musings from the photographic memepool [the shallow end]

Returned to the lanes in the North Carlton area recently, a gold mine of material, texture shapes and forms.

Met a chap who was adamant that the problem with image size and CCD's was the software not the the acutal CCD's themselves. He claimed it was possible to make a program convert a square to anything you wanted, ergo, square pixels become round. I think he didn't understand how CCD's work.

Yet another meme from, flickr, this time a somewhat useful one, geotagging.

I like to geotag my work sometimes it is an interesting way to add another dimension to my work, not that is ever really about geographic location.

Sometimes my work is a mirror other times it is a window.

More shots from the North Carlton Laneway over the weekend

So Schmaps an online travel directory service has used some of my images for their travel guide of Melbourne.

I have mixed feelings about this, but I put my images online with a licence that permitted it, so I guess I'll have to wear it?

For either of you who care, I've linked to the the images they used on their download-able guide below, I'm on a Mac as you both know and the download-able guide won't be ready for some time so I can't link to them in any way on the Schmap site, or even see how they look embedded in the publication.

Interior of the Hotel Lindrum, Williamstown overlooking the CBD, Museum of Victoria, Williamstown football oval, from the air, My front porch of all places!

A continuing series, of glimpses of my Polaroid project as it gets uploaded.

I am over halfway now in the scanning and processing, thankfully Photoshop™ has a nice set of features allowing a level of automation that alleviates the drudgery of resizing and converting file formats.

Recently a fellow Melbourne Flickrnaut regaled a story about a person they had photographed on the street outside Flinders St station, it wasn't a pleasant situation, and she handled it well I feel. Now the incident has made the mainstream press, in article by Terry Lane which then got picked up by the SMH.

All up; a heap of buzz has been generated by it, so to quote Oscar Wilde,

"...there's only one thing worse than being talked about
and that's not being talked about"

Flickr never ceases to amaze me in it's depth and surprising spontaneity of imagery.

Florencita, posted this image recently of what I can only assume is a fair ground in Paris, from her Paris series.

The simplicity of this image, as well as the poignancy of it has me searching for adjectives. To see this and make an image of something that seems relatively innocuous is a gift that is to be nurtured and cherished. The photograph reeks of poetry; life; death; and has several classical connotations as well as being firmly planted in it's own contemporary place and time.

Initially we see a white statue of what appears to be a male holding their face in some sort of remorseful pose, white clouds frame the sculpture, a blue sky helps emphasise the framing, in the lower half of the image, there is some buildings or functional architecture, the use and function of which is unclear, within this small building is a window, the window appears to open into another space within the environment itself a somewhat anonymous and empty one, but one that would it seems have some use for human activity. There appears to be kitchen like utensils in there, yet again no human presence other than the utensils exist.

The symbolism of this image and the underlying apparent tensions are what make this image for me, the huge white sculpture turning away from a harsh lonely and empty world, even if it is turning into the light, somehow suggest to me a poignant reflection of the current human condition.

Tis Fin.

Now enjoy it in all it's surround sound splendour

Chris, another, friend from flickr, who has the somewhat unusual distinction of knowing me before flickr, before the world wide web in fact, sends me this uri for hard to get Polaroid films.

Use if for shots like this:-

I am officially on holidays, we have just returned from Apollo Bay for 4 days, we had both been looking forward to this for some time as it's "feels" like it's been 'one of those terms'—for me anyways. Our stay was at Beacon Point, in the Mariners Cottage. Beacon Point is set on a hill overlooking the Southern Ocean with views of Apollo Bay, nestled in native bush-land.

I wondered if there would be any web access, thus proving that I am once and for all truly addicted to flickr - oh dear!

There was none.

Day One 20.09.06

Spent the morning cleaning the house and packing ready to go, I tried to squeeze in some last minute flickr action, all I managed to do was upload a handful of images, recent images. The drive up was pleasant, we did however need to stop and buy a set of leads with a 3 ^1/2 inch jack on one end, so we could run the iPod through the DVD player whilst at the house, glad we did, but mad I managed to forget.

