from the archives … bangkok

Since i’ve just returned from thailand, I thought it would be fun to revisit some images from my first trip there four years ago. It was May 2008 and I hadn’t had my DSLR for long so I was experimenting a lot with different genres from street to portrait to still life. I can’t remember how many images I shot but it was in the thousands I think. There are an enormous amount on my flickr set from that trip so I’ll just post a selection here and you can head to flickr for some more of the love.

… actually on second thoughts … there are so many that this is going to be a part one … yay!

sydneyside … new polaroids

Last month I was in my ex home of Sydney for a conference. I also went to the amazing Atget exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. I had brought my Polaroid sx70 and a pack of Impossible Project px600 poor pod film. Inspiration abounded and produced my first decent lot of Polaroids in months. It felt good.

PS I’m heading to Thailand today so you might not see me about for a bit. But I promise to come back with lots of lovely film shots from my holiday.

Q

from the archives … newcastle

These images are from many moons ago. A time when I still lived in Sydney and worked at Historic Houses Trust. I went up to research and photograph a story for the organisation’s magazine, Insites, of which I was the editor (and sometime photographer).

The story was on the Nissen Hut that the HHT had purchased at Belmont North for an adaptive reuse project and for which they held a design competition with the University of Newcastle architecture students. The huts were originally housing for British postwar migrants who had come out on assisted passage schemes. Today there are very few left and the HHT hoped to highlight their importance to our history and that they could be utilised for a functional home for contemporary occupants.

I shot the story with a DSLR that I hadn’t had for that long but had been using prolifically. My lovely friends Sarah & Luke made me welcome for the weekend and Luke, no mean  film photographer himself, lent me his delicious Voigtländer and gave me a roll of B&W film.

That was the beginning of a love affair … with film

where friends & strangers always meet …

Malacca is one of those places where you could not wander far without running into someone you know (or don’t yet know) and end up having a long chat that might turn into a meal and then a night out. Although I was only there for a short time, I met so many people and by the end was feeling right at home.

This last Malacca post features some of the places that we spent a lot of time with friends. There are other spots that I didn’t take photos of and I only just realise now … but I guess that’s something for next time.

return to malaysia … malacca again

More shots from Malaysia, January 2012. Malacca.

After editing and loading these images onto flickr, including heaps of Malacca’s Chinatown, I saw this post by the Cherry Blossom Girl with her images of Shanghai. Now  I NEED to go there to shoot. Imagine how awesome Shanghai would look on film!!!

This is a looooooooong post. Plus there are more photos on flickr.

return to malaysia lah!

Last night on the tram I heard two girls speaking a seemingly crazy mix of English and Malay, combining phrases, sentences and words from each with effortless and easy flow of conversation. It made me miss Malaysia so I went home and finished processing all the images from my December/January trip to Thailand and Malaysia.

After a crazy, joyous, blissed out three weeks in Thailand during Christmas & New Year, we headed back to Malaysia for a few days. to revisit friends in Malacca, pick up all the stuff we’d left there three weeks before. I was then jumping on a plane back to Australia and Chris had accomplished his visa run from Thailand before heading back there for another month.

Heading back there I got to completely indulge in taking photos of Malacca. I’d wanted to go crazy when we were there earlier in the trip but really I was too tired and just enjoying relaxing with Chris after six weeks apart so I didn’t shoot that much (by my standards!). So I relished the opportunity to go back and shoot more two rolls of film in this amazing place. It was about to be Lunar New too … we missed it by only a couple of days … but it was great to photograph all the decorations.

There are about 80 photos from this few days and I tried to whittle them down but I pretty much like all of them. So here’s part one, starting with Kuala Lumpur, a place I photographed extensively a couple of years ago and blogged about here and here early in 2011 (although I shamefully have a massive backlog of images from that trip as I shot a lot of digital).

So I eased off this time, saving my film for Malacca … maybe I’ll get those old KL images together too at some point?

at the beginning … malacca

First stop:

Melaka/Malacca, Malaysia

8 to 14 December 2011

A random selection of shots from our first visit to Malacca. Chris had been living here for a month and it’s such a beautiful place to wander, soak up the atmosphere and hang out with friends. I really enjoyed photographing it but didn’t go crazy – partly because I knew I was returning, partly because it was all so overwhelming in terms of being ripe for photography and partly because I just wanted to chill out …

You can see more images from this part of the journey on flickr

so there was that one time …

when i shot a whole roll of film for the melbourne silver mine totally awesome film swap project.

i spent the evening and morning with a good friend who was over from london and is one of a couple of people that i really credit for inspiring me to return to film photography. i shot the whole roll in one day, kind of like a day in the life of nicole. i felt inspired and excited by what i’d shot.

now i’ll let you in on a secret. normally with photographic projects and exhibitions i’m usually doing things at the last minute (like framing photos at 3 o’clock in the morning the night before) rather proud of myself that i’d done a project several weeks before the deadline.  i immediately developed it and it looked awesome on the negs! then i got a bit busy with uni and work (actually frantically mind blowingly busy) and after a couple of weeks realised i’d better get my butt into gear and scan and print the photos.

could i find the negs? no … nowhere. chris and i turned the house upside down, i flipped out and cried cause i was so stressed out i didn’t feel like i had time to shoot, develop, scan and print another whole roll.

but i did do it … and in the end both myself and the recipient did love the images.

fast forward three months. i’m back from thailand and malaysia. i’m centred, at peace, calm. and i’m looking through my dvd collection in my tv cabinet draws and glance up at the shelf in front of my face. a white box that my lab puts the negs in was sitting in front of me. about 20cm from where i’d last seen it all those months ago. it was there all along, in plain view.

i’ve now had them developed and i’ve scanned them. but you know what? i don’t think i like them as much as the roll i ended up giving to dee. it’s like the time i finished a uni assignment two weeks early and got the worst mark of any assignment ever. i don’t hate them, i like them but they just don’t have as much of the spark, the oomph, the passion of the second lot. i suppose i shouldn’t be dissing my own work but it’s just honest. maybe i’ll change my mind later though.

in any case here are a few and you can see images from both rolls on the flickr set or the other shots in the original post – if you’d like to compare and let me know what you think about all this.

what have i learnt from this? i do too much. i need to keep calm.  i shouldn’t freak out. i need shanti.

and most of all … never ever ever finish something three weeks early and then neglect to go back to it and check it again before the due date.

athough sometimes you need a little bit of panic to inspire you too!

ps i really really want to post my travel shots but i needed to finish this … and i have one more post before you can see the travel ones – see you tomorrow x

enjoy.

totally awesome …

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 …

la poesía – a story

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.