I went searching today for an image I remember making, but not its time date or any other details about it. Eventually I found the photograph I was looking for, and added it to the group that had prompted, its search. But in the interim, I realised I have become remarkably less obsessed with uploading images to flickr over the last couple of years. I have no shortage of them to upload mind.
I recently purchased two new books, while in Sydney.
"Wim Wenders: Journey to Onomichi: Photographs" (Heiner Bastian, Wim Wenders), and,
"Lee Friedlander: America by Car" (D.A.P./Fraenkel)
For those who are curious, here's a peek at my entire library of books for the last ten or so years, on librarything.com, I'm also reading a very engaging series of books, STUDYING PHOTOGRAPHY: A Survival Guide,"Your Assignment: Photography (Photo Developing)" (Douglas Holleley), and, "Photo-Editing and Presentation: A Guide to Image Editing and Presentation for Photographers and Visual Artists (Photo-Developing)" (Douglas, Ph.D. Holleley), again real refreshing insights into teaching Photography, not only the technical processes, but the creative and the organisation process as well, from creation to presentation.
Standby for a flurry of input, as, now I'm toting an iPhone everywhere, and making images, constantly on the fly, with the ability to upload immediately if I so choose to flickr, my posterous account, the shared posterous project, or twitpic.
Now that I've finished using my Sony Ericsson c902 phone/camera, I decided to trawl back though my archives and see what was lying around. From 2006, I used the k610i ending up using c902, in to the August 2010, Imade over 3 thousand pictures. From these, I managed to hobble together one book, with plenty of images to spare. When it is finished I shall post a link to it.
Two more books are a distinct possibility.
Today, saw the creation of a new collaborative project, shared between myself and 3 other iPhone users. The project is hosted by posterus, and is called 4over3.posterous.com. We all share a similar approach to picture making and have a similar regard for the web and its ability to share regardless of time, place or space. Where it will go I have no idea, we are spread across the globe, 1 in Asia, 1 in Europe and 2 in Australia. I may consider expanding the project to include one or two more people, contact me if you have a passion for picture making, regardless of device, and can afford to connect to the web anywhere anytime.
I also signed onto the eyeem.com site, an online site dedicated to sharing of iPhone pictures.
While we are on the topic of Posterous, I've begun using the space as, another small gallery for spontaneous projects as they occur.
I am a proud and new owner of the latest iPhone 4, it s my first iPhone ever, to say I am pleased, would be an understatement.
One of my peers, has had an iPhone since their release 2 years ago, he too is an advocate of, the best camera to own is one you have on you at all times, and are prepared to use all the time.
Hipstamitic, is one of his favourite iPhone applications, so, of course I had to give it a go too. I have at the moment, 6 lenses and 8 film types, as well as, the flashes, that come with the application, perhaps just the iPhone 4.
With such a dizzying array of options I needed to be clear in my own mind what film/lens and film/lens/flash combinations I felt the most comfortable with. How to work this out? Why run a test of course.
Not a very scientific one, but a test nonetheless, in real world conditions, i.e. my sunroom at home in the gorgeous winter light.
So I photographed the view out of the bck window with all possible lens/film combinations. Once I'd settled on a film/lens combination, I then tested the flashes with that combination.
The winner for me is:-
Is it art? The jury is still out on that one, one thing is sure though, it is a whole lot of fun.
Art Season is kicking off big time! Along with this show, there is the Melbourne Art Fair, and It's Not fair.
Albert Camus, novelist and Nobel Prize laureate, once said: 'After many years, during which I saw many things, what I know most surely about morality and the duty of man I owe to sport'.
Not everyone would agree that sport is the key to understanding human experience. But it's certainly true that Australians connect sport with anything from community life and personal achievement through to historical and political controversies.
[From Sellers Art Prize]
Recently I discovered, quite by accident, that I had my flickr stream removed from public searches. This is affectionately know as being NIPS'd. My view count on my flckr stream had dropped quite dramitically over the last month and I was perplexed as to why. To the point where I was questioning my continuation of my flickr account. Now that I have resolved the issue regarding the public searches, my views have returned to the state they had been at for most of the time I've ben on flickr, since the stats were introduced. This is a worry as this means, that, the majority of my views come from these searches. Should I care? Should I use this as an excuse to re-focus my energies elsewhere? We'll see.
My flickr views have taken a bit of a beating over the last couple of weeks, in that they have dropped to an all time low. I just discovered today, that the flickr staff have hidden my account from public searches. Why I don't know, and the only reason I found out was I was looking for my exif data in the new interface, when I discovered the setting.
I quickly visited Sydney on Friday and Saturday, an exhaustive and exhausting 2 days of art food and walking! I didn't shoot as much as I would have liked, but, here is the first edit, from my time up there.
More on the Biennale itself later.
Here's a small slideshow, roughly cut together using sampled sounds from freesound.org. Credits to the following for sharing their samples/sounds and allowing them to be re-sampled, DJ Chronos, gleeman,j uskiddink.
If anyone even cared, the browser wars are still raging, this very cool info-graphic give lots of information away.
Original graphic is from, www.michaelvandaniker.com
Life hacker has a neat e-mail article today, looking at note taking tools. Citing ubiquitous mobile phone usage as its reason. Well I am a HUGE fan of Evernote™, mainly because it allows me 3 points of access and organisation for all my notes, my desktop, my mobile device, any web access point.
It seems that many share my enthusiasm for the tool as it was the clear leader overall, as suggested by those who participated, in the poll. I also like the simple builtin free tool that comes with my iPod, but Evernote™ is a more powerful tool, I even pay for the service even though, I doubt I will come close in reaching anything beyond the capacity fo free accounts.
Give it a whirl it's an awesome tool.