Upon arrival the accommodation is as exactly I had expected, and I was very pleased by that. When we were researching our options on the internet it is easy to get sucked in by the eye candy used to sell these resorts. Even with both our experienced photographer's eyes in looking at images in any medium there is always a niggling doubt in my mind as to what we are seeing. All unfounded as it turned out that the unit on the inside is as spectacular as it looks on the web, and the views are to die for.

With the unit inspected and the tunes drifting out of the stereo attached to the DVD player we relaxed and flipped though our magazines, I also found what I think will be a suitable location for a series of images to be taken over the 4 days and set up a tripod ready to shoot. Over the next two days every two hours or so I jump up and make an image. Day turned to night and we watched Bleak House on DVD, a recent gift for Nik, before an early night.

Day Two 21.09.06

Breakfast is included in our deal, haven't had croissants since our 2004 trip to Paris. So breakfast was a no-brainer. Some tough decisions though were needed to be made today. Do we stay put and relax read and eat, or do we head out and wander along a local beach or have a coffee in Apollo Bay proper?

Staying put won out, the weather isn't quite warm enough to sit outside, but it is by no means terrible either and with the awesome views out the huge double sliding glass doors it feels like we are outside anyways.

An uneventful day really, reading napping, a bbq lunch, and a short stroll around the resort, all mount up to more relaxing. One or two mobile phones calls were the highlights of the morning, [hi Mitch] after which both phones were both promptly turned off.

I brought a pile of books and magazines to read, so far the magazines were the only ones to see the light of day. We had a splurge at Magnation before we left, I spent $65.00 on magazines! This got me four in total, although one did have an extra magazine inside it.

A literary reviewer I am not, but I will say I am enjoying my copy Frankie, issue #13, the best article I felt was the one that dealt with Australian Television. Is the mainstream realising that today's 20 somethings [and many others] are bored with the one-way diatribe that is TV? Websites like Youtube and Google video are far more engaging and once you work out how to find the content great fun. It also has a small photo essay, “ Saturdays Around The World” that is not bad but, I reckon they could do better especially if they used flickr as a resource for finding images. The idea itself worked, it's just that the images seemed a little insipid.

The next magazine to be devoured was iCreate, a very expensive magazine from the UK. It describes itself as the creative magazine for Mac users. It has news tutorials and a bonus CD attached. As with all these kinds of magazines, the tutorials can be a little hit and miss, but the mag is well laid out and and the tips were enough to get me thinking about some ideas I'd been tinkering with in Indesign, they actually had a tutorial on pages, the drag and drop template driven equivalent page layout tool by Apple, which I might add is quite powerful. The magazine also openly promotes it's forums, something I will investigate myself no doubt—soon.

'T' The Journal of T-Shirt Culture Issue #1 is magazine number 3 I perused, so far looking like thinly veiled advertising but the eye candy is great and I'm always on the lookout for good T-Shirts. The last Magazine remains unopened by today. But when I get around to it I'm sure Pol-Oxygen won't be a let down, this had a bonus little magazine, O₂+, describes itself as 208 Pages of Inspiring Designs, which I read as blatant advertising—in hindsight.

The day ended with a quaint Disney movie, on Austar, an hour or two of solitaire and finally a session of more Bleak House

Day Three 22.09.06

Nothing beats a home cooked hot breakfast, eggs on toast, hash-browns, sausages, bacon tomato and baby spinach, fruit-juice, tea or coffee.

Again time for that tough decision, oh wait is that rain…?

Most days we had some nice visitors too. A family of Magpies, some Parrots or Lorikeets, and some large difficult to identify black birds, ornithologist I ain't either.

After the rain stopped, we decided to head into town itself, for lunch, fish and chips of course. Not much loitering there though as neither of us are into chintzy tacky souvenirs, and while the beach itself is nice I find the rockier parts of the coast more interesting to wander along. On the return home being the sticky beaks we are we made a neat discovery of a partially demolished house site. This meant that I actually pulled out the Hasselblad, and shot 2 and a half rolls of film on the one spot.

