Brendon Kearns

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Author: Brendon (page 4 of 6)

October & November

November 28, 2011 / / 1 Comment

Quick update with a few shots of my own from the past couple months:

I snapped this first shot of Katie only to realize there was a way more interesting dude behind her

99%’ers camping out in Martin Place

Man who had just proposed to his girlfriend in the middle of Occupy Sydney

Enmore was over ran with teenagers expressing their identity crisis

Newtown’s ‘Reclaim the Lanes’ festival


Glebe Markets

I tried taking the same style shot multiple times, pocketing the subject in the bottom left or right corner while trying to give it as much context as possible

I’ve been working on doing my own film development and I feel like its giving me better results than anything I had got back from a lab in the past year- I’ve coupled this with using a Phaidon discount I get to buy up some photography books.

While reading through Danny Lyon‘s Memories of Myself he transcribes Hugh Edwards telling him how the best photographs imply movement. It seems an obvious statement in hindsight but I had never been able to put my finger on what the ‘poetic quality’ was that made some images stand out while others look stale and I think its that exactly- when it feels like the image is just after something started but before its finished.

After the Newtown Festival a couple weeks ago I was on my to Doughboy for a pizza when I dropped into Gould’s to dig through the mountain of books. I found a copy of Nikos Economopoulos’ In the Balkans which was the first time I had seen any of his work or even heard of him- its was 30 bucks (comparatively high for Gould’s) so I left it. By the time this Friday rolled around I had been thinking about the images so much that I sat through a jammed up CBD for an hour and a half on the M30 after work to go back and see if it was still there.

I consider it now the best photography book I own- in my mind its up there with Koudelka. Since leafing through it and studying the images, I feel like I’m reevaluating every shot I’m about to take. I dont know if its the cuts and crops he’s making after the fact or if he is actually getting that in there to frame while shooting but I’m amazed at each stray arm, foot, branch, bottle or cigarette in his shots.

Found Photography: The Poole Photos

November 21, 2011 / / 1 Comment

Awhile back I had found some negatives with the name Ms. Poole written on the back- I returned to the same shop over the past couple weekends and was able to dig out another four packets.

I wanted to do a little more research to see if I could identify some of these areas but I spent all my free time this weekend out at Sculptures by the Sea with the Rolleiflex. Its hard to find time to do the homework behind the shots as I never want to waste a minute of day light where I could be out working on my own portfolio.

Found Photography: Sea Breeze

November 18, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Print I pulled out of a box

Did a quick Google search on Sea Breeze Hotel but came up with a ton of results, too many to sort through so that makes it photographer and location unknown

Back of the photo has it dated at January 1962

Found Photography: Country Horse

November 17, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Another stray negative I found- I can never seem to place these kinds of photographs in a particular decade as I feel like everyone in the Australian country side dressed about the same from 1930-1960

Found Photography: Woman in Rocks

November 16, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Another stray negative I found while digging through a box of prints this past weekend- if you look closely there’s some graffiti written into the rock behind her, I tried to play around with the image to see if I could make it clearer and decipher but had no luck

Personal Photography: U.S. Trip

November 15, 2011 / / 1 Comment



I found these old photos from about a year ago on a forgotten roll that had been sitting in my Oly XA- I was helping Sabs tie up a clothes line while the other is Bern and Lana chilling in the kitchen


Few color shots with some Velvia 50 I picked up cheap at the NYC Lomo store

Accidentally loaded a roll of 100 at 800 for some super high contrast

An overdue mix of photos from my last trip back to States in August- some are family, friends, old co-workers or complete strangers

I’ve been shooting a fair amount of street around Sydney so I should have more to post up soon

Found Photography: Dog Reading the Newspaper

November 14, 2011 / / 0 Comments

After moving flats I’ve had a long delay in my posting ability- it took two weeks before I could get a technician out to setup my flat with net access, but in the meantime I’ve been steadily collecting negatives from in and around Sydney.

This is one of my favorite finds thus far for its sheer weird factor- if you look closely she has her glasses placed on the dog. I found a few less well composed and more over exposed shots of these two and their dogs so I’m guessing this was just someone messing around with a flash.

Later while scanning I found I had picked up this negative of the same women- I had pulled them out singularly from a box of mixed prints, based on the negatives themselves I hadn’t realise the two shots were related although I think its interesting to see them in two very different contexts; I’m assuming this last frame was from a funeral.

Learning to Develop

October 17, 2011 / / 0 Comments

After much internal debate I finally decided to take a class on doing my own film development over the ACP- so far its been fairly good as I’ve developed a couple rolls of Tri-X and learned about the print process by creating my own contact sheet.

This first shot was with Xtol at 1:1 and yeilded a very fine grain but low contrast image

This second shot was with Rodinal at 1:50 which came out with a grainier and harder feel

I feel like the Xtol seems good for scans as I can always bump up the contrast in the image via Lightroom to whatever is needed- but I like the grain showing through on the Rodinal. I’ve read online that this is fairly common and there has been a lot of experimentation with adding a drop of Rodinal to your Xtol to get the best of both worlds.

While these were just off some test rolls I ran through on the walk to class, this Sunday was the first time I was really able to get back out and shoot straight street so I’m psyched to get those rolls dev’d and the photos up even though I havnt yet posted the slew I’ve scanned from my trip to the states a month ago on top of a mountain of interesting found or loaned slides to scan on the side- should have plenty to keep me busy in the coming weeks.

Found Photography: Christmas Double Exposure

October 13, 2011 / / 1 Comment

I found this strange double exposure of a man dressed as Santa Claus- it was shot with medium format but has an elongated frame that seems to be common with older photos instead of the straight square I’d get out of a something like a Rolliflex.

Found Photography: 1950s Australian Suburbs

October 12, 2011 / / 0 Comments

If you look closely at the photo above you can see its the same guy and girl from the previous set I found

All the shots above are off another roll I found at the same second hand shop as the wedding photos I scanned in last night- the stock this time was Kodak Tri X Pan Film.

The promiently shown car looks like a Ford Zephyr Mark II which would place the photos sometime after 1956.

I’m still lost as to the actual location of these or the previous roll although the license plate of the car does indicate New South Whales- it has the look of a new suburb at the time since the houses are all next to each other yet in the middle of nowhere. They’re an odd mix of country and suburban- heavy on the grape vine covered overhangs. As an American, it seems odd to me that with all that empty space surrounding them they would choose to build their houses literately a few yards or meters apart but maybe they were going for more of a town or village feel as everyone in the photos seems fairly close.

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