Well, I’m off to go camping in another country with a bunch of strangers from the internet! Ok, it’s not really as creepy as it sounds. It all started with a self portrait application, submitted to Pictory, to be a part of the second year of Phoot Camp. It was an amazing opportunity to hang out, collaborate and meet with inspiring creatives and photographers. So I’m in Los Angeles right now, in a few hours I’ll head out to stay at a mansion with 27 photographers for a weekend of fun. That’s pretty much all I really know for now, I’ll update in a few days!
Following a few busy months since my last BNE project shoot, I met up with John Davis a guitar repairer based up in Red Hill in Brisbane. For those unfamiliar with the project, every person selected for the BNE project is chosen by a previous BNE participant. John Davis was selected as the inspiration of one of my early BNE portraits, Dan from Dan and Dilmah.
I caught up with John a few days before the shoot at his store and spent a few hours chatting and observing, amongst a constant influx of passionate guitar lovers frequenting the store. One of the things I noticed about John is that when he was working, he was constantly in motion. Whether it was chatting to three customers at once or restringing a guitar, the man is always on the move! I came back a few days later and despite having scheduled the shoot after hours to avoid interruptions, John was still juggling customers and fixing guitars into the night. This passion for his work, people, and guitars is something I really wanted to capture with this shoot.
Earlier in the year, as part of my BNE Project, I did a shoot with Joshua Levi (Brisbane photographer, gallery owner, entrepreneur), while he was working on the construction of a second new gallery. I had always intended on doing the second portrait for the series back in the same space once it had been finished, but also really wanted to somehow incorporate more of Josh as well as his trademark bathtub at his main gallery. Residing mainly at Joshua Levi Galleries in Woolloongabba, the vintage clawfoot tub had been used in helping to promote his past shows as well as in his latest combined photographic exhibition “Coke Can Spirituality” where it even found itself on the back of a ute in front of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s electoral office.
Like most of my shoots, we threw around a couple of ideas and tried out a few different approaches before deciding how we wanted in the shot to look and everything to work. After rehanging and rearranging all of Josh’s own “bathtub” photography a few times and having to refill the tub (and clean up) after a few explosive splashes, we finally ended up with what we wanted.
As I did with the previous shoot, I also shot a time lapse video:
The first portrait and timelapse of Josh from the BNE project series photo shoots:
I recently started a new project called VonVintage. Put simply, it stands for Vintage on Vintage, which is exactly how I intend to shoot it: Vintage content, shot on a Vintage camera. Through it’s use in preservation and storytelling, photography can be a powerful tool. Coupled with an artistic approach, I hope the project can help bring back some value to beautiful vintage design and the keepsakes of the past.
Thanks to the generosity of friends and strangers, I now have 7 vintage cameras which I’m running film through. If you know anyone that collects film cameras, or would like me to put a roll of film through an old camera you have, please get in touch!
You can see my “scrapbook” of related imagery on the VonVintage website here: http://www.vonvintage.com/scrapbook/,
follow the feed of images on tumblr
or if you are interested in the progress of the project, be sure to follow @VonVintage on Twitter.
Here are some shots from my last roll. Shot on an old Nikomat FT2.
I love visiting Japan and I specifically love the city of Tokyo, where I spent a lot of my childhood. Although I’ll often spend a lot of time catching up with family, and this time, actually spent a lot of it catching up on work, I made some time to take some photos around town. I’m fascinated with documenting the lifestyle, and history of the country, all within such a rapidly evolving culture. I’ve chosen a few images to share, from ‘Old Japan’ to the faces of Shibuya, one of Tokyo’s famous shopping and entertainment districts.
Pecha Kucha Night – Volume 10 was held as part of the Brisbane Ideas Festival on the 27th of March. I had the opportunity to present at the event and speak about some of my work and projects.
Pecha Kucha is an event where any designer, artist, architect, interactive media or alike, are given the soapbox to present their designs, thoughts and ideas. Each presenter gets 20 seconds to showcase and talk about 20 slides of their work.
This is a video of my presentation. Lots of “umms”, I know, but with a packed crowd of 300 in the room, 200 on the 2nd floor balcony, and another few hundred on the ground floor watching the live feed, I was pretty nervous!
As part of the “second degree” of the BNE project, a photographic project looking at people’s inspirations, chosen by the subjects of the photos themselves, I did a shoot for Matt Rabbidge from 9 Lives. Matt was chosen as the inspiration of Nick Crocker, one of the first portraits of the series as his inspiration for the project. Trying to capture someone you don’t really know well in a portrait can be quite a challenge, but I suppose that’s what makes the project fun to shoot. One of the inspiring stories behind Matt is the collaborative effort with his friends to get the 9 lives gallery off the ground. With this in mind, we chose the gallery as the perfect location, and invited everyone along for the shoot. We started off with a few solo portraits at the front of the gallery and set up a second camera to record a time lapse of the shoot. I later found that my favourite shot was one off of the second camera. The shot that really captured Matt was one of him sitting, looking into the main room of the gallery, as I set up for the shoot. I couldn’t have hoped to capture a better moment without even holding the camera! Check out the resulting shots from he shoot as well as the time lapse video:
For the last few weeks I’ve been working on a number of photo shoots for my ongoing photographic project entitled BNE. As part of the project I take a look at the inspiring people that surround me and tell their story through two images. I recently photographed Josh Collings, from Joshua Levi Galleries, at his new space at the Bell Brother’s building in the Fortitude Valley, Brisbane. After seeing what Josh recently did with an old antique shop, transforming it into a unique space for artists and musicians, it seemed fitting that I shoot his portrait at his new gallery whilst still under construction. The second image of the series is scheduled to be shot after his opening in a few weeks time. As part of the project, I ask each of my inspirations to select the next inspiration in the series, playing on the idea of six degrees of separation. You can read more about the project here:
I was recently interviewed and featured on a great website called Australian Edge – “Showcasing Australian Creativity”. You can have a read of the interview here.
I love sites like this and it features some great work, make sure you check them out!
Australian Edge is a collective helping promote Australian creativity in all forms. Australia has an exciting and vibrant creative scene. Australian designers, artists and industry professionals through their contributions have had a strong influence locally as well as globally in their related fields.
Joshua Levi Galleries Brisbane – The River City Exhibition
Artwork by Brisbane Artist Kylie Farrelly - The River City
In a month of events that celebrate the city of Brisbane and all it’s offerings…Brisbane Riverfestival, Brisbane City Romp, Bridge to Brisbaneand theValley Fiesta to name a few, Joshua Levi Galleries will be joining in the festivities with their next big showing of Brisbane themed work. Featuring the colourful works of Kylie Farrelly, appropriately titled The River City, the opening will be accompanied by the sounds of Brisbane band Dan and Dilmah. As part of the exhibition, I will be showing portraits of inspirational Brisbanites from my recent BNE project! Joshua Levi himself will also have a range of stunning Brisbane imagery on the walls and in addition, two more of Brisbane’s talented photographers, Darren Tuer and Dustin Osbourne will also be showing their city scapes. The River City and the photography of Brisbane will be showing at Joshua Levi Galleries from 4th – 30th September.
