I queued some appropriate songs. The landscape sped past. Moving onto some side roads, we pulled the top down and enjoyed feeling like ... somebody else.

We had a quiet lunch in a popular country town and, returning home, felt like the world had taken on a slightly different quality – just for a day.

I hadn’t considered just how different it would feel, though, and I wonder how we might experiment like this in other ways to bring other little sparks of joy into our life.

#Travel #RoadTrip #Photography #Drive #Moments

This was a post from Cos.

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One morning, I spotted somebody's Christmas remnants and heard Fleetwood Mac leaking out of a popular cafe before resting in a park while a pair of masked lapwings patrolled the grass near me. Another morning, a wafting smell of food grabbed me as I crossed a railway bridge, and just nearby, a friendly cat talked to me from somebody's garden. The cat had so much to tell me, in fact, that it jumped the fence into a neighbouring garden to continue meowing to me as I walked away.

The streets remained quiet, though, for which I'm grateful. My restless mind craves a chance to breathe, to listen, to explore without the stress of a crowd. Sometimes, I'm revisiting memories; Sometimes I'm thinking about conversations I need to have, and it's all part of a never-ending battle to Remain Present. Music helps, and often it's the soundscapes that really help.

#walks #photography #weekends #wandering #restlessness #music #ambient

This was a post from Cos.

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I did the necessary registering and certification stuff, which wasn't too onerous for Australia, but moreso in Thailand when I took it along just in case I'd be able to use it. The 150m limit (generally, around where I am) doesn't feel like an issue – I've never gone higher than 100m so far, and still had pleasant-enough results. It feels like I have to go through that “the first 10,000 photos are going to be terrible” process all over again in order to feel like it's part of my overall mission.

I love the vistas I see from travellers like Yan, but accept that I probably won't be travelling that much or that far. There've been occasional moments, though:

It'll be a slow burn, this one. The hard part is finding a diversity of times and places to practice – it's much less immediate than the camera in my hand, but the payback is the opportunities that I'm hoping it will open up. All said, I'm grateful to my prior employer for the 10-year tenure gift card that prompted me to consider this at the start of last year.

(click through to see the original photos in their full panoramic glory, BTW – they're getting squeezed in this blog)

#drone #photography #learning #relearning #confusion

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The sun rose early, and I could explore the quiet streets, some quieter than others.

I’d watch the streets fill with people making their way to work, to school, to anything...

...while I floated in a temporary void, needing to be nowhere in particular, enjoying the New Ordinary.

#japan #travel #photography #film #hipstamatic #osaka #street

[ Photo notes: the 3x black & white ones are from the same roll in my trusty Olympus XA2, the square one’s from Hipstamatic on my iPhone ]

This was a post from Cos.

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My wife found it odd. I couldn't really explain how songs seep into your bones over time, but it related to how I needed to experience a more random nature of Tokyo beyond other people's top-N lists.

We could've seen anything at all here, and it would've helped a few more connections form somewhere in my brain. That's what I'm looking for – the joy of less-conscious discoveries. After all, it's up to you what the image means.

#music #travel #japan #tokyo #photography #film #digital #memories

[ photo notes: the first one's on film from my Olympus XA2, the other two are from my Leica M Typ-240 with an old Canon 35mm M39/LTM lens ]

This was a post from Cos.

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The entryway hasn't changed – from 2005:

One strong memory is from when I bought my very first brand new film camera, in 2008 – a Bessa R4A with a 28mm lens – and my first photos with it were taken there after running into a couple of Flickr friends:

I since took other cameras there (2010):

But also took other lovely portraits outside other, nearby cafés – this one on Smith St in 2013:

In the process of digging, some other good café window views came up:

• from the northern edge of Thornbury in 2010:

• from South Preston with a pinhole camera in 2010:

• from Fremantle in 2009:

• from a long-gone café in Xi'an in 2013:

• and from South Preston in 2017:

Nothing beats the window at Captains of Industry in the heart of the city, though – I have countless photos of it:

#FilmPhotography

[ This is a #NowAndThen post, where I try to dig through my #photography #archives ]

This was a post from Cos.

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I visited Lăng Minh Mạng, the mausoleum for Emperor Minh Mạng:

...and made it to a few others – Chùa Thiên Mụ overlooking the Perfume River, Lăng Khải Định a little out of town, and so on. The heat was getting to me by the time I reached the Imperial City, so I only explored a small part of it.

I reckon ~90% of the people I saw wearing an Áo dài in Vietnam were doing it for photographic purposes, with a guy juggling camera gear hovering nearby (the male gaze, and all that). Wandering around in Lăng Tự Đức, the tomb of Emperor Tự Đức – “the last Vietnamese monarch to rule independently” (ref) – I saw this:

Just as I'd arrived in Huế, an old colleague asked if I was going to visit Chùa Từ Hiếu (the Từ Hiếu Pagoda), where Thích Nhất Hạnh had started his life as a monk and recently returned to live out his final days before passing away earlier in the year. I managed to add it to my driver's itinerary. Having racked up so many miles in temples in Thailand, I'd be lying if I tried to say this one felt particularly “special” somehow – every temple has something – but it was certainly peaceful. Thai temples always seem to have an underlying buzz of activity that seemed absent here, at least this morning.

Perhaps the most pleasant time I had was walking the long way around the lake in Lăng Minh Mạng, hearing birds and distant noises as I caught shade from the trees and trudged through the grass. There weren't any people nearby, and it was almost like time stopped. I enjoyed it so much I don't have any photos from it, but it wasn't too far off this:

(what was I listening to while assembling this? you'll never guess).

#travel #Vietnam #Photography #FilmPhotography #history #temples #pagodas #mausoleums

This was a post from Cos.

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I'm really happy with this quick phone shot – it makes a lot of the recent #walks feel worthwhile.

#photography #windows #waves #lines #shadows

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I took a few film shots this morning, and only one phone shot:

What have I got from prior years, around this time? Five years ago I was in #Thailand:

Ten years ago, I was in #Fitzroy looking at somebody's photography exhibition, in the middle of a haze of confusion around the new life I was trying to settle into:

Fifteen years ago, I'd flown to #Adelaide to help setup someone's WAN connection in their new office, and unexpectedly needing to stay overnight:

Twenty years ago I was watching Grand Salvo play:

#FilmPhotography #street #memories #music

[ This is a #NowAndThen post, where I try to dig through my #photography archives ]

This was a post from Cos.

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My lovely collection of film cameras, no matter how often I dipped into them to try a different one on each short trip, spent their time at the bottom of my bag while I walked and moped and struggled to find beauty in the everyday. When I did find a shot, my phone was just too convenient to avoid. Even when I recently travelled overseas – at last! – hoping for some inspiration in other places, the film shots didn’t come back looking that great, especially compared to the phone ones.

It feels like I’ve finally had a breakthrough, though, with a bunch of “keepers” from my first roll of JapanCameraHunter Streetpan 400. It’s enough to make me love black & white film again:

Wandering back in my archives, though, tells a slightly different story – there’s been a few more (film) winners in the last two years than I remembered, both from my much-loved Leica M6:

...and the medium format point-and-shoot Fuji GA645i that still occasionally surprises me after a decade:

But this is why I should be spending more time with my archives – it’s a great way to remind myself of what I have done, and helps challenge the devil on my shoulder that keeps telling me “meh. You’ve lost interest. It’s time to get rid of all that gear.”

#photography #travel #archives #film

This was a post from Cos.

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