musings from the photographic memepool [the shallow end]

Online Book Publishing

2009-06-28T22:44:13Z

Blurb now allows you to upload a pdf for publication. Using their own templates is part of the process, but I always found their software slow and clunky on my computer.

And it is rumoured that the colour quality is better from them compared to lulu.com, too.

So look out.

Scanner Camera

2009-06-15T22:09:26Z

I recently began experimenting with alternatives to traditional digital capture. I'd thought about using a scanner somehow to capture images, and some digging around on the interent produced some good results. The main one however, used a simple cheap magnifying glass lens with cardboard apertures and a sliding focus arrangement. I figured I could do better, and with numerous 35mm lenses lying around, I figured I could get something more manageable together. So here's how I made these images.

I used a Canon, flatbed scanner I had lying around, one that I use for low end webscans. I bought some black foamcore, and scrounged up an old 35mm lens.

I cut 4 strips of the foam core to fit the scanner each being 50mm high, and the approprite width and length to fit the scanner. I then cut a piece the same size as the platten of the scanner. This had a hole that held the lens in place. I used the ever useful gaffer tape to construct it.

It took some time to realise that, I had incorrectly calculated the focal length of the lens I'd used. So by modifying the piece that held the lens so that it sat lower inside the 'housing', I had more luck.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Exposure and focus still seemed a little hit and miss, so I set up a studio arrangement, and had more luck, but of course the platten of the scanner is more than A4 in size, which puts it in the realm of an 8 x 10 inch camera, in terms of square area of light capture. This seemed a bit of a waste, and eposures anf focus were stil not at an optimum.

My final experiment was to use a Box Brownie Camera, attached to the scanner, this yielded pretty good results too. Ultimatley though, I'd like to get my hands on an 8 x 10 camera lens, say around 300mm and try to utilise the entire platten.

The last idea came from the scanner project page.

Can digital photography be made art?

2009-06-14T03:59:49Z

We have reached a certain point here in the history of western art, where history seems to be somewhat insignificant, or perhaps less significant. My training in the arts, had a heavy emphasis on what had gone before it [In all the arts]. The path was/is to an extent linear, but not in a mathematical/chronological sense. The great/new artists of the past, tried/explored/created something that had not been seen/heard before; more importantly though 'borrowing' and sometimes even outright theft was not uncommon, that, 'theft' was then re-invented.

Now we are so far down this slightly linear path albeit curved, twisted, and modulating, path that Modernist Art History is hardly taught at art school.

We can give beginners directions about how to use a compass, we can tell them stories about our exploration of different but possibly analogous geographies, and we can bless them with our caring, but we cannot know the unknown and thus make sure a path to real discovery"¹

It is as if the past prior to the turn of the century, the one before the last, matters not a fig.

What then for young people starting out? Who do they emulate, copy ridicule; other post modernists? Any wonder few people feel they understand modern art.

For me, part of this whole history of art, was the materials, concepts, & techniques explored by all artists, often in combination of all three. Not like the idea alone, as Duchamp said:-
"I am interested in ideas, not merely in visual products"²
However; for some myself included, it is difficult to reconcile the quality of brush strokes, in a Caravaggio to the day to day rumblings/ramblings of my own highly digitalised life. Image making in particular using a camera, has become a single point perspective about the moment. Millions worldiwde are participating. With so many 'creators' is anyone a 'consumer', should there be, will there ever be again, does there need to be?

Part of the difficulty in trying to be both an artist and a business person is this: You make a picture because you see something that is beyond price; then you are to turn and assign to your record of it some cash value. If the selling is not necessarily a contradiction of the truth in the picture, it so close to being a contradiction—and the truth is always in shades of grey—that you are worn down by the threat.³

If 'art' is materials, processes, concepts, techniques, how then does digital photography one of the least tactile processes known in the history of art, fit in to this equation? Given that the process of Digital photography is even more removed from the average person's ability to control and manipulate results to match their own emotions and ideas does this make it less of an art-form. Or does it? Photographic prints are still able to be manipulated to match vision and emotion, by more people more easily and more often than in the history of the medium so far. But do people want to, how many stories can be told ultimately? Stories that are expressed iin a unique way; exploiting medium's unique characteristics?