The constantly changing light otherwise only served to slow me down, till eventually the clouds came over. The remainder of the day was spent in front of the box watching the rest of Bleak House and some other bits 'n bobs on Austar.

The unfolding spectacular weather pattern ocurring outside, was almost better than TV itself.

Day Four 23.09.06

Checkout day.

Slept-in had a lazy breakfast and packed up and headed home. I also re-jigged the playlist for the drive home.

I have had an image used over on abbotsfordblog.com, one buried deep in my stream and like so many in 2005 hardly viewed or posted to many groups, thanks to trapped in a suit it gets to see the light of day.

As I approach my second anniversary of flickr addiction I am now in a position to revisit my flickr archives and post some images here. Surprisingly image making around these parts has ground to a halt, not counting the 4 rolls of unprocessed film sitting here on my desk, and several other projects tucked away on my hard drive [that I feel have question able merit]. I also still have 2 other online projects on the back burner and a 3rd slowly bubbling away, and I haven't organised my solo show for 2007 yet.

This image made on a photo stroll with ziz and AhlzMeh, was one of my such experiences, which ended up with us drinking free beer at an opening we stumbled upon down at the VCA. This image alone has had the power to evoke so many more thoughts and memories than I'm prepared to share, but it is for me a powerful reminder why photography is such an evocative and suggestive tool.

This is one of the projects I want to contribute to.

Discarded Object Poster Project

Have you ever seen a single shoe in the gutter, a beanie on the road,or a glove on the tram, and thought about whom the object may have belonged to, and how it got lost?

Embedded within the creases and stains of these objects is a human history that speaks of usage and ownership.

Discarded Object Poster Project involves photographing lost objects and making the images into posters that will be posted around the CBD. The shift in context of the object, especially in contrast to the expected advertising image, will reflect it as a trace of a person the remnant of an action or routine.

A map outlining the posters locations will be produced and launched at Bus Passenger Studio Space in early November. The map will help access the work and create a permanent record of the posters.

Discarded Object Poster Project invites you to submit an image of a discarded object, which will then be made into a poster. Next time you see a shoe/glove/sock (anything!) simply photograph it and send it to discardedobject at hotmail dot com (as a jpeg image, 300dpi or higher if possible) including the location of where it was found.

Thankyou for considering being part of this project!

This project is supported by CLUBSproject and Bus Gallery.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australian Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

An online collaborative magazine has asked me to submit images for it's first publication, Metroblossom is:-

a collaborative space for exploring the interaction between humans and the nonhuman world. In particular, those presenting their work through this project are interested in the informal and undocumented life with which we are in constant interaction. Through these explorations, metroblossom argues that all life is meaningful, important, and more than worthy of our recognition.

They have chosen 4 images from my utterly urbane series.

The images have yet to be published and I had to submit an artists statement as well, which in itself was a good process to go through, as I re-discovered some old bits and bobs of ideas quotes text that had been piling up in various places that I put to good use.

...today.

..through my archives is a common pursuit these days, shooting seems to be more of a rarity than I'd care to admit.

By archives I mean both my flickr stream and my iView catalogues.

During a recent trawl, a handful of images caught my eye, that reminded me of Lewis Baltz's body of work from the 1970's called, "The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California". Baltz and Robert Adams along with Joe Deal are three of the main influences on me during my early years as an artist.

That recognition lead then to a search for more similar images, which turned out to be a fruitful one. Resulting in a new set. Sadly flickr won't let you create a set without a title so it's called "."

I am really starting to appreciate the benefits of the flickr site these days. It is a playground and place to experiment a place to bounce ideas off other folks. Part of me wants to treat this whole experience as a legitimate exhibition space, but part of me has trouble dealing with that idea too.

An offshoot to this trawling of the archives is that in those early naive days I went nuts uploading far too much, not being tough enough on myself. I was seduced by the speed and ease of digital.

