I can’t believe it’s Halloween again! I thought this year I would post a throwback to last Halloween where I got to spend the day with my friend Simone and her two babies Lilly & Mason. At the time she was pregnant with her third baby, Ella who is now 6 months old. Seeing these photos again make me realise how much things can change in one year and how much the babies have grown and changed! This time last year Mason was very attached to his mum & dad and didn’t really want to know about me when I was around, but now he loves to give me cuddles and is growing into such a sweet little man.

Lilly is getting smarter and maturing every single day and each time I see her I am blown away by how bright and beautiful she is. Her vocabulary is better than most adults and you can have a normal conversation with her like you would any adult and she doesn’t miss a beat. It’s a testament to how good of a mum Simone is, she was born to be one and is doing an amazing job.

Happy Halloween!

All photos taken with Canon AE-1 Program using Kodak Portra 400 35mm film.

On days like this one I captured I feel so grateful for the beautiful paradise where I live. I live on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. We are 1 hour from the capital city of Brisbane, and 1 hour from the beautiful Byron Bay. There are so many beautiful little places to visit within the span of the SEQ coast and one of my favourites is Farm & Co at Byron Bay. Farm & Co is a farm that sells fruit & vegetables, but the main attraction is the beautiful sunflower fields and Macadamia trees that line them. During sunflower season you can barely scroll through anyone’s instagram and not see a photo taken among the sunflowers.

I love that sunflowers represent the sun, and face towards the sun. They are light seekers, they were planted in the dirt and bloom and rise to follow and seek the sun. That is how I feel about God.

We go through tough times in our lives but all the while if we seek Him we will be living in the light and the darkness will be beneath us.

I love getting to explore these places with Chynna, she really is my soul sister ♡

I do like the E100 film – slide film is such a cool thing I want to try more often, however I found the colour tone of this particular roll to be quite brown which is not to my taste as I like bright colours. However, I think this is a scanning issue as the slide film looks really nice and doesn’t have a brown tone at all. I have a couple more rolls of it I’m shooting so we will see how it goes next time.

All photos taken with Canon AE-1 Program and Kodak E100 slide film.

On New Year’s Day I ventured up to Brisbane to spend the day with my friend Chynna! We went to the Botanical Gardens and lookout at Mt Coot-tha and got a lot of Vitamin D. Going to the Botanical Gardens and in particular the Tropical Dome was a great start to the year as I’ve wanted to go for awhile now.

Late last year I picked up some Kodak Portra 160 35mm film and couldn’t wait to use it! Although I’d had a great experience with Portra 400, I found that some of my photos were overexposed and maybe I should step down to a less light sensitive film. Fortunately, that was a brilliant decision! The lower ISO works perfectly for Australian weather, and I couldn’t be happier with how the photos came out. The roll started on my last day in Melbourne and ended with Mt Coot-tha and I love every single frame of the roll.

The photos came out so clear, and amazing quality. I did some minor brightness adjustments to make sure the blacks weren’t too black and the whites weren’t too white but these photos were pretty perfect straight out of the camera.

I found that Portra 160 has more natural and neutral colour tones, and has less yellow than Portra 400. Portra 160 think it is the most accurate colour film I’ve ever used and I’ve tried quite a few!

I have a stack of 35mm film I want to get through before buying any more, however Portra 160 is the next film I will be buying and I think will be my new go-to.

All photos taken with Canon AE-1 Program and Kodak Portra 160 film (new fave).

As promised, here are the Hunter Valley Gardens photos!

In my last post I showed my road trip photos from the drive to Cessnock from the Gold Coast. It was my first ever road trip by myself and it was awesome. I listened to a lot of worship music and Kyle and Jackie O podcasts to get through and it was so fun to be alone and have complete freedom. I would love to go on another road trip in future, just gotta figure out where!

One of the highlights of the trip was going to the Hunter Valley Gardens to check out the various themed gardens and attractions they have their. It was a slightly overcast day which was perfect for walking around for an hour or two. Taking photos of my friends and family is one of my favourite things to do and Fiona & Sophie were more than willing to be my models! The Gardens are so lovely but I have to say the Storybook garden stood out the most, it truly was magical.

I loved the trip and the wonderful connected, intuitive conversation I had with Fiona & Sophie. I rarely get to experience conversations like those anymore and it was so soul renewing for me. It’s been a few months now since the trip and although I was only there a few days, I’m still adjusting to my regular interactions with people and searching for that same ease of conversation. I’ve found myself to be very emotional and feeling unfulfilled by conversations since returning home and I’m hoping that feeling passes soon.

