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Australian houses, from architectural masterpieces to suburban family homes, Victorian terraces, mid-century marvels, coastal shacks, city apartments, and everything in between.
Award-winning Australian architecture, inspiring homes, and interviews with Australia’s top architects.
In depth features on Australia’s most beautiful gardens and landscape design.
Studio visits with Australia’s most talented creatives, from artists to architects, ceramicists to stylists, furniture makers to lighting designers.
Do you remember your first digital camera!? It was amazing, you could actually see the photo you had just taken, instantly! Unfortunately you could also see you had both your eyes closed in the family reunion photo, leading to the inevitable awkward reassembly of three generations of relatives to retake the photo. This time, another photo was tarnished by a younger cousin captured doing unsolicited bunny ears on your grandma. DELETE. So another photo, and another, and another was taken until the ‘perfect’ photo was eventually snapped, one where everyone’s smiles were strained after so many deleted outtakes. Then we moved to the camera phone, and now Instagram, where a Valencia filter can fix pretty much everything. Well, today’s New Kids on the Blog candidates’ old school approach to photography takes us back to pre-digital days, where every photo, bunny ears and all, is finite.
Introducing Hillvale, an independent photo lab based in Brunswick by two mid-twenties pals Jason Hamilton and Andy Johnson. The pair met while studying Graphic Design at RMIT in 2007. ‘We both bonded over photography, film especially, and have since pursued it both as recreation and a commercial exercise,’ recalls Andy. Hillvale officially launched in August last year, after this industrious pair spent about two years gathering equipment and securing a location.
‘The idea came about when we learned that Jason's old photo lab (where he worked while in high school) were decommissioning their analogue photographic equipment. Soon enough we found ourselves in my parent's garage with a C41 processing machine. After a few weeks of research we had sourced suppliers of chemistry and had it running,’ says Andy.
Jason and Andy originally ran their photo lab with the intention of processing their own and their close friend’s film, but soon enough, word of mouth spread and their services became in demand. Keeping things a little Gen Y, Hillvale doesn’t operate like a traditional shopfront business, instead they have ‘Dropbox Locations’. Basically you take your film to one of these locations (listed here), fill out a ‘job bag’ with all of your details, and the boys will collect the film. The magic then happens at Hillvale HQ, where the pair process your film, then scan and upload print ready images for you to access via your email. They then send your processed negatives back you in the mail, and all this for just $8.00 per roll.
After just under 6 months in operation, Hillvale has snowballed in popularity. Andy reckons it's Melbourne's supportive creative community that has really propelled their fledgling business. 'Having been open a few months, there's definitely a community feel developing, and we've had the opportunity to be exposed to some great people and work' he says. 'It's great to know you can take a picture, we can process / scan it, then that picture may be used in an upcoming group show or zine shortly after. We feel pretty lucky to be surrounded by people who create such abundant opportunity.'
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Film ..how i miss the the nuances and subtleties of film, Film has soul.How I loved putting film on the light box and look at it through my loop.!
I love old school film … the anticipation of waiting for the roll to be developed and then excitedly flicking through the photos to see if we captured that perfect shot and laughing at all the outtakes with their poorly framed blurry imperfections. Having an early morning nostalgic moment!
Hell yeah, these kids rule! Great feature x
Great to see another lab opening in Melbourne! Any start-up business that supports film photography deserves all the spruiking they can get… I’ll be spreading the word. Hope you boys can stumble across a Fuji Frontier in the future and also add prints to your repertoire. Keep up the great work and may your venture grow at a rate of knots! ps – love the mamiya :-)
Fantastic …. I have an old film that has been lying around ready to devlop. I have no idea what is on it…can’t wait to see. Good on you Jason and Andy.
Great to see! Do love a bit of old school film – My “Diana F” has being gathering dust as film developers so hard to find.
WHat a great idea!!! Shared it with my photo friends, I still have some rolls undeveloped, fantastic to know! Thanks for finding this gem! :)
Love that word abundance. Ace when people love their job! Great post, thank you :)
Great interview, we love Hillvale!
very great idea.
I absolutely loved the family reunion illustration. That is so true. This was a really interesting read. What I think is so cool is how it wasn’t that long ago that we were using regular film cameras, but it seems like it was so long ago.
I remember the days of taking two photos “just in case”. It’s really amazing to see people still enjoying these types of photos. It reminds me of playing Oregon Trail on an Apple II, simpler times, but still is was amazing. Thanks for sharing and I hope this business experiences amazing success.
All the best,
Gathered Again
Off topic, but does anyone know what brand those bikes are?
Also this is a great idea. I’ve been toying with the idea of film for a long time now but the options for developing are not so great, this may push me over the edge yet.
I offer a slightly biased opinion, being Andy’s Dad.
I am so proud of Andy & Jason for putting in so many hard hours early on in their quest for their fledgling Photo Lab. It took tons of trial and error, internet research, and pure hard slogging to get their old machines purring like a kitten. They saw the need and they did the deed.
Well done boys!
These two mid-twenties studs are the real deal. Great human beings too.
Oh yay! I’m so glad i stumbled across this… i’ve been trying to find somewhere to develop film for my old camera for ages ! Woohoo