All that has changed now, oh what a difference a year makes, [well nearly two actually].

Thanks to Streunerin on flickr for this heads up to a blog that is actually worth reading, by JM Colberg, I really like the title too!

Conscientious
Conscientious - a weblog about fine-art photography (and more)

Yahoo are asking for contributions to a time capsule they are putting together.

They are asking for submissions in several themes themes, Love, Anger, Fun, Sorrow, Faith, Beauty, Past, Now, Hope, You. They are also asking for media in a variety of formats, text audio video and of course photography which according to the flickr blog entry where I found this, is leading the pack in terms of numbers.

I had two goes at uploading something, didn't work so at least I can say I gave it a try.

This is the image I tried to up load.

I chose Faith as the category that I wanted to contribute to. [I originally wanted to choose hope but the artist's idea or maybe Yahoo's idea of what that meant isn't quite how I define hope, perhaps more on that later.]

Let me ask both of my readers this question then –
How do you define the word hope?

On the Digital Photography School Blog in fact, in an article about using light to add impact to your photography.

Just when you think you've seen it all on flickr up pops another great image maker.

This set by akiruna, reminds me of the power to transform the world into something that simply re-affirms our existence, dare I say it it fills me with—hope?

New phone with increased resolution, the ability to blog to blogger from the phone, more features yet to be explored I'm sure. One thing though and I'm not sure if it's me or not, but the interface on this phone seems marginally more elegant than my k700i, wish I could make the text smaller though.

So I guess there's going to be a flurry of cheesy mobile phone shots in these parts over the coming days, unless the novelty wears off quicker than that?

There is talk afoot of a Darkroom session amongst some of the Melbourne Flickrnauts, in the Melbourne Silver Mine Pool. Interesting idea, might be fun?

Simon Roberts a European Photojournalist, has some powerful imagery on his site I particularly like the Polar Nights series. Sadly It's a flash driven site so you will have to go poke around in there yourself to find the series I'm talking about, yet another reason not to use flash [imho].

The weather patterns here in Melbourne at the moment are perfect for photography, a brief shower followed by, sunshine provides glorious colour as all the dust is washed off things and the moisture glows beautifully in the sunshine.

Small update here as I sip my first coffee for the day in readiness to head out and snap of off the odd shot or two, this little people project is intriguing and insightful, thanks to felix42 over at delicious

Joerg over at Conscientious, has finally told it like it is regarding the HDR fad that is/was sweeping flickr these days, I vaguely remember reading about in the New York Times too. Mostly it is obviously poorly done and simply reeks of poor technical skills and a poor understanding of what a real HDR photograph should look like. Some discussion of these issues has occurred on flickr as well

This is an example of what an HDR photo should look like

Apologies to Joerg, as I got his name wrong, since edited to reflect this, again my apologies.

One contract has ended for the year, so time is now starting to free up a little, as a consequence I am going to attempt a series of articles on photographers I've encountered online at flickr, in the last couple of years.

In my, 23 months or so on flickr I have been fortunate to encounter several photographers, whose style and approach I admire, Barb is one of those people.

This image is one of hers and is one of those classic, formal street shots that speaks as much about the street it was taken in as it does about the photographer itself.

I particularly like the way the eye wanders around the image in a loose yet cohesive way. The sparseness of the image is actually a furphy, the image is rich in minor details that all add up to a wholeness that is rewarding in one sense and simply matter of fact without really being a documentary photograph in another sense. Not a single element of the picture plane has been wasted. Barb's stream is littered with these images, her sense of composition incredibly strong, and her colour sense is understated.

I'm glad to have met her in person and am happy to have her in my growing list of contacts on flickr.

In my, 23 months or so on flickr I have been fortunate to encounter several photographers, whose style and approach I admire, digiboy is one of those people, who I happen to have known before.

One of the aspects of digiboy's work is the way he uses the simplest of cameras to produce remarkably evocative images that are inherently dark and moody. If I was to ever wander the streets of Japan where a lot of of digiboy's work has been shot, I would be constantly looking over my shoulder.