Google Chrome, my 2nd browser of choice now has extensions, allowing me to trick out the browser to do so much more. Will it replace Safari? I doubt it? Safari's colour management, ie Apple's colorsync are a given, and as I spend so much time looking at Photographs online, I need to feel comfortable regarding the colour.
This month I got involved in:-
SoFoBoMo is short for Solo Photo Book Month - a group event where a bunch of photographers all make solo photo books start to finish in 31 days.
SoFoBoMo 2010 is running from 1st June to 31st July.
My book is uploaded, and freely available, have a look see what you think?
Been getting some strange server error pages of late, this new page might exaplin why?
In graphic design, Marian Bantjes says, throwing your individuality into a project is heresy. She explains how she built her career doing just that, bringing her signature delicate illustrations to storefronts, valentines and even genetic diagrams.
My online presence just grew by another site, this time the site is called Fine Art America and is the American equivalent of Redbubble.
Whether this pans out to any sales or more recognition I have no idea, we'll see I guess.
I Recently signed up for another book publishing idea, this time over at, SoFoBoMo, the challenge is to produce 35 images in a pdf format book in one month. So I plan on uploading a book of 35 images minimum by the 19th of July. "SoFoBoMo is short for Solo Photo Book Month - a group event where a bunch of photographers all make solo photo books start to finish in 31 days.
SoFoBoMo 2010 is running from 1st June to 31st July."
Fingers crossed, I've a busy month ahead, a return to the EOTOB program for 2010, albeit a short 7 day stint this time, and a few days off to make images, in what can be gorgeous winter light.
Technology at its finest.
hmmm an interseting turn of events!
[From “Request to License” via Getty Images is here! « Flickr Blog]
I hear some folks are doing ok from this process.
Today I'm wearing my educator's hat, indulge me please for a moment.
Because of, or in spite of reaching the end point of the semester with VU and almost the mid year point with PIC, I recently had somewhat of an epiphany, particularly in regards to the learning of camera craft.
Before the predominance of digital cameras, the only way to learn the craft of photography was using a film camera. Schools often chose the hardy and solid Pentax k1000, and many student's relied on these as the cost was too prohibitive to purchase one. Simple, and simply mechanical it demanded you understand how the controls worked on a camera, i.e. you very quickly learned how to get the needle in the middle, otherwise you were faced with countless rolls of film ruined. The flow on from this was of course that you then understood technical aspects of the process, such as Depth of Field and movement. Eventually these process became intuitive and one could throw all that away and just focus, pun intended, on the image in front of you. Now the plethora of cameras, and their relative cheapness, plus the abundance of each camera's controls available mean that simple controls on a camera are a rarity. This rareness can then impinge on the process of making a good image. The ease too, of flicking your camera to auto, means, why bother with all that information, just press the button let the camera do the rest. But this seemingly simple gain can come at a high cost. Overall understanding of the process, means when things go wrong it can be difficult to understand why and what to do right next time, or worse, simply avoid the situation that brought this disaster upon us, thereby limiting our creative options.
Other ways digital seems to limit options for creative picture making is the 'that will do approach'. Instant feedback on a small screen means students can make quick decisions, for better or worse without exploring other options, particularly those who may have chosen the subject of photography as an elective subject. Despite the powerful tools available to us to sort order categorise our images students 'anecdotally' anyway seem to baulk at the idea of spending too much time assessing and evaluation their results.
The last thing that has me thinking is that students are surprised and delighted when simple things like depth of field are achieved, this used to be a mandatory and rudimentary skill required to produce images that were results of the image makers intentions. Too put an image in a folio simply because it contained an example of shallow depth of field was not even a consideration?
What to do then, expecting students, to use the photography by the kilo approach is one that has been floated past me, in some instances this can work, but again, is it visual overload. Can students exercise enough control to edit down the vast quantities of images they produce to a cohesive body of work, especially in the early stages of their learning of the craft of photography?
Today, a quick cursory glance at a small screen on the back of the camera, you own or was bought for you, gives you a rough idea of how your shoot is going. So why flip the camera controls beyond Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority? Well I have no answer for that, not an easy one any way.
These days I see a all the mistakes from analogue cameras, being trundled out, incorrectly loaded films, majorly underexposed films, poorly developed films, all skills that are quickly learnt within weeks, if not days of starting a course, with borrowed manual film cameras.
Now it is possible to delay the process of working with film and chemistry and manual cameras, sometimes for a whole semester or longer, delaying making these mistakes, means a delay in learning FROM them. Unless the mistakes can be replicated using digital cameras. Putting a camera, ANY camera on Manual mode, means very quickly you have to understand what is going on with light and the sensor. Many students do not, put their cameras to manual. It's a shame a rich and valuable learning experience is being lost.
This image comes from a flickr stream, by, Eric Fischer, in particular his set, Locals and Tourists Set. Red is for tourists and Blue for locals, yellow being for indeterminate photographers. I am surprised by the large amount of blue to the North of the city? And disappointed by the lack of blue to the West, MY neck of the woods.
I have submitted images for consideration to either competitions or exhibitions to both the CCP and an American organisation called, Artists Wanted recently. The outcomes of both of these submissions won't be known for at least 2 or 3 months, so in the meantime, I sit and wait.... oh and make more images. The Artists Wanted competition/exhibition allows, public voting on each artists gallery, while the work is individually judged on its merits, so feel free to swing by and vote on my gallery.
This new service offers to access your flickr stream and present a very nice customisable site as a consequence.
Macworld critiques Photoshop CS5. Let's not forget about the hand that feeds it etc..
![Fisrt Edit Sydney 2010 [Biennale]](http://img.skitch.com/20100724-mui5n5n7tr23n8irste8pxkm95.preview.jpg)
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