June 2007 Archives

As Saturday arrives and I watch the light creep over the tops of the roofs in our neighbourhood, I am excited at the prospect of time to make images, follow my nose and generally bask in the time available to me.

My output tends to ramp up this time of year, even though the days are short, the light is gorgeous and many places are wet. Moisture combined, with sunlight turns the most mundane of places and objects into wonderful wonderful glowing subject matter. Of course only film and higher rez digital cameras are really capable of capturing those subtleties, so output will as always be delayed. So I guess that kind of maps out my 2 week break here in Winter, shooting shooting and more shooting, mostly on film.

Maybe I'll start printing

Someting that doesn't require high level optics other technical minutiae.

Photography doing what it does best, abstracting the world around us.

Technorati Tags: analogue, photography

Bernd Becher, 75, Photographer of German Industrial Landscape, Dies, he was a major influence on my work, according to the NY Times, he died Friday just gone.

Technorati Tags: art, photography, urban landscape

check out this photo project, great idea, thanks to Donina.

Technorati Tags: geek, photography, project

This looks like a good show to see, at the NGA

Technorati Tags: art, gallery, NGA, photography, National Gallery Australia

Collective Image Memory?

An interesting idea but still does it carry any meaning?

Technorati Tags: digital, Microsoft Expression, photography, web

Inspired by some of Ralph Eugene Meatyard's images.

Speaking of which, the George Eastman House has a stunning collection of Phortgraphy from the 20th Century, many of my heroes are in this collection. Also the CCP in Arizona, probably has the world's most extensive collection of 20th Century Fine Art Photography

Technorati Tags: light, lo-fi, lo-rez, mophone, neo-documentary, phonecam

Ok Ok, I admit it I'm excited!

Just watched, the intro to the iPhone, and the way the iPhone seems to work is mind blowing, the "gestural" approach to using it is so 'sensible'. Definitely an desirable piece of technology, elegant simple easy and intuitive.

The idea of "swiping" to remove things and "pinching" to zoom just blows me away.

Just hope that by the time it gets to good old Oz, a carrier here will handle it and the costs won't be too prohibitive.

I still would prefer a higher Mega-pixel count in the camera, though.

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, mac

Not normally a technology commentator, but I thought I post a link to Kottke's site that expands on the building hype over the iPhone.

Now when the iPhone's camera hits 5 megapixels maybe then I'll get excited... maybe.

Technorati Tags: iphone, kottke, puppy, apple, puppy

Waiting for my haircut, 2007:06:23 10:55:47

Technorati Tags: barbers, lo-rez, neo-documentary, phonecam, photography, lo-fi, sonyericsson

2007:06:22 13:22:44

Technorati Tags: Chinese, LuLu's, lunch, mophone, neo-documentary, phonecam, photography, sonyericsson

Patti Hallock's images of suburbia at night are quite beautiful, her work has a strong focus on architecture

Technorati Tags: architecture, light

Technorati Tags: phonecam, mophone, driveby, sonyericsson

So, I am now officially using a Microsoft product.

Above my old beloved iView Media Pro, which was technically owned by Microsoft, but still looked and felt like the original app.

Perhaps a review over the coming days? One thing I can say at this point is, that I cannot run the apps together side by side to see how they fare, and some menus and commands have moved, more to come.

Technorati Tags: DAM, photography, software, Digital Asset Managment, ivewmedia pro, Microsoft Expression

Joerg* over at Conscientious, has an interesting interview with, a photographer called,Todd Hido.

I particularly like this quote:-

The digital process just cannot seem to represent the subtly of some of my prints. In fact I have noticed a real “relaxing of quality” out in the world due to people accepting and adapting to lesser results**. Digital is multi-faceted for sure —it works for lots of things—but it not necessarily always better.

I agree wholeheartedly, of course don't get me wrong, the immediacy of digital is great particularly if you are publishing to the screen, but I often talked about the contemplative nature of wet analogue processes, and the ability of analogue to capture, the smoothness and continuity of the world as it is presented to us through our lenses.

*My Apologies there Joerg

** My emphasis.

[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: analogue, digital, photography

Poking around on Zeldman's site I found this gem, of an early web art experiment.

Technorati Tags: art, multi-media, web 1.0, web, zeldman

I mentioned a week or so ago, an interview I gave to ABC online, the interview is now on their Daylesford Foto-Biennale site.

At some point I'll, write a bit about some of the shows I've seen. There is so much to see it's not funny, and of course as always a fabulous display of what current practitioners are doing.

Have spent all of today fine tuning and surfing, in the process I've discovered the following:-

• Safari 3.0 Beta has been released
• There's Ad blocking software out there for Safari, but only Version 2
• Several more blogs and links on photography
• Newswire, and Netnewswire are the two big guns for news reading online.

I'm back! After a dead laptop, and a weekend away at the Daylesford Foto-Biennale, things are almost back in shape.

Even though I don't have a built in DVD burner on my laptop, I've been able to retreive most software, that had no install disk, and all my documents made prior to December.

I've got to confess the excercise was the least painful of my entire geek existence thanks to the cd roms mainly and perhaps experience, plenty of printed serial numbers and a book of username password cominations.

Sadly I lost a handful of digital photos, whci is kind of ironic in a way, in my 20 + years of making images I lost 2 or 3 negs. I actually don't know how many digita photos I've lost, but suffice to say, my entire current project is still safe.

This weeeknd I'm hoping to re-visit Daylesford, at least for 1 day, and catch some more of the excellent work on show up there.

Here's an example of the D.I.Y ethic I've talked about in previous posts.

Sadly I'm not in a postion to blog as frequently as I'd like, for the next few days, so things will be a little light on.

No doubt about it technology will fail you at some point.

Thanks to Jim Johnson, I discovered that some artists, are still astute enough to put forward political views, that run contrary to popular trends. Joel Peter Witkin's 2006 piece, entitled, The Raft of George W. Bush (2006), is simple clever and controversial, things that will guarantee it's place in history. It may not change any views or policy, but it might form a cultural indicator particularly in The United States of America, of a turning point in many people's minds about the USA's foreign policy.

I don't want to ramble on here about politics, there are others more articulate capable of discussing this, than myself, but I guess I just wanted to comment that Art and Photography is capable of causing a controversy, or at least pricking people's consciences and while the painting that Mr Witkins' has used may not be as well known as some it certainly is not an unknown in the public's consciousness. It also operates on several levels, which anyone can operate on, so the point will not be lost on as many people as some more clever and self-referential contemporary art that so common today in many art galleries.

Technorati Tags: art, photography, politics

Here's an interesting article on the BBC's site about how Mobile Phone Cameras are denting sales of wallpapers, and graphics for phones.

Technorati Tags: low-rez, mophone, phonecam, photography, wallpapers