neglect

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

le grand bazaar

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!

down the river

 

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 …

flowers for you

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

magical

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 …

a parliament of owls

so i actually should be finishing my phd proposal. but posting some more of my px100 experiments seems like a much more satisfactory way to spend a cold melbourne night while half watching the the carlton/melbourne afl game.

the top two are from my first pack. the bottom two from my second. i was going to detail where the wheel was set, blah blah, but really, due to the dodgy shutter, exposure times varied. so really all these px100 shots are in the hands of the gods! but i really don’t mind that. it’s really why i love polaroid photography. the mystery, the random results, the excitement of seeing what turns (or doesn’t) turn out. & with these new impossible films the frisson of the polaroid magic is even more exciting. so all of you out there who haven’t tried it or haven’t had the greatest success, go for it! there’s magic even in the shots that are less than perfect. looking forward to showing you more of my experiments …

ps thanks to the lovely amanda  for tweet support encouraging my procrastination tonight.

night owl

i declared my sx70 broken a while ago. but thankfully it’s not. it’s just being curmudgeonly and the shutter is staying open for several seconds when i press the button. it’s not the same amount of seconds though. no. sometimes it’s one or two or three or sometimes (but not very often) it acts completely normally.

frank, the awesome impossible project camera doctor, has been trying to help me fix it via email from across the world but i still need to fiddle a bit more. i recently hurt my shoulder so fiddling with a polaroid or even taking photos difficult.

but there is a plus side to all this.

• the long exposure time means i’ve been playing with interior night shots.
• and these have to obviously be held very still so i’m doing some still life stuff.
• and i’m experimenting with my packs of px100 that have been sitting there for months.

this little fella was my test subject for getting the light right. it’s a bit hard due to the unpredictability of the shutter speed but i’m liking this version best out of the five shots of him. it was actually the first shot and i would prefer a little more contrast in the white so i kept experimenting. but i wasn’t not able to get it any more contrasty than this.

when it’s easier for me to type & control photoshop (ie with two hands) i’ll post the various images of my little owl that i did while practising.

i really really really like it. i will definitely be buying more. very soon in fact as i’ve used two of three packs already!

oh in case you are wondering, my owl is my pen/brush/scalpel holder in my studio.

he’s from have you met miss jones. i want one of everything!

to be in paris is to be

isn’t it just?

ps i discovered this image by atget over a year after i took the photo above … hence the subtitle.

pss the title of the post is a quote by an anonymous correspondent to diarist jean de jandun … 1323

colonia

just  a monday post. a few b&w film images from colonia del sacramento in uruguay. enjoy! some colour ones tomorrow.