LC-A+ Multi-Exposures

I am not a very adventurous lomographer but with the LC-A+, I consciously tried to shoot multi-exposures because I know this camera can do it really well. All these are little shots of my daily life.

My brother, the Plantman!

Walking home at night. The first layer of apartment lights was a experiment in how the LC-A+ would function at night. It exceeded my expectations!

First layer was a scene where a scandal for my local Member of Parliament (an American equivalent would be a Congress Representative) broke out and people converged at the Meet The People session. The guy in the centre is my Dad who dragged me along to witness the scene. Second layer was sunset on my street.

First layer was Tara McPherson's talk at Darkroom Army, layered on with Green Man Walking.

Simple textures with the sky and my front gate.

My personal favourite. A spring onion must have dropped out of someone's marketing bag so I grabbed a shot of it and superimposed it with the sky.I title this  Onion in the Sky. :)

Mornington Peninsular, Part 3

When I read Jane Austen's unfinished novel Sanditon, I couldn't, for the life of me, picture how a bathing machine looked like. After a bit of googling, I found out that bathing machines evolved into bathing boxes and Melbourne had bathing boxes! I was determined to find some on this trip. We didn't get to the more famous stretch in Brighton but the Mornington Peninsular ones did very nicely.

And just to round up the Morning Peninsular and Australia collection of photos, here's an aerial view of the Peninsular from Murray's Lookout. I would love to explore more of the Peninsular next time, taking a long slow trip through. I am going to start posting non-travel photos going forward (finally!), I have such a huge backlog that I am going to have to learn to be selective. If you like my travel series, don't worry, I am going to be off to Taipei in 28 days, there will be lots more to come!

A bit of a life update, I have had a few tough weeks at work, where I have been working a minimum of 12 hours everyday. It's not likely to get any easier and I am trying my best to put on a good face, keep my head down and deal with it as best as I could. Not going to lie, there were a couple of moments when I almost lost it but I managed to rein myself in. This is definitely one of the most trying period of my work life,  and I tell myself everyday that this is a test and that I will prevail. Wish me luck.

Mornington Peninsular, Part 2

For lunch on the Mornington Peninsular, our tour brought us to the Ashcombe Maze & Lavender Gardens. While lavenders are pretty to look at and smell, I can tell you it is not good in food, especially ice cream! I felt like I was drinking scented soap! Never again!

After lunch, we headed out to the lavender and rose gardens for photographs. So lovely wandering among all these flowers, something that I would never be able to do at home.

Once again, I am awed by the Velvia 50 film, the colours of the flowers are at once true to form but yet so much deeper and richer. And the rays of light shining through the petals, it feels almost luminous. If only E-6 processing was cheaper, I would do it more often.

Mornington Peninsular, Part 1

With the promise of blue skies and spectacular scenearies for our day trip to the Mornington Peninsular, I knew I had to choose a special film to document the day. I decided to use one of my favourite slides, the Fuji Velvia 50 and double down by processing this film the way it should be with E-6 processing. 

I was thrilled at the roll turned out, from the second I received my film back, I couldn't stop looking at how beautiful the colours were and how much more depth there seems to be in each image. There seems to be a bit of a purple tinge i some of them but I don't mind them, I find it adds to the unpredictability of the slide film. I look forward to experimenting more with E-6 processing but I will have to do it sparingly because it's much more expensive than the common C-41 process.

We booked a day tour with Gray Line Tours. It was a simple online process but you have to call them up a couple of days in advance to make sure the tour is running on the day you want it because they have a minimum quota to fill. The original date we wanted was below quota and we had to shift our itinerary around a little. We had to do the tour on our last full day in Melbourne instead of in the middle. The tour was a fairly comfortable size, about 10ish people which makes for lots of space on the coach for everyone to sprawl about to their heart's content.

We headed out of Melbourne via St Kilda, along the shoreline, where the tour guide kept a rambling spiel about the development of St Kilda. As we passed by Albert Park, I was really thrilled to find out that some of the roads we traversed were part of the F1 Melbourne Grand Prix circuit! (Little known fact about me, I am a Formula 1 racing fan!) It was a bit of a drive towards Mornington Peninsular and our first stop was for Devonshire Tea at Arthur's Seat. It's just so elegant to have tea with scones, and with that lovely view from the windows.

After tea, we headed to the strawberry fields to pick our little box of fruits. It was a fun experience picking the strawberries, trying to find the brightest, reddest and ripest fruits to bring home. Strawberries taste so much better when picked by your own hands!

More about Mornington in the next post...

New Hair

I cut my hair on Thursday. I was really apprehensive when the stylist first suggested I do a pixie cut because I didn't have much options after my previous stylist had layered my hair considerably. In the end, I decided to throw caution into the wind and just do it. Result: I really really like it! I look a totally different person and I adore how my fringe looks!

Sensory Lab, Melbourne

I tend to stick to cappucinos and lattes but have always wanted to venture out to try other types of coffee drinks. So I decided to be brave and order a macchiato at Sensory Lab. Macchiato means espresso stained with a little milk. Drinking pure coffee is an experience and it takes some getting used to. It's not likely to be my regular drink but I can see myself ordering it sometimes to change up my coffee routine. Oh, I also like trying to guess the notes in the coffee blend used!

Brunswick, Melbourne

We have a terrible habit of forgetting how early places close in Australia. By 5 pm, most shops and cafes are done for the day and you would be extremely lucky to find a place that is still open 6pm (besides eateries for the dinner crowd). Well, this terrible habit kicked us in the ass when we got to Brunswick, we only reached around 3pm and 2 hours was NOT ENOUGH to browse down this whole street! We only managed to make it down about half way down the street before all the closing signs made us turn back. We had wanted to grab a cup of coffee on the way out but the adorably named Slow Poke cafe had already wiped down their machines. The irony wasn't lost on us.