the fridge.
you are supposed to use a filter with 600 film in an sx70. i couldn’t find mine so i just tried it anyways … maybe a wee bit overexposed but i was very happy with the results!
i’ve been completely blessed with impossible project film. i guess it’s kind of tricky but i’ve almost always been happy with the results. so they’re not perfect but i’ve never been devastatingly disappointed or shot a whole pack that comes out blank. i do follow the suggestions for shielding them from light and such that i read in the forums but i’m certainly not precious about it all.
guess i’ve just been lucky.
my only disappointment? the poor pods have not yet yielded any of the faulty gorgeousness for which they held such promise. but hey, i’ve got 11 packs left.
surely it is only a polaroid photographer that could be disappointed that their film was not faulty!
ps it’s chris’s birthday today. he got the original of these as part of his present. a little return gift to say thanks for the lovely flowers. x
i’ve been posting a lot of new photos lately … mainly polaroids as i’ve been sooooo busy starting the phd and all. polaroids are so surprisingly easy to pop out and scan … truly instant gratification … kind of!
so i decided it was time to have a bit of a look backward at some of my older images. it was lovely rediscovering these from our trip to cambodia in february 2010. they were shot at preah khan, one of the amazing temples in the angkor complex near siem reap. while i loved the famous ta prohm, preah khan gave you a bit more of that overgrown abandoned tomb raider magic without the crowds. i had somewhat of an ethical problem with going to angkor so at least the less touristed sites like this abated my qualms somewhat – if only while i was there. i’m still internally divided on the heritage and social ethics of this type of tourism but i have to say it was such a magical place – with lovely warm people and amazing sites – that the minute i arrived, i was glad that i came.
while i do love shooting the amazing eye-popping colours of south-east asia in in colour, i wanted to explore the angkor’s temples on black & white film. i guess it was my attempt to evoke that old fashioned feel of the photography of yesteryear and reflect the mystery and magic of those amazing old black & white photographs of jungle temples. hope you enjoy, more on my flickr stream …
did you know that melbourne has a special camera group dedicated to film photography? it does! and it’s called the melbourne silver mine. it’s made up of about 100 people who love old school analogue. silver miners come from all backgrounds and have the most amazing range of film cameras that you could not imagine. we do stuff like exhibitions, fun photo walks, monthly competitions, group buys of film and such.
we are very excited to be holding not one but two fringe shows at this years ballarat international foto biennale: the melbourne silver mine show at woolshed clothing on armstrong street north and just don’t call it street (surprisingly about street photography) at the very cool old butcher’s shop on seymour street. dee (top) and roberts (bottom) two of our very talented photographers (with super design skills) made some great posters with all the details!
the shows and the biennale start on saturday 20 august and run until 18 september. so there’s plenty of time for people to jump in the car or on the v-line train for a gander at the amazing range of works by melbourne silver mine and hundreds of other photographers.
on thursday a few of us went up to ballarat to drop off our street show work and to hang our msm woolshed show images. i’m doing some old favourite street shots from buenos aires for the former and both old and new polas in the latter. the majority of folks headed up today to have a big all in hanging day. even with only a few works up on the wall it already looked great and i can’t wait to see the final results.