Digiboy's understanding of light is superlative, his appreciation of the most mundane details outstanding.

Some people find this kind of bleak vision difficult, but I prefer images that I consume, to ask more questions than provide answers.

Even though I knew digiboy, before signing up to flickr, he is also one of my contacts who delights and surprises me on a regular basis.

A 70's photographer whose work I've always admired

My little project on blogging fellow flickrnauts has ground to a halt; sadly. I wanted to use images from their streams, but it seems a lot of folks want to protect their images and copyright. Fair enough; so I guess I'll just link to their streams, and just talk about their images without actually displaying them.

Flickr is full of ego, and to quote TISM "stinking bravado", myself included, but when it comes to unassuming visions of the world around them, Lonely Radio takes the cake, he is the quiet achiever of Flickr.

What I like about Andrew's work is the detail, he sees so much in the minutiae of our suburban lives that when isolated from it's surroundings it becomes interesting.

Signs and graffiti on their own are good fodder for the photographer, but after a while it becomes less than interesting. However Andrew's work has a quirkiness about it that makes you do a double take, the strong use of wide angle lenses and tight cropping make his images really stand out.

For example he has a shot of Banksy graf somewhere in Prahran in his stream, the use of framing just proves my point, this image is a poignant moment in 21st century living, 21st century suburban living. Made as much so by Banksy's graf as Andrew's composition.

Not to mention his insights into the contemporary Rock/Music scene in Melbourne

Again a wonderful photographer and must have in your contacts, if you have a Flickr account.

You do have a flickr account don't you…

Let me begin this entry on another outstanding flickrnaut with a disclaimer. Annene's work often draws copious quantities of superlatives from me. So forgive me if I ramble on in some sort of incoherent way with a mass of adjectives.

If you were to plan a trip to L.A. Annene's home town, where she makes most of her images, you could be forgiven that the city she lives and works in is devoid of people. Despite the lack of humans in the majority of her work, her images are bursting with life. Life that 'has just happened', scenes that are full of tension, like a crime scene without any obvious visual evidence. Her images are bursting at the seams with formality, yet they often seem at first glance casual and off the cuff, this is one of her many strengths.

Not only is she a strong photographer of her own urban environment, but she is a committed experimenter of all forms of cultural image creation, polaroids, and TV and screen images for example all speak volumes about her vision of her own culture.

Annene's influences shine strongly through all her work, David Lynch, Gary Winnongrand, just to name a few. Ultimately though what makes Annene such a worthy contact is her ability to sequence a body of work that expresses and idea, even if on the surface that idea seems bleak, it's the kind of truth that Robert Adams mentions that we need more of in our lives these days.

As part of my submission to the discarded object poster project, I went trawling through my archives for about a dozen or so images that it had been suggested would work.

A task, that ordinarily would have sunken to the bottom of the pool if it weren't for flickr and iView Media Pro.

After setting up a special set of the suggested images using tags, I then tracked down the dates that I had shot them, by year. Then I loaded up that year's catalogue in iView Media Pro, and based on the dates taken from my flickr stream, I quickly, easily and accurately found each image. Then after locating the physical disk, I archive my work to CD roms, it was a simple matter or control clicking and transferring the file to the appropriate location on my hard drive.iView Media Pro is even polite enough to ask me, how I want to handle this process.

All up a 45 minute job to track down about 13 images spanning 3 years of photography, not sure I can even do it that quick with proof sheets, as it is often a case of relying solely on memory of when an image was taken to find an image, my proofs are filed chronologically.

Currently my workflow involves, creating a catalogue of images every-time I download from the camera, then assigning keywords and any other meta-data that I see fit. Once that folder contains roughly 500 to 700 meg of data, I burn it to a CD, after creating a catalogue of the contents of the entire folder. Then each time a new catalogue is created I import the entire catalogue into an existing catalogue file organised by year. The advantage of importing catalogue files is that all keywords and meta-data is imported as well, so so long as I add the meta-data at the initial download that follows through to the final catalogue each year. Date of course are handled automatically and I assume are based on Camera meta-data and exif files.