All photos taken with Canon AE-1 Program using Kodak Portra 400 35mm film.

In late October I went on my first ever road trip by myself down to Hunter Valley region in New South Wales. Driving down the coast was a pretty calming experience, and I got to see a few things I hadn’t seen since I was a child, like the Big Banana at Coffs Harbour! I also went to Sealy Lookout near the Big Banana and was blown away by both the drive and the view – definitely worth the 15 minute detour.

I stayed with my friend Fiona in Cessnock, and our mutual friend Sophie came to visit as well. The three of us met at University in 2010 whilst studying film & television and I’ve always felt like I have a very deep connection with them. Our trio communicates so well and have so many interests and personality traits in common. I see the parts of myself that I love reflected in them, which is a blessing.

We had a really great time in our few days together – we got aura photos, went to trivia, saw A Star Is Born, and of course, went to the Hunter Valley Gardens which is where I took most of the pictures on the trip, which will be the following post, but for now enjoy the trip itself!

All photos taken with Canon AE-1 Program using Kodak Portra 400 35mm film.

Each year I like to visit the Swell Sculpture Festival at Currumbin Beach. This year my friend Simone, her two babies & I went to have a look. Going anywhere with a two-year-old can be difficult and we experienced a couple of tantrums but overall it was a nice day.

2015 was the best Swell Festival I’ve seen and this year’s was an improvement on last year’s so it fell in somewhere in the middle. The highlight was the bird, and the lowlight was the traffic cone square.

Afterwards we headed to a local park to let the kids run wild. Mason is now able to walk with a little bit of assistance which is soooo cute.

Photos taken with Pentax Spotmatic using Kodak Profoto XL 100 35mm film.

We need to live more.

These words that have been circling my head for the last few months, and honestly, I’ve been trying to do it, hence why I have been pretty inactive on this blog. I’ve done my best to leave fear behind and have been out in the world trying to find the things that fuel me and make me happy, whilst trying to achieve some of the goals I have that have always been a bit more difficult for me to accomplish. In doing that, I have become extremely drained and desperate to travel. Tangalooma Island is only 2 hours from where I live which was perfect as we were only able to go for a couple of days.

The first 2 days of the trip were great – exactly what we needed, but on day three is where things kind of turned for the worst. We went Quad Bike Riding and I accidentally went into a wall that has left a huge, nasty bruise on my thigh. Janice got a bruised foot from doing something that she doesn’t even remember. Then I had my first and only panic attack on Day 3 after I got off the Banana Boat. We managed to end the day with a lovely dinner at Tangalooma’s Fire & Stone restaurant which made up for the kind of crappy day we had.

We found out Donald Trump was elected President on the boat ride home on Day 4, which was the worst possible end to the holiday. I think his Presidency will stir up even more passion and fight in those of us who believe in a globalised world where every type of person is accepted. People have fought for generations to get to where we are and we aren’t going to stop or give up now. Everyone woke up feeling divided today, but I think over the next four years we will unite and come to understand that we can’t keep living the way we have been. We can’t keep on living out of hatred and fear. Love really is the only answer to all of this and I think it’s up to those of us who still believe in love to be the ones to make the change, and do their best to change the world for future generations, as those who came before us did for us.

I had such a great time in Sydney! It’s the city where I grew up and it has a special place in my heart. I took a couple of cameras there so you will be seeing more of my Sydney snaps in future Disposable Diaries.

All photos taken using a FujiFilm QuickSnap (Fujifilm Superia ISO-400 speed film) disposable camera. I got back 24/27 shots.

View more from the Disposable Diary series here.

Over the last couple of months I feel like I’ve abandoned this little blog. There’s no excuse but I will give you the reason why. I honestly believe it’s because I’ve stopped seeing value in my day to day life and don’t feel like it’s worth sharing with anyone. I’ve been struggling with the idea of mediocrity and have recently found out that I’m just like everybody else and I’m not special or different like I used to think I was. Most people already know that about themselves, but it’s really shocked me and made me reevaluate everything. You could call it a quarter life crisis. All of that said, I’m going to try to update this blog more and maybe by doing that I’ll see the value in each and every day again.

Today I wanted to share with my little getaway from this past weekend. I went with my two friends Janice & Sarah to Yamba – a little town just for a quick weekend trip. We all felt like we needed to get away – they had both finished Uni for the year and I have been feeling pretty stressed about my job & figuring out when is the best time for me to move next year.

Photos were taken on my Canon 60D with the 50mm f1.8 lens.