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).

When those electronic first notes of Dumb Stuff began and the crowd began to roar, I knew I was in for a good show.

I saw LANY last year in Sydney but unfortunately was sick and had to leave halfway through the show so I missed all the hits. When I heard they were coming to Brisbane I knew I had to get tickets and they did not disappoint. I personally thought the crowd was more enthusiastic in Sydney but Brisbane held up pretty well. As magical as the Brisbane show was for the crowd, it seems like it was just as amazing for Paul:

 

brisbane i have no words for what just happened in that room. top 5 maybe top 1 show for me. insane intimate indescribable. the love you gave tonight will carry my soul for weeks thank you x

— paul klein (@pauljasonklein) March 23, 2018

If you haven’t heard of LANY, you probably don’t have Spotify or a Tumblr account. LANY is an American alternative-indie-pop band that formed in 2014 and has risen to popularity over the last few years. They released their first album last year, and it was incredibly popular amongst young adults. Just last week, one of their most recent singles Super Far hit 10,000,000 streams on Spotify which doesn’t include the 19,000,000+ views the video accumulated (to-date) on YouTube.

With a lot of bands it’s about ego, but LANY is about connection. You might think that it’s about aesthetic and synth-pop if you look at their online presence, but being in their presence you realise they have a true love and passion for the music and performing live. The shared connection between LANY and their fans is through feelings, experiences, youth, and self-expression. Even if you haven’t experienced the exact situation or emotion that a song is about, you can still feel it and by the time the audience erupts into applause, it’s almost like you have experienced it.

Of course their first smash hit ILYSB closed out the evening. It was the first song I ever heard of theirs and it did not disappoint hearing it live for the first time.

I wasn’t expecting to like them as I’m not usually into that kind of music, but they really surprised me and I enjoyed their performance a lot. The lighting was also fantastic during their set which is a luxury for a support act but it made all the difference and got the crowd hyped for LANY.

Follow LANY on facebook, instagram, twitter, and their official website which is a tumblr account.