All in all an elegant piece of software, which I am still learning the intricacies of, that is making my life and workflow much easier

Donina is one of the few flickrnauts I know who had prior to signing up to flickr an existing online presence.

Her stream therefore serves a different function to mine and several other flickrnauts I've mentioned. She uses it as a testing ground for new projects and ideas, the final images then making it to her photo-blog.

What an intriguing, emotional and contemplative body of work it is that forms her experiments. Donina is a flickrnaut who has a true understanding of the emotional power of an image, who pours her heart and soul into each and every image she produces.

Her titles like, “ the hollowness of brevity” and, “ fury and tears for the philistines”, are poetic and poignant, and offer some clue as to her motivations, yet offer no real answer to the question or questions posed.

Donina's approach to her image making is rare for places like flickr and the internet, her output while not prolific as is often the case with digital photography, is deliberate, thoughtful and dramatic.

I'm proud to list her as a contact and to have socialised with her in person, gladly I've yet to play her at pool.

A week or so a ago I started writing about some of my fellow photographers on flickr, here again is another of Flickr's under-appreciated gems. Ziz's sharp eye is matched by his sharp wit. His imagery delights in the details and the mundane. His work suggests that Melbourne is either a cafe soaked metropolis or an apocalyptic desert, a relationship I'm sure many could relate to in this fair city of Melbourne Australia.

He also is not afraid to push the boundaries of how and why an image is made. Using Toy cameras to make charming yet edgy observations about his place and his time.

Ziz, not his real name, appreciates form line and light in a way that often only many seasoned professionals can, and this was all before he even acquired a DSLR, [considered wrongly by many serious amateurs to be the pinnacle of camera gear], now with his DSLR in hand, his witty and poetic body of works just goes from strength to strength.

Kent's photography is one of those rare, photographers who can firmly plant a foot in each camp. No genre or subject matter escapes his clever eye. His appreciation for and understanding of light is up with the best of them.

Of course I might need to make a small disclaimer here in that, I too have met this fellow flickrnaut, and we hit it off like a house on fire.

Despite this, his imagery reflects his enthusiasm for photography as a whole and his pedigree in the fashion world of the 80's has stood him well with his current work using digital cameras and flickr.

Kent's fashion work has a kind of honesty that seems rare in some ways these days, the models and their poses are somehow timeless, and his attention to detail just right, not to much not too little.

Fashion though isn't only where he excels, his appreciation of, and for light itself, as well as architecture, and the more cerebral aspects of art photography are truly humbling, a rarity in commercial photographers, or the ones I've met anyways.

28th November 2005

A small note however.

Last night saw Yann Tiersen at the Corner Hotel in Richmond. A music writer and critic I ain't, but it was an interesting gig, the mixture of tunes I can only describe as eclectic.

But what really piqued my interest was the number of mobile phones held up at several times during the night, at one stage I could see 5, and wondered what the hell do they hope to record?

I mean, video of the act? Stills, of the band? Sound? How can a mobile phone do any of these mediums justice?

I enjoyed myself though and what a relief the bandroom is smoke free and well ventilated, it was a real treat NOT having to shower off the smell of cigarettes, or put my clothes straight into the washing machine after a gig.

Like all good legends this one is scant on details, but a good read nonetheless

Photography & Memory?

A recent flickr article, on the flickr blog prompts me to once again ponder, the meaning of memory and photography, after all is not memory one of the major defining factors that makes us human? The article basically suggested surprise at photography's ability to remember to aid it and amplify it.

And amazing how the description on a photo in Flickr can be part of our personal idiolect.
But also amazing is the fact that it was posted 23 months ago now.

Take this image on the left for example, a series of thumbnails, of my sets, some of which relate to times and places from as long as 2 years ago to more recently. Several memories automatically return as a consequence of looking at the thumbnails alone. I am reminded for example that we travelled extensively in the years 2004 and 2005.

