The view from my suburb

Another old photo from the dusty film archive. One of the very few photos I’ve taken that doesn’t feature a particular person.

Neopan 100 / MG-1

Runners

 I took this a month or two back, when I still had the time, money and patience for film photography. I’m a crazy fanatic for reflections thanks to the ethereal graciousness of Saul Leiter’s photos and my interest in the abstract and bizarre stems from my general interest in the abstract and bizarre. The location adds to the hint of modernity too I suppose. How serendipitous. I’m sure Dupain would be pleased with my efforts here.

Neopan 100 / MG-1 

“Look how lonely he is” The pigeon said to the other.

Happy Mother’s Day

The innocent Laundromat across the road

 As my table exhaled a loud sigh of disgust, I had been brought to the attention that my mind had painted a self portrait amongst my drawing apparatus. My pencils lay stiff and lifeless; full of colour, but lacking any soul. No, they were were sprawled across quite spontaneously. Amongst the bunkers of books, papers and tissues are small debris; hiding away from my inevitable discarding. Two day old chips sit wide-mouthed talking shit like some old geezer who’s drunk on cynicism. Chords wrap and weave around boxes and suffocate under my pig skin wallet and tv remote. The aroma is twisted, mixed with burnt out caffeine, waxed pencils, oxidised potato chips and sterile lens cleaner. My pepsi is whispering something faint. Small crackles of laughter, perhaps woes of pain. He, like me, knows he’s had his days.

Will have more interesting visuals to update over the weekend. 

Busy Bees

Imagine a cloud of forgotten futures and recycle them amongst baskets of smelly nostalgia-ridden sweaters given to youby your grandmother for your 21st birthday. You’ve bloated your coffee with milk and it suddenly turns into a hopeless pale white. You slap it into the sink and it blushes a furious pink as it drips down the sink hole. You wash your empty hands and return them to the draw, tainted by the smell of a horrible morning.  You pass on breakfast and advance straight to Go. You reach for your keys and remember your hands are in the draw. Your tie begins to slither and strangle your collar, turning it’s face from white to blue. Suddenly you regret not wearing that nostalgic-smelling sweater given to you by your grandmother for your 21st birthday, instead of a snake.

Obviously busy doing nothing, hence nothing busy to post.

Empire
Tkkdout 

Early Morning Leaps Of Faith

I got an old roll of film dev./scanned from Rusk a few days back. It had been sitting around for a month or so now and I forgot I took half them. There are a fair few good snaps. This is the first shot on the roll, as well as the first good one.

Every morning I make the monotonous trek to the train station and each morning holds very little surprise or births fruits of imagination, but every so often I am spoon fed some great elements. It was raining domestic house pets and I figured I had some time on my hands. This is an essential crossing to get to the train station, so I waited around watching for a good moment (as well as enjoying the humour of their confusion and struggle). I suppose it’s a cheap knock-off of Cariter-Bresson’s infamous shot. His is much better and more interesting. I’m surprised this guy made it. Much applause.

Neopan 100(?) / MG-1 

The Drug Bench

I recently went through my archive of photos on my hard drive looking for shots to print out for friends. This one was quite nice, I thought it was cute so I decided to give it to miss Ggibbings as a surprise gift, seeing as she was going away for awhile.

At first I thought the girl’s worried face and the boys obnoxious snare amongst the trashy wall covered in tags and bad advertisements was all there was to this photo, but I was diminishing some bigger details. The guy at the printers asked me where I shot this and then told me this was actually a ‘drug bench’ where deals would go down. He told me drugs were hidden there and we both tried to look and see if i had captured any. None, thankfully. He said that fact gave ‘gravity’ to the photo and indeed it did. Looks like I didn’t give it the true credit it deserved.

Not a bad gift hey? It’s hanging as an A3 in her hallway, framed and all.

Walking The Wire

I heard some fella named Curiosity killed your cat…

Street Rats And Alley Cats

Three rebellious boys with attitudes that exceed their height, exploring and re-imagining this jungle of a city. Wayne, the boy trailing behind. Though not the toughest of the gang, what he lacks in brawn he makes up for in brains. I heard he cracked into the school’s internet firewall and played that Rickroll video on loop throughout all the computers in the school.

Next is Ulrich, the bigger fella who is following behind the leader, probably distracted by the succession of one foot following the other. A German exchange student who doesn’t have it all up stairs, but that doesn’t matter too much when you make a pretty mean ‘fist schnitzel’. A friend of Ulrich’s friend’s counsin’s uncle’s friend’s son told me Ulrich once threw a kid from one side of the room to the other. That room was the school gym.