For me Digital photography, is the most cerebral it has ever been. It far more removed from the tactile wet process than many imagine, music too has always been non-tactile, in the sense of appreciating it and responding to it. Therefore being non-tactile like, music, does this make digital photography more art like, only with it's own rules in terms of speed.

In my own mind, I keep coming back to speed; digital almost instant, comparatively speaking. For many it is the 'act' of making an image that is paramount, eg barb, and pw-pix. Caravaggio had no say in the idea of speed, each brush stroke was deliberate and carefully considered.

For digital photography to real art, modern art, it needs to be freed from the constraints of it's birth and development in the last century, it needs to embrace the speed and connectivity that the internet allows, the culture jamming that is being conducted out there as well as loose any connection to the idea that it alludes to truth, or evidence.⁴

References

Roberts Adams, 'Why People Photograph' ISBN 0-89381-597-7, pg 39,
thinkexist.com
Roberts Adams, 'Why People Photograph' ISBN 0-89381-597-7, pg 43
For a more detailed and complex exploration of this idea, see Fred Ritchin's 'After Photography' ISBN 978-0-393-050240

iPhone/iPod remote

2009-05-30T22:03:44Z

Using your ipod or iphone as a remote for certain devices is well known, but how about a remote control for your camera?

Using the software made by onOne, you can tether a Canon to a computer with the remote software installed, then using your iPod touch or iPhone, control all aspects of the hoot, and preview them 'live']

As gadgets go, this is really amazing, and yes I finally confess to being a gadget geek, but those of you who know me, knew that anyway.

Organising My Archives

2009-05-23T03:36:30Z

Getting organised for the collection of Broadcast Media, using my eyeTV, and g5, I decided my archived CDs needed re-organising, it turns out I've been using a digital camera of some shape or form since 1999, 10 years folks, 10 years! I've been scanning longer of course, but as negatives, they need not be archived via CD. If you count 1998 as my start year in serious photography, this means over half of my time making images have been spent using a digital camera!

Of course 1/2 way though 2008, I got my 'DET leased' laptop that actually has a DVD burner, so that'll slow things down.

Not sure where external drives are going to fit into the equation, nor 'the cloud'.

BANKSY?

2009-05-12T22:24:38Z

gallery or street?

This article, by a British writer is tired of Bansky, I can't help but wonder; the irony of his work being sold in galleries?

[...stumbling across his work in alleys and splashed on buildings throughout London. And occasionally the artist has created work both bracingly timely and incisive (”NOLA", is a particularly good example). But it is impossible to contain the raw energy of street art in a formal art space, where any anti-establishment strains in his work are bled away beneath the expensive track lighting.]

Isn't selling this kind of art in a gallery the height of cultural hypocrisy anyway?

Hat tip to AVD

Scanner Camera

2009-05-03T02:48:29Z

Today, I am attempting to build a scanner camera, primarily for use in a class at work but just for my own curiosity, to see what kind of images I can make, I'm also thinking about an article that questions whether digital [onscreen] images can be art?

PolaPremuim, Opens a Bricks and Mortar Store

2009-05-01T03:37:55Z

This just in in my inbox.

PolaPremium is more than delighted and proud to announce the opening of the very first pure PolaPemium Shop in Berlin. This is our first step into the challenge of presenting our beloved analogue products not only online at PolaPremium.com, but offline as well. On our continuing mission to celebrate the magic of instant photography, we take our first baby-steps to develop and build a worldwide network of selected authorised PolaPremium partners. The new shop in Berlin is the shining starting point of our offline adventures and based on the experiences we collected and will collect there, we will soon start to search for more retailers and partners all over the world. So please stay tuned.

Things are looking up for Polaroid products, eh.

altfotonet.org

2009-04-30T08:57:46Z

I am very pleased to announce that altfotonet.org now has an ISSN,[ International Standard Serial Number]. This means that the National Library of Australia recognises it as a serial publication, and may at some point in the future add it to it's archive, Pandora's box.

Canon Eos 40D

2009-04-26T03:12:55Z

Currently testing a new camera for work.

