watch out for that sprocket hole!

Green Bridge, originally uploaded by jayavant.

Something you don't see every day - I jammed a 35mm film into a 120 camera and the resultant images went all the way to the edge of the film. This photo was shot from the hip and shows two folks jogging across the new "green" bridge in Brisbane. The bridge carries people on foot, bikes and buses only.

The camera was a Holga - a cheap Chinese 120-roll camera with fixed shutter-speed and aperture and a plastic lens. It has a curious soft focus and interesting colour rendition.

To fit a 35mm film into the Holga I had to make a few temporary modifications to the camera. Click on the pictures to go to my flickr site where further explanation can be found.



I am wondering about the possibilities of using 35mm film in other types of camera too. A mosaic of pieces of 35mm film could be held somehow within a 4x5 sheet film holder....

Brisbane - found film

Brisbane - found film, originally uploaded by jayavant.

Found films are fascinating. this is my fourth. I am so interested in found films now I am starting to look for them. In second-hand shops sometimes you will find and old camera with a film still in it. I have found one like that.

In this case however, I found a negative file among my negatives, containing photos that I did not take.

In the 70's, some of my friends used my darkroom occassionally and one of them must have left these negs behind. So I have scanned them and they are a fascinating collection of street scenes in Brisbane taken it seems in 1978.

Many of the photos show a crowd of people waiting to watch a parade of young Aussie athletes returning from the Commonwealth Games. Some show scenes of Brisbane streets which take me back to Brisbane's quieter country-town-like days. This was during the Bjelke-Petersen years, when we used to call New South Wales "the socialist south". There are even cigarette ads on buses - they became illegal long ago now.

Seems like a good time though looking at these pictures. Brisbane was not yet Brisvegas. Old codgers like this walking along Queens Street (before it became a pedestrian mall) in his Akubra and suit, were common-place.

See the rest of this film here.

Or as a slideshow here.

365 days

For three weeks I have been posting photos to my Flickr acount specifically to contribute to the 365 days group. It sounded like a good idea at first but the necessity of taking a self-portrait every day for a year was too much for me. I got to day 22 (the day before yesterday) then decided that was quite enough.

I still like the idea however and think I will continue it in the form of a photo-diary here on blogger. No manditory self-portraits however.