When the wind changes...

Polaroid SX-70 (Gold Frame Colour Shade 680)

Relocation. Most of us relocate at some point in their lives. I have several times. Through all the little Queensland towns I lived in as a child to high school in Toowoomba, moving to Brisbane after graduation, moving to London, moving to Melbourne. There is so much to be gained from experiencing new surroundings & cultures, but sometimes you do feel like you lose many things also.

After I returned from London and moved to Melbourne, I felt liberated & loved discovering a new city. I still love Melbourne, more than ever, but now so many of my friends have moved back from overseas & interstate to Brisbane, I feel like I am missing out. As much as I am in Brisbane quite regularly, a few times per year, it is barely enough time to see all my friends properly, so I have started just making small trips to see just one or two friends (& usually, my parents).

I know a few of my friends wish I would move back to Brisbane & I understand why, but at the same time, I feel like I've spent the last 6 years of my life uprooting myself from location to location. It's time I put a few roots down & I must say that's one of the hardest things to do when you're out of practice. I can't even commit to a mobile phone contract, let alone anything else.

A couple of my good Melbourne friends are moving to Sydney and Tasmania, one is moving back to her her home city & the other is moving for work. They are both moving for very good reasons... but I just don't feel like I have a "very good reason" to be moving away from Melbourne, I've only been here for a little over 2 years & it is only now, starting to feel like home.

If only ruby slippers were real, then all my amazing friends would be but a couple of heel clicks away.

x Mel

NYC Guest Post: Liam White

Hasselblad 500 with Kodak Portra 160

"It was cold in NYC when I was there; cold and weakly sunny. Like Hobart, the city I called home for eight years, the wind cut right through me, carrying with it the promise of snow. I’d visited at the beginning of November; two days after visiting Philadephia, and a day after 24 hours in Washington DC that seemed to whir by. My time in the USA came at the tail end of a month in Mexico, where I’d gone on holiday by myself for the first time in my life, at 30 years of age.

The thing I was struck with about New York City, and still can’t get over, is its size. Never mind the scale of the States in general. US blocks bloat for hundreds of metres, yards are huge, pickups are limousine-length, and cities are purpose-built for auto-commuting.

But it was NYC, more than anywhere I visited in my short time stateside, that really messed with my sense of scale. Manhattan itself is bewilderingly huge, with hulking yet elegant offices, glittering department stores, teetering high-rises and the fading grandeur of city apartments stacked neatly row upon row, as far as I could see."

Hasselblad 500 with Kodak Portra 160

"I stayed in Williamsburg, that of vegan restaurants, bagel bars, and expensive thrift stores, renting a lonely apartment just off Bedford Avenue. Each day as I got off the L train at Union Square I involuntarily looked up, trying not to gape openly at the scale of the city. I couldn’t help myself. New York made me feel like a kid again, trailing doggedly behind my parents, feeling ant-high. I walked block after block, past bagel sellers, kebab vans, stalled traffic, until my legs and back ached, and my hands had numbed from the cold. I took the lift to the Empire State Building's 86th floor. I met a friend on his last night in the city and went to a hockey game, drinking beer and crushing whole peanuts. I walked through Broadway, Central Park, the East Village, the Flatiron District, walked, walked, walked, Each day I would take the train home, open a beer, and distractedly watch English football highlights on cable before heading out for food. I was tired, a little mopey, and overwhelmed in a city I felt like I needed a month to understand. Four days weren't enough. I wanted more.

Although there was life everywhere, NYC seemed to me austere, reserved, contained, serious. More of a compartmentalised city, even more than the self-awareness of Washington DC and the artsy fun of Philly. I expected New Yorkers to be brash; instead, they were unfailingly polite. Even as they asked me what part of England I came from (Melbourne, Australia), they exuded warmth. It was almost disappointing. I wanted some ‘tude. I hadn’t even been called an asshole yet."

Spinner 360°

"On my way to JFK Airport to take my plane back to Australia, I left my apartment, key hanging inside the now-locked door, with a route mapped out to the airport. Easy. The thing that I didn’t count on, though, was the New York Marathon being on that day (who reads the newspaper on holiday?), and Bedford Avenue being closed to both car and pedestrian traffic. Shit.

I needed to get that train, and the only entrance to the subway was on the other side of the road. There were no gaps in the runners. Five, a dozen would pass at any one time. There was no chance of crossing without bumping into at least one marathon runner. Besides, the cops were right there. After fifteen minutes trying to plot alternate routes, and finding that every subway entrance within walking distance was on the other side of Bedford, I asked a cop how I could get to the subway. After cheerfully telling me I couldn't get there, and seeing the look on my face, I asked him if there was any way I could get to the beckoning subway entrance, not ten metres from the other side of the road.

“Just run across,” he said.

“Uh…,” I said, eyeing the unending stream of thousands of focused-looking runners coming towards me, with no gap in sight.

“Uh…, I’ve got my pack. I don’t think…”

“Sure ya can,” he grinned, and firmly shoved me out into the middle of the street, where I flailed my way across to the other side, pissed-off runners streaming either side of my turtle-like movements, my ridiculous backpack turned leaden shell.

“Aw, c’mawn!” came the cry from a sweating, frowning runner as she dodged my lumbering gait. I apologised, but smiled a little smile to myself as I went down the stairs to the subway. I’d gotten my ‘tude."

Liam White

flickr www blog

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

NYC - Subway Yellows & Reds

 
 

LC-A (Lomography Slide X-Pro 200, Redscale XR 50-100 & Kodak BW400CN)

One of my favourite parts of New York City was the Subway.... & thanks to my LC-A (& her handy light meter) I managed to capture some of my favorite parts... including the rush of a train arriving & departing the station... the yellow green light of the platforms...  (& almost) the sticky humidity of the hot days of July.

I loved people watching on the Subway... such a different variety of people all on the same train carriage... the whole time I tried to not look like a tourist... a art student who is into analogue cameras - yes! Tourist - no!

Some days/nights I was dressed to the nines... other days/nights in jeans & a t-shirt... from 23st to Union Square... from Times Square to Astor Place... always with a camera ready.

Heart NYC, heart the Subway!

x Mel

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

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