I recently returned to Shanghai for a three week break in Melbourne. It was strange to be there in the midst of the bushfire crisis. It seems all my peers were off shooting this, but that’s not what I came for.

Anyway, while I was there, I shot a couple of rolls of Kodak Aerochrome, a discontinued false colour infrared film that I’ve mentioned in a previous post. I’ve played around with this film a bit and have decided to mostly photograph landscapes with it after playing around in Shanghai’s urban environment as well as Sanya and the mountains of Zhejiang and even doing a little street photography with it.

The last couple of rolls have taught me that I have to be pretty mindful of the conditions I shoot it in unless I am prepared to bracket (that is take a few shots at different exposure settings to try to make sure I get a decent shot). As this film is quite pricey, I think I’m better off just shooting it on bright, mostly cloudless days with the sun high in the sky and behind me. I’ve shot a few rolls that have come out perfectly in these conditions with my exposure set for the brightest part of the scene. I tried doing this and the spectacular coastal scenery of Sorrento Back Beach but since I shot near dusk I need up with half a roll of under exposed crap. Lesson learned, I hope I’ll be back there next summer to do better.

I’m not sure what I’m heading towards with this series. It would be nice to see them as prints. In the meantime, I’m just enjoying a look into the invisible with scenery turned alien by light that we normally can’t see.

I think I’ll take a roll down to the Vietnam border in a couple of weeks to see what I can find as I also pursue my border project.

Here are a few shots from my time in Australia. The first is of a lake in the Dandenongs on the outskirts of Melbourne and the others are from Tarra-Walla National Park in East Gippsland and Mount Martha on the Mornington Peninsula. Hopefully these areas will escape the bushfires this summer.

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