I too am amazed at how much extra information comes back from looking at the thumbnails alone.

What however of a photo that has is not of anything readily identifiable? What kind of memories does it jog, for me or for another viewer? Does it, this other photo, has less value than the one where I can myself in time and space exactly and maybe even remember the other external stimuli that was going on around me? This is a sense that I often get as I flip though 20 years or so of proof sheets too, some recent proofs have even ended up on flickr.

This is a powerful feeling and one that grows in importance constantly, and perhaps is one of the reasons why photography has become such an important cultural tool in the last 150 years.

The Australian Bush-fires have had an impact on flickr.

That speaks volumes in my opinion!

Will this bring an onslaught of "Art" images revolving around the devastation as has been mentioned in other blogs out there? Personally I am interested in the scarification of the landscape, and will venture out there, camera or two in hand, when it all dies down, might even pull out the 5 x 4?

Been Using Flock a fair bit of late, hats off to Lord Of The Flies over on flickr for prompting me to give it another go.

This browser is very much geared towards to Web 2.0 and the social aspect of the internet.

Flickr forms a major part in it's design and use, along with delicious, blogging and of course news feeds. Clicking on a small icon that appears in the bottom right corner of any photo on flickr allows you to launch that person's stream at the top of the browser window and then very quickly scroll across it to see what's new in thumbnail form. If something grabs you you can click on it to view the larger picture and entire page below.

It has a built in photo-uploader, that allows quick and easy uploading directly from it's interface. Tagging is real easy and adding to your own sets is an easy next step after adding a title description and tags.

Another great feature is the snippets bar at the bottom of the screen, here you can store text and images for later use.

Bookmarking has deli.cio.us built right in, this took me a little while to realise but was most likely due to my own ignorance more than poor design on flock's part. You can choose to share or not to share your bookmark/s as you work.

All in all this browser is shaping up to be a good all-rounder. I wish however that the curser when clicked around on the screen didn't keep disappearing, and I have yet to test flock for colour fidelity.

Well a simple test seems to indicate that Flock like Firefox doesn't use colorsync like Safari, ah well.

Before I waffle on about day 3 of the process of getting organised for my 2007 solo-show, please take a moment to check out this body of work on flickr, beautifully abstract and formal very painterly, yet at the same time completely photographic, my kind of stuff.

Day 3 of working with my scanned negs for my solo show and nothing much has changed. One thing I've noticed is the amount of limitations that apply to Photoshop 5 in terms of 16 bit editing though.

In an effort to maintain maximum print quality when I finally print out these shots, I scanned the negs at a bit depth of 16 bits. I used a Nikon 9000 scanner to scan the negs, [thanks again to Ricky for getting me access to it] this scanner is very sharp. On the day I scanned, I forgot my one most essential accessories, an anti-static camel hair brush I use to dust off negs before I print/scan. Gah, now I'm sentenced to days and days of spotting. This normally wouldn't be an issue except a lot of the shots have things like power-lines in the background. If the dust sits on the edge of something like a power-line [anything with a distinct edge] it can be tricky to clone out, especially if the line is curved for example. So my favourite way around this is to make a small soft edged selection close-by and copy and paste over it. Photoshop 5.02 doesn't allow copy and paste in 16 bits. This then harks back to my comments yesterday about time and productivity. I could switch to a different version of Photoshop on either Machine to do the work, but again more time taken up with fiddling around with files rather than actually creating.

In an effort to choose the final 10 I printed out a "rough" proof of all my scans [see above], that as I said yesterday, was a feat unto itself. Eventually I will work out how to get small versions of my images onto these scale models of the gallery space,above and below. [Currently the black squares represent my images, based on them being 1 meter square]

Quiet here this weekend, Saturday, busy, Sunday, almost as busy

Also picked up a book on one of my favourite photographers, Ralph Eugene Meatyard. Interesting read it mainly concentrates on the series,"The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater". I particularly like Meatyard's idea of the billboard nature of photographs. And of course the idea of masks being used to discuss identity is not new in Photography, nor is the idea of repetition but nonetheless a body of work that is as charming and engaging now as it was in the 70's when first published, this version I'm reading claims to be the first one to honour the original idea by Meatyard.

