I was humbled to be able to meet the staff of the Ministry of Agriculture, The Ministry of Health and Solomon Water, as well as the PACTAM specialists that work to help strengthen these industries.

Most of all, I was lucky enough to meet some pretty bloody amazing Solomon Islanders, who were incredibly generous, open, friendly people.

Filming in the hot and humid environment of the Solomon Islands presented a few challenges – not least moving from air conditioned rooms to the hot, humid environment outside which immediately fogged my camera, working on a short timeframe, and of course, the fact that I’d never shot video footage for anyone else but myself.

I learned stacks.

Besides a few additional stock shots, I shot all footage for these videos, on behalf of Australian Volunteers International. All three videos were edited by AidWorthy.

I headed west over xmas and New Year and spent ten days or so in and around Perth, heading north to Geraldton, and south towards Margaret River.

I’m posting a few extra images over at http://leeeham.tumblr.com if you would like to check ‘em out. I’m giving it a go after abandoning it a few years back. Seems like it’s a whole lot better now.

Here are a few images from my trip – I’ll post a few more, soon.

These are shot on Hasselblad 500C/M and Portra 160 and 400.

I was stoked to hear recently that Melbourne musician Darren Gibson will release his debut solo album Cross Town Motions soon on vinyl.

The artwork’s cover will feature a full, uncropped portrait I shot with him in winter 2011 at the Tramway Hotel in North Fitzroy. I shot twelve pictures with Darren with my Hasselblad on Kodak Portra 800.

The CD version of the album was released in 2011 with different artwork. I’m chuffed that my shot will be used for the LP version and I’m pretty keen to see how the photo will look at 12 inches square on the LP jacket.

I thought I’d give you a look at the contact sheet for the roll of film we shot.

It’s one of the only times I’ve sent a full roll of images through to a client as I generally think fewer options are better.

The reason I did this was because although I already had a sense of which image I wanted to use, I wanted to give Darren the opportunity to choose the direction of the image that we went for. I’m glad to say that we both chose the same frame.

If you’re interested you can see a larger version of portrait we chose here.

You can now pre-order Darren Gibson’s Cross Town Motions LP via Melbourne label Midnight Funeral:
Order here

Some travel snaps from 1) Hanoi, 2) Muang Ngoi, and 3 and 4) Ho Chi Minh City.

Olympus XA, Kodak Portra 400, Melbourne, spring 2012.

Sapa, Vietnam, on Olympus XA with Kodak Tri-X.

Earlier this year, I had an interesting conversation with Melbourne musician Jamie Hay. It was a bit bloody exciting, but one that I never thought would happen. We’d been talking shit, maybe even drinking a couple of beers when Jamie had asked me if I’d be interested in playing with him at a few shows, and possibly doing some recording.

I was a little surprised being that Jamie is a strong performer, one who roars his way through meaty, weighty songs with the conviction of one who has lived the words he writes, who doesn’t write filler songs. I’d always thought he was the kind of performer who didn’t need accompanying. But I was stoked. Oh boy was I stoked.

After a few weeks spent running through demos and throwing around ideas for vocal harmonies and accompanying guitar parts, I headed to Hobart with Jamie, Carl (Arrows) and Matt (A Death In The Family / H-Block 101) to record a week’s worth of songs at Linc le Fevre‘s house in chilly South Hobart. It was good to be back under the shadow of Mt Wellington. We were due to start work with production team Linc and my brother Nic, fresh from working on the newest Luca Brasi recording.

I had lived in three separate houses on the one street in South Hobart over a period of six years or so, one where we recorded the tracks in a spare bedroom that made up The Scandal side of the split CD with Stand Defiant that launched the record label that I co-managed for five years, Disconnect Records. To a few people it’s still known affectionately as Disconnect House. To my neighbours at the time, I’m very sorry.

I arrived at Linc’s house to find that Matt had already laid down his drum parts and was back in Melbourne already. His parts sounded better than I could have imagined. We spent the next few days flipping between recording Jamie’s guitar parts, my guitar parts, which were in all honesty still pretty tentatively formed, and Carl’s bass parts. I was glad for the times where I could step outside in the cool sun and think about the next part, because I was still figuring out how my guitar should fit in with the other instruments.

