DZ Deathrays - Brisbane, September 2022.

I had a lot of fun making this.
DZ Deathrays were in Brisbane at the start of September to support Violent Soho on their last performances at the Fortitude Music Hall.

They hadn’t played a lot together in recent weeks so we had two days of rehearsal before the performance.
While they were there I set up to take these portraits with the intention of making this collage.
I set up a small beauty dish just above my Leica MP loaded with Ilford HP5+ and a 50mm Summicron in front of it.
When I got home I developed the film and printed small darkroom prints of each of the portraits on a single piece of Ilford FB Classic Glossy paper, masking off the other ones as I went.
I then cut out the portraits and jumbled them up, before using a glue-stick to stick them to a piece of A4 copy paper.
Then I scanned the images with my Epson flatbed scanner.

Burnt Out Car

Tuesday September 21, 2021.

While I was driving to work I did a double take as I passed the northern end of Cross Road in Numulgi. This burnt out car was sitting on the gravel. Not an uncommon sight, however what was spilling out of the bonnet was less common. A beautiful arrangement of red bottle brush and hippeastrum flowers, flowing from the charred engine bay to the ground. I used Ilford HP5 film pushed one stop with a red 25A contrast filter to get the extra contrasty look.

35 - Number 5

Simon and Lachlan, asleep on the highway.

DZ Deathrays Positive Rising: Part 1 European Tour - Sept/Oct 2019

Day 12

Today we got up early and started our 8 hour drive to Le Harve for Foul Weather festival. The journey took us through some truly beautiful Swiss and French countryside before getting back on the boring old highway to Paris. 

We drove on to Le Harve and arrived just before Together Pangea were playing. 

The venue was really interesting. It was in some sort of old walled area with lots of community things going on in it. The people running the festival were lovely and showed us to our accomodation which was a shipping container that was painted black and had been unopened so it was very hot and damp inside. The ceiling was particularly mouldy so I opted for a bottom bunk.

We had some really good baguettes, from a bag, a bag of baguettes. 

Boundy and I unloaded the van and started setting up side stage for the show. Jacuzzi Boys were playing and were quite good. We did the change over in a miracle amount of time, with the patch only being mildly wrong. 

DZ started playing and after about 20 seconds all the power in the whole building cut out but the lighting lady and I flicked the breakers back on and the show went off really well. It was a fun concert and we loaded out quickly before going back to the shipping container for sleep.

35 - Number 4

Danny, Stephan, Brett and BC on the back steps of Belgrave Music Hall.

I took this photograph on July 7, 2018 at Belgrave Music Hall in Leeds, England on the Wavves 2018 Europe Tour.

We were touring in Europe and the UK for the first time NOT in a giant splitter van and this time rather in a small station wagon, able to fit in to regular car parks, able to drive fast on freeways and able to sit more comfortably - ish. The middle seat in the back folded down and we fit Brett’s basses through the hole with Danny’s guitars on top. Everything else packed in around the back.
Danny has an incredible gift for needing to go to the toilet for the entirety of a load in, almost perfectly timed from beginning to completion. In this photograph, we had just finished loading in and the band, along with Stephan from Wavves sat on the fire escape. Brett is smoking an apple bong.
The show was really fun and Brett and BC made a banner out of pillow case with the words ‘Dune Rats’ writen on it. ‘Dune’ started quite big, relatively close to the centre, and ‘Rats’ ended up somewhat squished in on the side to fit.

That night we went back to the hotel and Brett went sleep walking in the very early hours of the morning and couldn’t get back in to his room. BC and I woke up to see him open our door and lay down on the floor. I went down to reception and got him a new key cut and put him back to bed.

35 - Number 1

35 is a series dedicated to my favourite focal length, 35mm on 135 format. 50mm is what is known as the “normal lens”, however for me and for how I see, 35mm is normal to me.

I am going to start with a photograph I made in Vienna, Austria.

This photograph was made on the 10th of February 2020, directly outside the hotel I was staying at in Vienna.

I was on tour with DZ Deathrays, who were supporting the English band The Darkness and we were staying in the MEININGER Hotel on the corner of Columbusgasse and Raaber-Bahn-Gasse. I believe since staying there, that this hotel has permanently closed down.
We arrived on the 9th and had a night off, which allowed me to get an early sleep and subsequent early rise.

This was photographed around 8am as the gentleman was walking west with his morning shopping along Raaber-Bahn-Gasse. I immediately noticed the shaft of morning light splitting between the building to the south, funneling up Columbusgasse and hitting the side of his face. It was a very split second image - one frame, totally unsure if I’d captured anything and I was glad to see I did when I developed the roll later on.

The show that night was at Simm City and definitely a lot of fun.