Current list of likes at the moment:

two, yes 2 types of histogram available, being a 2 mere button presses away
fast, AND quiet
thumb-wheel at the back of the body for aperture and separate one for shutter at front of camera, can be used to over and under expose in Av & Tv modes
simple menu set up
weight/feel, this is a real camera.

Current dislikes, not many at the moment

focusing/focus lock, I had to read the manual to work out how to use it, not bad, but not good in my opinion.
Lens, light and plastic feeling, focus seems too, touchy and fine, crucial at wide aperture.

After using the camera on and off, over the last few weeks, I'm very impressed, it seems simple to use and operate, I guess if I had some spare cash, I'd buy one. When trying to make some teaching aids for a class about exposure I did notice however some differences between [in density] 1.8 and the other apertures I used, but never got to the bottom of it.

Looking Back

2009-04-17T23:08:20Z

Two Years; today:-

One Year today:-

It's been a while since I did this.

It's no coincidence that I uploaded 2 mophone shots. Looking at my 'organiser' on flickr, I see a few shots, around April 2007, where I remember beginning to think about using a phonecam in a more concentrated and excuse the pun focused way.

But the real reason I did this today I feel, is because I picked one of my books of Robert Adams' essays, and felt inspired to look back and see where I've been and think where I could possibly go.

In the past I have talked at length about why, what and how I do what I do, Mr Adams, sums it up far more succinctly than I ever could.§

*Attention only to perfection, however, invites eventually for urban viewers — which means most of us — a crippling disgust; our world is in most places far from clean. Photographs that suggest an Arcadian landscape are recognisable from the city dweller's perspective as partial visions, and they make us uneasy. We feel defencelessness against what we will encounter on the street. How can trees in a National Park save us from the concrete-and-glass brutalities of a BIG city? The answer is, in simple emotional terms at least, that they cannot; to be reminded of the trees makes city streets seem worse.

*page 104, 'Beauty in Photography Essays in Defence of Traditional Values'

§ The actual place names have been changed/removed, to better contextualise it, both were recognisable as American.

Robert Adams, Hasselblad Award

2009-04-16T12:32:11Z

One of the major influences on my photographic direction has been justly awarded the Hasselblad prize. His influence stems not only from his photography as subject matter, but his writings as well. I have bought and read many of his books over the years, 2 of the most influential are,

Completely unfashionable in today's post modern world, but an ongoing inspiration for me no less.

This is my favorite quote regarding, the job I do to pay the bils.

"We can give beginners directions, about how to use a compass,we can tell them stories about our exploration of different but possibly analogous geographies, and we can bless them with our caring, but we cannot know the unknown and thus make sure the path to real discovery"¹

¹ Page 39, Why People Photograph.

How quickly we forget... how quickly.

V&A and Photography

2009-04-14T10:00:22Z

The Victoria & ALbert Museum in London has a wonderful photography collection, when I was in London in 2004 I visited the gallery, looks like I need to to return, who says the tyranny of distance doesn't exist?

Walker Evans & Postcards

2009-04-13T21:05:10Z

Another Exhibition at the Met I would like to see.

This exhibition focuses on a collection of 9,000 picture postcards amassed and classified by the American photographer Walker Evans (1903-1975), now part of the Metropolitan's Walker Evans Archive.

The picture postcard represented a powerful strain of indigenous American realism that directly influenced Evans's artistic development. The dynamic installation of hundreds of American postcards drawn from Evans's collection will reveal the symbiotic relationship between Evans's own art and his interest in the style of the postcard.

This is also demonstrated with a selection of about a dozen of his own photographs printed in 1936 on postcard format photographic paper. Accompanied by a publication.

At least there is a slide show.

I like that The Met's Website, offers extensive background material on their artists too, along with a wealth of other information that is relative. Including a historical timeline

Postcards and books I've always found interesting, there's something delightful about an image designed to sit on your fridge, or just dash off a quick note to friends elsewhere.

OBSCURA GALLERY

2009-04-13T02:17:06Z

Soon to show Sony 2008 Photography Awards. Opening night, 14th of April, 7:30 -9:30pm, runs for 2 weeks

[From Obscura Gallery]

My apologies, as this is a flash driven site I can only link to the front page. Once there, click on either the right hand panel or the exhibitions link.

Thanks to "sergemarx" on twitter for the heads up.