We hadn’t rehearsed as a band at that point, and I was suffering from trying to make my tentative parts come off as the confident parts they needed to be. Carl and I swore a lot and drank a lot of coffee in between Carl popping painkillers to try and mask the pain from his freshly pulled tooth. Ouch.

We wound up the week with me desperately trying to relax my way through vocal tracking as my voice went from rough to worn out to completely, raggedly fucked due to my raging head cold (ask Linc about my track record of getting sick EVERY SINGLE TIME anyone even mentions recording).

The record is done now and I’m immensely grateful and proud to have been a part of it. I can’t wait to get out on the road with Jamie and Linc and play these songs with them.

The photographs above are all shot on Canon 5DmkII and is the first work that I’ve shared that I’ve shot on digital. I’m still shooting film, but I’ve started to branch out a little, too.

Here are a few mobile phone snaps from the week of tracking in Hobart:

My feet and a room mic in Linc’s lounge room. Note firewood; it was cold.

Linc’s monitor speakers set up in the lounge room so Carl and I could listen in to vocal takes as Jamie went through part by part. Linc ended up using this image as a basis for the cover art for his soon-to-be-released album Resonation.

Nic’s Ibanez bass that we ended up using on a couple of tracks, along with Linc’s Marshall JCM800. The weird box on top of the 800 is a headphone box so we could sit in the hall and play guitar instead of being right in front of the (LOUD) amp.

Linc at work in the control room.

Jamie killing time in between takes.

Nic in the observatory on top of Mount Wellington.

Jamie and Carl. We did some location recording on the top of Mount Wellington. It was blustery, cold, and so windy that it almost blew us sideways a few times on the way out of the car. The howling wind was eerily present through the recording we did, but unfortunately we didn’t end up using that version of the acapella cover of Eric Bogle’s Gift of Years that ended up on the album.

Jamie at a coffee fuel stop before starting tracking for the day. I liked this picture a lot and aimed to capture a similar, but slightly more relaxed feel in the first portrait in this post.

These next couple are borrowed from Nic’s instagram feed. Hopefully he won’t mind.

Myself and Linc chewing the fat at the end of a long day of tracking.

Jamie and Carl playing a couple of rounds of Last Action Hero pinball at the Alleycat in North Hobart.

And the next couple of images are borrowed from Jamie’s instagram feed. If he minds I will fight him.

Mount Wellington from South Hobart

This is how you deal with the cold in Tasmania. TWO HEATERS.

That’s my ‘trying not to mess up the record’ face.

King of the Sun is now available to pre-order. You can do so HERE.

Hope to see you at one of these shows!

You can listen to ‘Rabbit On’ from King of the Sun HERE.

More:
Jamie Hay’s tumblr
Jamie Hay’s page at Hobbledehoy Records
Linc le Fevre

A couple of months ago in the depths of Melbourne’s winter I headed up Mount Dandenong, just out of Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, with the hope of doing some walking.

The weather didn’t have the same plan though, and as soon as the car pulled into the parking lot, the weather closed in nastily. Heavy rain and wind were followed by a thick fog that rolled in and settled in the late afternoon.

I didn’t get to do any walking but did manage to snap a few shots in the fog in between the heavier periods of rain.

These are all taken on an Olympus XA, developed in Rodinal R09, and printed on Ilford Multigrade IV using Ilford PQ paper developer.

I’ve got a few things on the go at the moment that I will hopefully be able to show you in the coming weeks. Thanks for checking in.

I’m going to be exhibiting a print in the Melbourne Silver Mine annual group exhibition, Unsensored, again this year. Hope you can make it along for a look – the show opens this Friday in Collingwood. There are 47 photographers involved this year, all working in analogue formats in one shape or another. Here’s the juice:

UNSENSORED12
Collingwood Gallery
292 Smith Street Collingwood

Opening Night:
Friday 14 September 2012 from 6pm

Exhibition dates:
Saturday 15 September 2012 – Wednesday 26 September 2012

Gallery open daily:
10am – 6pm Saturday & Sunday
Midday – 6:30pm Monday – Friday

Head to unsensored.net for more details. This event is also listed on facebook.