Lastly, leading the gang with an undeniable confidence and sinister presence is Gotti. This kid was smoother than Sinatra, but held authority like John Corleone. He knew he was the alpha dog and he let people know. There was a rumour going around about how Gotti somehow gained full control over the Pixie Dust deals throughout the school and when the school tried to bring the matter to the surface, Gotti spent no longer than 5 minutes in the principal’s office before the whole thing was swept under the rug.

That’s what I hear anyway.

Ilford Delta 400 / MG-1

With Or Without Faith

I’ve always danced around the topic of faith and religion lightly. When I was a silly(er) little kid I always use to lose my things. My mum says “If your head wasn’t connected to your body you’d lose that too.” So, whenever I did lose something, I would stress out like a timid gazelle at the watering hole at lunch time in Africa. I’d look everywhere. When worst came to worst I prayed. I prayed on my knees, eyes glistening with the beginnings of a tantrum monsoon, that I could find my $10 dollars for school or my favorite toy. Pretty pathetic excuse to call upon the help of a higher power hey? I was really clumsy with my belongings. Typical me.

Ilford Delta 400 / MG-1

Old Dogs

My mind was elsewhere. In the past, future and present all at once but at different times. I was on my way to make amends for unforeseeable events earlier that day, but I was in an odd mind state. Nothing ever syncs consistently during these cerebral strolls and I find myself leaping from one topic to another effortlessly. Being happily lost in my own mind, all the while, traveling on a strict route to a specific destination. Being in two places at once I suppose. Maybe. ‘Spose not.

When I saw this shot the dog was sitting in the back seat at the time. I was more concerned about the issues awaiting me once I got off the tram and merely observed half-heartedly as the dog meandered it’s head through the gap near the driver. I sat and watched for a few seconds, thoughts still looming in another world. The next minute I found myself elbows deep in my bag blindly scouring for my camera. I rose the small lightbox to my eye level and then…*click*

The picture had made itself. It was almost in one fluid motion. How strange. As soon as that shutter closed I buried my friend back into the damp soil of my bag and picked up from where I left off; staring aimlessly out the hazy window, continuing to mentally write out fictional scenarios of a time I’ve yet to welcome and rewriting stories of the past on fragile pages of thought.

It’s 1am and it’s quite obvious the ‘after midnight’ effect is setting in. My writing has become too reflective and personal. I’m quite tired. The degree of my fatigue couldn’t possibly be measured with a numeral made from fingers. Good lord, that was horrible. I promise i’ll upload some sketches tomorrow.

Goodnight Internetians

Kodak 200 / Oly

It’s A Dog’s Life

This is my favorite photo up to date and this was long before I began taking photography seriously. This is an incredibly old photo taken on a crappy little ‘Kodak Easyshare m835’. Sadly, I don’t have the original, so this is an old copy I saved onto my hard drive a year or two ago. I took it late 2010 I believe. I was walking to the god-knows-what convinience store on my way to who-knows-wheresville. I walked past this station wagon occupied by three large dogs. Each had nestled into the seats of the car while the owner was away and to see them in such a comfortable state, you could forgive me for mistaking them for a family of people.

It was a hot day if I can remember and it’s obvious the dogs aren’t too happy about it either. Hell, the dog on the right in the passenger seat looks miserable as fuck. The wife is obviously frustrated with her husband for taking her to the same old annual holiday destination; some crappy old iconic landmark or a 2-star accommodation home in a small town where the tv only picks up 2 of the 5 major channels(which happen to be the shit ones) and the complimentary breakfast tastes like sawdust. The man is silent for the whole trip, hands firmly gripping the wheel, eyes staring past the lines made by the road kissing the horizon line. Thoughts of cynicism race through his mind as he battles his sexual frustrations with his spiteful wife. Both on the verge of divorce, hanging by a thread, awaiting for one another to say it first. Alas, they are tied down together by the failing high school idiot sitting in the back with his head out the window. He’s not exactly a kid genius and hopeless with anything involving physical labour. He loves these holidays. It must be something in the air brushing harshly against his face, dragging his tongue across the side of his cheek that must paint a smile on that delinquent. Or perhaps the wind is pushing up on his cheeks so much he has no real control over his facial muscles. A crumbling family riding along a crumbling road in a crumbly old stationwagon on their way to some crumbly old memory of a holiday. Fan-fucking-tastic.