something old, something new

This is definitely something old. In fact, it's almost a whole year old. But I still love it for several reasons:

1. It's from my first ever Holga roll, and kind of signals my return to interesting (and film) photos. I actually thought it was a colour film so I went around Sydney taking all these photos with this fabulous colour in mind. When I got the film back and realised it was black and white I was terribly disappointed, but after spending a bit of time with the prints I realised they were kind of beautiful anyway.

2. I hate tourist shots. We're all guilty of them, probably because we want to capture the emotion we feel when we see famous landmarks while also proving to people that we are well-travelled, but that doesn't change the fact that most of them look exactly like the publicity shots we've all seen a million times (only ours look decidedly worse). I was thrilled that I managed to get two of the most photographed icons of Sydney/Australia to look different.

3. There's a lot of atmosphere in there, at once old-fashioned and also kind of haunted. There are lots of potential stories that come to mind when I look at it.

4. It was my first (and probably still one of my most successful) double exposures.

5. I love Sydney. This was from my first trip there and I was captivated. So, you know, it's sentimental.


My beautiful old friend Pete has many endearing qualities, most of which are captured in this photo. We were between drinking holes one night, temporarily stopped off at someone's house, when Pete spotted this guitar in an unknown bedroom and picked it up to kill time. It was all very spur-of-the-moment and laid back, just like him.

This was the first time I realised that straight colour film could produce some beautiful photos (after a series of very underwhelming trials). Thank you, yellow flash.


This is something new, in that it's from my most recent film. Also new is the realisation that different brands of slide film accentuate different colours; this one really brings out the reds (unlike the blue-heavy slide film I have used in the past). I do love this building, situated in the street and suburb in which I now reside. There isn't really much more to say on this one - except that my very law-abiding housemate broke-and-entered with me to witness the taking of the shot, and was subsequently disappointed with the finished result. Oh well.

So I guess I should also say hello!, this is my first blog post on my first blog. I don't really know what I'm doing but I'll keep doing it for at least a little while longer (until my enthusiasm wanes). At this point, though, I am very much looking forward to regularly sharing my images, some old and some new, with a potentially unknown cyber audience. Hooray!