Or is it?

This set came from nowhere as I stared at my flickr page this morning.

Back at work and too busy to talk

Well at, well over 2 years down the track on Flickr, I've begun to notice a change in how I use the service. These days it seems to be all about muckin' around with other flickr users in the DBOLRL pool, a place where smart alek's get together and cast meaningless votes on images made with low rez image capture devices

What I'm doing nowadays is uploading an image or two, making them "private" and once it has been through the grist of DBOLRL opening it up to public scrutiny

A far cry from my early days where I my mindset was coming from some other angle... what I actually can't remember. Still it's all good clean fun and who knows maybe, someone in the future will find these cyber-footprints of mine amusing or enlightening.

Technorati Tags: lofi, low-rez, mophone

So I decided to try and publicise my upcoming Solo Show on the flickr blog. In the past, if you had an upcoming event, adding it to upcoming dot org and notifying the flickr team via e-mail was all that was required to get it added to the front page of the blog. Sometimes you even got sent schwag. Well now it ain't so simple. Inevitable really I guess, flickr has turned into a monster and now that Yahoo owns it, the inevitable corporate language will creep in, along with lengthy delays in getting help. And it's that subtle language that is sending me the signal that things are not what they seemed, well I guess another year and then who knows. It has been a fun 2 ^1/2 years so far.

Technorati Tags: art, flickr, interwebs, photography

Check this flickr set out, I challenge you to get beyond the 2nd page.

Puts my time is a construct series i ii iii iv & v to shame.

Technorati Tags: conceptual, flickr, photography, weird

I've signed up to this new pool on flickr called 24 hours of flickr.

On the mail front IMAP is a little new to me, but I'm told it's a little more spam resistant. I'm the tech person in this house, so I "just make it work". Nik [seen here on the left] doesn't share my interest or patience with technology.

[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: 24 hours of flickr, computers, flickr, geek, photography

Flickr has re-jigged their slide show, bigger and better, not bad imho.

Check this slide show of my favourites

Technorati Tags: flickr, photography, slideshow

Flickr has collaborated with The Tate in London to put on a exhibition about the history of Photography.

According to, the flickr blog, there is even a pool, with categories, for continuing online submission.

Technorati Tags: art, exhibition, photography

The distinction between photo-journalism, documentary photography and art photography, has been blurred significantly over the last 10 years or so, I've created a new set, that I will use to attempt to explore this idea further.

This was the image that got me thinking.

The blurred bird, was the catalyst for that thought.

Technorati Tags: art, art theory, australia, documentary, low-rez, mophone, neo-documentary, photo-journalism, photography, theory, truth

Today I was interviewed on the telephone by Jarrod from the ABC, about flickr and my interest and involvement with it, as well as how it's impacted and affected my photography. Here's the list of questions I was e-mailed the night before. The interview itself didn't quite go exactly this way, but the gist was similar.

Jarrod, was waiting to hear back from Catrina one of the founders of flickr before he decided whether or not he would broadcast the interview, or transcribe it to the website the ABC has set up for the Daylesford Foto-Biennale, in Daylesford.

• what did you do before Flickr?
• how has it affected your photography
• for the uninitiated - what do they mean by 'communities' on flickr
• is there a difference between the 'private' (weddings, births, etc) and the 'public' (buildings, landscapes)
• what are some of the groups you moderate?
• has it pushed you in new directions?

I might post some thoughts on these questions later or over the coming days.

Technorati Tags: ABC radio, flickr, photography

Again, one of the beauties of flickr is finding work by people like casualities.

Technorati Tags: concrete, flickr, grey, concrete canvas

Found this person whilst snooping around another pool elsewhere on flickr. Not seen this approach before, but it makes sense in some way and is a change from the usual "look at me, look at me"

Technorati Tags: flickr