February – Melbourne

So I had a long weekend to take a short break from the tedium of my job, go to Melbourne and table at the Festival of the Photocopier. Going to FOTP has become an annual trip, where I’ve been tabling other people’s zines as part of Canberra Zine Emporium, along with my own. My friend Sam travelled with me to help out for the day. I had to pack two suitcases, one for clothes and camera gear, and another smaller one for the zines.

Around this is generally exploring, seeing some art, the usual graffiti spots. I find Hosier Lane to a mess. Too popular for its own good, it’s often crowded with people trying to take a shot, and in between the protest art and the taggers, the lifecycle of a piece is very short lived. If you need to something that less busy, go about a block east and find Duckboard Pl. There’s less gawkers there.

The two cameras I brought with me, included the Fuji GFX and the Voigtlander rangefinder. The film photos I’ve written about in another post. For the GFX, I’ve got the 45mm, 30mm and a Canon 24mm T/S lens, which I have yet to write about. I’ll get to it soon. I did consider taking the Horseman Convertible, but after a weekend of carry two cameras photographing graffiti in inclement weather, I thought the better of it. I didn’t end up using the 30mm, since the TS lens covered pretty much everything I wanted. I also got to experiment with the selective focus or minature faking part of the lens. I didn’t even use the 30mm because of the versatility of the TS. It’s pretty good for architecture shots and taking in wide interior shots, like art galleries or installations.

Aside from that, a few futile shopping trips, lunch at the original Movida (which is in Hosier Lane), as second day at FOTP (but only seeing and not tabling), going out to do some night street photography in the slightly cooler evenings, and then spending, running out three rolls of film and taking more photos of the Tadao Ando designed ‘M Pavillion’ in the Queen Victoria Gardens, then what should be considered healthy. I completely spaced on getting a shot of the art deco McDonalds at night. Maybe that’s for the best for now.

Then it was time to hurriedly send the film back to the developers and wrangle two suitcases back to airport and back home.

The trip was fine. Did I get everything I wanted to get done? No. Eh. I’ll probably be back in Melbourne again soon. Also I thought I’d do a couple of updates this month, rather than a single drop at the end. I might be a habit in the coming weeks and months ahead.