New Year Film Giveaway!

Thanks to to excellent Film Festival store on ebay I have 10 rolls of 35mm film to give away to one lucky milk&miel reader! What a great way to experiment with different films without having to buy multi-packs of each!

All you need to do to enter the giveaway is head over to the Film Festival ebay store, have a look around & then leave a comment on this blog post letting me know which one of their films you would most like to try along with your email address.

For an extra entry you can tweet:

I just entered the Film Festival giveaway at milkandmiel.com! @milkandmiel

and/or follow milkandmiel.blogspot.com on google reader or bloglovin!

This giveaway is open for all, including those who do not live in Australia!

Entries close at 9am UTC 4th January 2012.
(Giveaway is now closed... I reveal the winner soon!)

Good luck!

Diana F+ & Madison Square Park

    

   

Diana F+ (Lomography 400CN film)

Back in July (how can it have been all those months ago when it only feels like yesterday?), while I was in NYC I went to a couple of workshops at the Lomography Gallery Stores in the West Village and Gramercy. One of which was a Diana F+ workshop, my first time using the Diana F+. 

I fell hard & fast in love with the beautiful 120 soft focus. I knew pretty quickly that my days of 35mm exclusivity were drawing to a close, but I was so happy that I had the opportunity to get some 120 NYC mementos to take with me.

A couple of months after my return from NYC, I relented & brought myself a early birthday present of the Diana F+ Parisian on sale at urbanoutfitters.com. I am still very much in love & can't wait to spend the summer experimenting more with my new little 120 film plastic wonder.

x

The Colours of New York City & a New Year!

 

 

 

 

 

New York City July 2011 - Diana Mini 

(Various Film including Kodak Portra 400VC, Lomography X-Pro Chrome 100 & Lomography X-Pro 200)

It's hard to believe that it is Christmas in a week's time, and then a week after that it is New Year 2012!

2011 has been an amazing, exhausting, rewarding, trying, breathtaking & overwhelming year that I am thankful for beyond measure. Between finishing my study full-time, working full-time, travelling to the USA, being involved in my first photographic exhibition & online web comedy, I can hardly say that it has been an uneventful year.

Thank you to all of those people who have played their part in my life in 2011, may 2012 be bigger, better & beautiful!

x

Love in the shape of SX-70.

I have wanted to get myself a Polaroid SX-70 for quite a while now, but the unreliability of the new Impossible Project film & the cost (& expiry) of old 600 Polaroid film put me off.

While I was at the hanging night of the Unsensored 11 exhibition I got chatting to the other members of the Melbourne Silver Mine Inc. & then suddenly I was agreeing to buy a SX-70!

I must say I think I will continue to have a love/hate relationship with the new Impossible Project film, but there is hope for instant film!

Also see Elle's excellent Polaroids from NYC!

x

8th December 1980

8th December 1980, I was 21 days old.

Today is just an ordinary day, and 30 years ago it was just an ordinary day... until gun shots rang out at the Dakota building in New York City.

This day means many things to many people, its a day of sadness, a day of hope & a day of peace.

I would like to thank, from the bottom of my heart, the man who without even being on this earth & without knowing, changed lives throughout the world. John Winston Ono Lennon. Peace.

http://imaginepeace.com/

P.S. Apologies for the lack of posts over the past couple of weeks. My poor little MacBook died last week & I am still waiting for my new one to arrive. I will be back very soon, to announce a giveaway for all those analogue film lovers out there! x

UNSENSORED11: Exhibition of Analogue Photography

The Melbourne Silver Mine’s annual exhibition of analogue photography UNSENSORED is set to return to Collingwood Gallery on Friday November 25, 2011. And I am lucky enough to be showing three of my photographs in the exhibition!

UNSENSORED11 offers a glimpse into what film in its various formats can produce today. Once again the members of the Melbourne Silvermine Inc. are presenting a diverse range of images in both subject matter and tools/techniques. The exhibition includes images produced using traditional processes and techniques through to hybrid works that blur the line between film and digital.

If anyone is in Melbourne, the opening night is this Friday 25th November from 6pm.

UNSENSORED11
Collingwood Gallery
292 Smith Street Collingwood

Opening Night:
Friday 25th November 2011 from 6pm

Exhibition dates:
Saturday 26th November 2011 – Wednesday 7th December 2011

Gallery open daily:
10am – 6pm Saturday & Sunday
Midday – 6:30pm Monday – Friday

For more information see http://unsensored.net.

Shutterbugs - Episode 7 - Stakeout

L-CA (Kodak BW400CN)

Diana F+ (Lomography 400CN)

Diana F+ (Lomography Redscale 100CN)

Diana Mini (Kodak BW400CN that had gone through an airport scanner)

These are a few of the photographs that were taken as a part of my contribution to the online comedy web series, Shutterbugs. The theme for my episode was 'Stakeout', so I decided to stake out the streets of Fitzroy with my L-CA, Diana Mini, Diana F+ and La Sardinia (& loads of film!).

You can view the new episode of Shutterbugs (& more of my stakeout photos) over at the Shutterbugs.tv website. (also while you're there you can catch an interview with yours truly about what I love about photography. *blushes*)

I would like to thank all the wonderful people who have put so much hard work into producing Shutterbugs, you were a pleasure to work with & I hope we can do it again sometime.

x

Mel

It's always darkest before the dawn

LC-A (Kodak E100G)

Once upon a time, instead of creating photographic snapshots of the world. I took syntactic snapshots in the form of poetry. I would never regret my move into photography, but some days I look back on my poetic past and ponder over those lines of words I created.

Today I stumbled on one of my favorite poems, written, what seems like a lifetime ago. To forget about these small stanzas would be akin to forgetting your own child, as every creation has a parent. So here is a that little poem for you.

Guggenheim New York City - Diana Mini

     

   

Diana Mini (Kodak Portra 400 VC)

The beautiful majestic Frank Lloyd Wright Guggenheim Museum is in many ways both a cultural & architectural icon, but when you stand in it's shadow while glaring up at the long curves of it's facade it almost feels as if it breathes, deep heaving breaths into it's surroundings. While inside, I felt like I lost the concept of where I was a few times, due to it's shrine like ambience, you feel like you are within such a holy space that you no longer wonder what exists outside it's walls.

x Mel

(P.S. Those of you who read my blog through RSS feeds etc... I'm trialling a new blog layout... let me know what you think. Ta!)

More Fuji Instax in NYC

I returned home from New York City with almost 100 Fuji Instax photographs... other than a handful taken in Washington DC, they are perfect little glimpses in the streets of NYC. I love how Instax, like polaroids, give a raw sense of the moment the photographs were taken, as if a little piece of time is preserved in that little piece of emulsion. 

x Mel

On Top of the World in NYC

(Lomo LC-A with Kodak BW400CN)

Oh, the top of the Empire State building on a hot, smoggy summers day in Manhattan!

x Mel