A Nintendo Gameboy Pocket Camera Update

Further details from my journey with Nintendo Gameboy Pocket Camera photography.

Kia ora koutou katoa,

Where to begin? Since the last time I sent out a newsletter about my exploration of Nintendo Gameboy Pocket Camera photography, things have taken a platform jump. Two months ago, I started posting a series of 8-bit location photo essays on Instagram. I started things off with a set of photographs of iconic locations around Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington), the capital city of Aotearoa (New Zealand), before continuing on with similar sets that I shot in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland) and Ōtautahi (Christchurch).

While I was down in Ōtautahi taking photos, I ran into an old visual artist friend of mine, Pete Howard aka Sole. I first met Pete in Te Whanganui-a-Tara in the mid 2000s, and we actually organised a series of concerts and dance parties together. At the time, Pete was fascinated with the screen-printing process. He used to create these incredible, multi-layered hand-stenciled posters and flyers for our gigs, and off the back of those, ended up doing similar work for a bunch of summer festivals.

I hadn’t seen Pete for a few years, so it was really good to reconnect. He’s been doing some design study at the university down there and recently started getting his head around the process of lazer woodcutting. Pete took one look at my Gameboy Camera photos and suggested putting some of them through the process. You can see a set of three below.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, a couple of weeks ago I shared some photographs of a few of them via social. A couple of days later, I was arranging to sell a set of three of them to someone who has been very enthusiastic about the photos since I started putting them online. So yeah, we made a set of limited edition art pieces and sold them to a client. Honestly, I did not see that coming, but when you detach yourself from the outcome and just follow the process, all kinds of things can happen. So yeah, if you’d be interested in purchasing some extremely limited edition lazer woodcut Gameboy Camera art, feel free to drop me a line and we’ll see what we can work out.

While I’ve got your attention, here’s a few more images I created with the GC recently. They’re reshoots of existing photographs I’ve taken on 35mm film with either my Olympus MJU II or my Nikon F60 cameras. Here’s the first set, some flowers, a Motel in Martinborough, and a street scene from Hong Kong.

Right, time for another set. This time we’re looking at some architecture outside the Wellington Regional Aquatic Centre in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, a seagull perched on a public bathroom in Plimmerton, and a skyscraper reflection photo from Sydney, Australia.

Anyway, enough of all of that for now. Let’s move onto some other topics.

WHAT I’VE BEEN DOING (OR NOT DOING):

I wrote about the Aloha Got Soul reissue of the Mackey Feary Band’s self-titled LP for Test Pressing. You can read some words from me here.

Apart from that, I haven’t been doing a huge amount this week. Monday was the third anniversary of my Father’s death in 2018, which took the wind out of me a bit more than I expected it would. Such is life, and death. I’m not really keen to relitigate things here, but I do have a funny anecdote to share that will be new to some of you and familiar to others. My Grandfather was a professional photographer at points in his life. My father was pretty good at photography as well. In the late 1960s, they struck on a curious notion, the idea of faking some UFO photos. I came across two different prints of the same image this week. You can see them below. Not gonna lie, I think they’re pretty good. I could really see one of these working as an album cover for the right record.

WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO:

David Kilgour, Here Comes The Cars (Flying Nun Records)

I’m far from a Flying Nun completist, but regardless, there are a few records/groups in their sprawling catalogue that I really love. Here Comes The Cars, the debut solo album from Ōtepoti (Dunedin) musician David Kilgour (of The Clean) is, as far as I’m concerned, a practically perfect indie rock album. I like to listen to it on plane flights, because it’s got a really defined sense of momentum, but it’s also sweet, somewhat dark and reflective. Basically, it’s ideal for the beginning or end of a journey. David’s one of those musicians who really knows his stuff, and Here Comes The Cars was him making it clear that not only did he know where he came from, he had a clear idea of where he wanted to take us. For whatever reason, you can’t purchase it digitally on Bandcamp (as far as I know), but you can stream it as a playlist via Youtube here.

Apart from that, lately I’ve spent a lot of time listening to the last two releases on Strangelove Music, which I’ve already mentioned in this newsletter here, and on Test Pressing here and here. I’ve also been listening to an absurd amount of music by Susumu Yokota, for reasons which I will reveal later in the year.

WHAT I’VE BEEN WATCHING:

The Quiet Earth (1985), directed by Geoff Murphy (Skouras Pictures, INC)

Man… I forgot how good this was. A scientist named Zac Hobson (played by the legendary English-New Zealand musician and actor Bruno Lawrence, b. 1941-d. 1995) wakes up one morning, only to discover to find that everyone else in the world has suddenly vanished; or have they all vanished? Post-apocalyptic science fiction excellence, The Quiet Earth is a remarkable showcase for Lawrence’s acting abilities, with several beautifully executed twists and turns thrown in for good measure.

After creating several incredible local films with Bruno in lead roles, Te Whanganui-a-Tara born director Geoff Murphy went on to work in Hollywood in the 1990s, where he directed Young Guns II and Freejack, before later on working as the 2nd Unit Director on Peter Jackson’s Lord of The Rings trilogy.

It’s also worth noting that outside of film, Lawrence was a jazz and rock drummer with a number of Aotearoa and Australia based bands including Max Merritt & The Meteors in Sydney, Quincy Conserve, The Crocodiles, and his own multimedia performance group, BLERTA. I enjoyed re-watching The Quiet Earth so much that I decided to reshoot a photograph of Lawrence through the Gameboy Camera. You can see it below.

Anyway, on that note, I think this week’s newsletter is done. However, with August’s Bandcamp Friday coming up in a few days, I’ll probably send another more music focused issue out later in the week.

FIN.