NYC - Instant Love

 

 

 

 

Fuji Instax Mini 25

So New York February has come to a (late) close, but I would like to thank all of those who were guest bloggers & for all the lovely comments over the last few weeks. This final NYC post is dedicated to the Fuji Instax Mini 25 & it's instant love of the city. I simply loved using this little camera to create pocket sized memories of NYC & I'm sure that there is something that shines through these photos which feels truly authentic & real.

milk&miel blog also hit 20,000 views today, so thank you all muchly for all the link love & for reading my dear little blog.

x Mel

NYC Guest Post: Elle - Everything Reminds Me of You

Like many girls, when I was in my late teens and early twenties, I dreamed about New York. It was literally a world away from the small town where I grew up in New Zealand. My fantasies were fuelled by classic movies like Breakfast at Tiffany’s and An Affair to Remember and television shows like Sex and the City and Friends. I spent years in love with a city I’d never visited. I told myself this was where I belonged.

Since I moved to London in 2006, New York is suddenly much more accessible. Just a six or seven hour flight. I feel extremely lucky that my job now takes me there a few times a year. I have just returned home yesterday from such a visit. I added on an extra day and half on to my trip to explore further, and of course, to take photos. The photos in this post were shot using my Polaroid Spectra camera with expired Polaroid Image Softtone film and my Polaroid SX-70 camera with Impossible PX70 Colour Shade film.

I spent an amazing day in Brooklyn – made even more enjoyable by the extremely well-curated City Scout guide produced by the lovely ladies behind the Studio Sweet Studio blog. I loved visiting the places they recommended. I like it when you can visit cities and see them through the eyes of the people who live there, rather than as a tourist.

Now that I’ve been to New York quite a few times…. I’m as much in love with the city as I always was. Possibly more. You see, newspaper columnists don't really have million dollar wardrobes and waitresses don't really live in huge lofts. As my early girl crush Carrie Bradshaw put it "No one has breakfast at Tiffany's, and no one has affairs to remember. Instead, we have breakfast at 7am and affairs we try to forget as quickly as possible." Sometimes, real life is even better.

Elle x
Everything Reminds Me of You

NYC - City of Sky

 
 

Diana Mini (Lomography Chrome 100 X-Pro & Kodak 400VC)

In a city filled high to the brim with skyscrapers, it was amazing to find that the sky makes a beautiful & stark emergence in New York. The unmovable landscape of crystal blue that peaks & flows like a river through the jungle of steel & concrete. Over central park, the sky hung like a horizontal picture frame, skirted by the canopy of trees, reflected in the spanse of crystal water.

This sky was a hot midsummer sky, the occasional cloud dotted here & there... when the smog would lift on those heat-filled days & the ozone would disperse. A cool blue of high sky would beckon the lights of the sleepless city to waken the night.

x Mel

milk&miel presents: New York City February!

View all the NYC February posts here!

This month to celebrate the fact I still have loads of photos from my trip to New York City last year, I am throwing the milk&miel doors open to all those analogue lovers of the big apple!

There will be guest posts from some of my favourite bloggers, lots of never-blogged-before photos from my analogue archives & generally a whole lot of love for the city that never sleeps.

If you want to get involved, then just send me your favourite analogue photo of NYC, with details about what camera & film you used, along with what you love the most about the city. 

New York is love. 

x Mel

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

New York in Shades of Grey

Here is a small sample of my first self-scanned negatives... I think I have a fair way to go before I perfect my scanning technique. These scans were happy accidents, they are actually cross-processed slide film negatives, but I scanned them in black & white by accident, then I scanned them properly & I still preferred them in shades of grey.

I anyone has any scanning tips, please let me know... especially for scanning longer than usual frames.

x Mel

Brooklyn Bridge and LC-A

 

The Brooklyn Bridge

(LC-A with Lomography x-pro chrome film)

I fell very much in love with the Brooklyn Bridge, as you know & I fell even deeper in love after seeing the results of my LC-A shots... I am now convinced that my LC-A cannot take a bad photograph!

I still have so many films to process and scan... each one is such a lovely surprise! 

x Mel

Happy World Photography Day!

The Brooklyn Bridge on a HOT New York City day

(Diana Mini with Kodak Portra 400 VC)

When I first arrived in New York, one of my first impulses was to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. It wasn't until my last couple of days in the city that I had the time to walk across it's beautiful expanse. However, I didn't predict that it was going to be one of the hottest New York days in the last 10 years... lets just say that all those bagels, Shake Shack shakes & burgers were burnt off quite quickly!

To celebrate World Photography Day I am doing a spring clean of my cameras, film and negatives... what are you doing?

x Mel