musings from the photographic memepool [the shallow end]

Pull up a chair sit back and relax as I waffle on some more on this new blog.

My Nikon is back from the shop. Whilst it was there they found a secondary problem that I thought was due to 3rd party hardware.
The original USB cable that came with the camera lasted all of 12 months and 1 day. The cheap 3rd party one I bought to replace it didn't last long either. Well now it seems it wasn't the cable after all so maybe i'll download camera to computer more often now? We'll see?

I'm back here's the test shot that Camera Clinic took to check my camera after repairing it.

Look closely at the large file on flickr.
You will see the chromatic abberations, particularly on the top left side of the shot.
Even when shot as a raw I would expet not much more than a 12 x 16 print from this camera.

So a while back on my old blog, I asked a question. I received several reponses, and thank you.

The question itself was actually taken from an essay by Henry Holmes Smith, who was an advocate of photographic education, with an emphasis on teaching people to read photographs.

Anyway, I think in all fairness I will expand on the question, and also ask another.

First the new question.

If there are two types of photographers in the world, one whose work could be described as a mirror, the other a window, which are you?

Secondly the original question was taken from an idea in the original essay, titled "The photograph and it's readers, 1953." In it He lists 4 constants that could be used as guides for reading a photograph. Number 3 of these constants reads and I quote,

"The immense respect with which the great photographers regard the natural, the real, and the exact."^†

So has your answer changed?

And if so why?

^†Henry Holmes Smith Collected Writings 1935 - 1985. Pub Center for Creative Photography University of Arizona 1986 ISBN 0938262084

A new set has emerged from the depths of my archives, again thanks to the application, iView Media Pro.

Several are sitting on the back burner awaiting processing, and at this stage I would argue that I haven't dug that deep really. I have 4 or so years of archives from one camera, plus the ever expanding current catalogues for my recently resurrected Nikon Coolpix 5400.

You know in some ways flickr is to blame, I trawl though the photos of the people I have listed as contacts, I trawl through several of the groups I submit to and they all jog my memory of places and times where I have photographed in the past of similar ideas, memories and experiences, and it's now slowly starting to dawn on me how and why photography has become such a powerful social glue, such a powerful social and cultural activity.

Stay tuned, it's hump day here and time to sit reflect and write may yet be a day or two away.

Here's the rough scan from the roll of colour neg 120 sent to me by Jakes World, from the USA.

Still processing the final scans, 4 in total, will upload in the next few days. This is part of the Tale of 2 Cities pool/project. A great idea where chance meets intention, one photographer somewhere in the world shoots a roll of film, it is then sent on to another photographer somewhere else in the world, who rewinds the film, if it is 120, and runs it through a camera in their own city. Resulting in a roll of film that has been double exposed, with 2 sets of images worlds apart. Creating some surreal and wierd results. I am suitbaly impressed by the registration of the two shoots. The alignment of the shots is impressive given that we both used holga cameras. The randomness is intriguing it would be interesting to try and print a couple of them up to see the results.

SAN FRANCISCO - Photographer Joe Rosenthal, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his immortal image of six World War II servicemen raising an American flag over battle-scarred Iwo Jima, died Sunday. He was 94.

Rosenthal died of natural causes at an assisted living facility in the San Francisco suburb of Novato, said his daughter, Anne Rosenthal.

More

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.

More from a recent wander down the lanes of north Carlton

More shots from the North Carlton Laneway over the weekend

The first day of spring sees, me about to start another project. Probably not a good idea given the light a the moment, and the increased likelyhood of the weather getting even better, oh and not to mention the slowly lengthening days.

At the September Flickr meet, I whipped out my 5 x 4 camera and some old Polaroid film I'd had lying around since 1996. Quite pleased with the results, bit disappointed that I managed to somehow break the Polaroid back. Still I think this is my favourite as it has the surfaces and edges of a true Polaroid. And the looks and interactions of the folks involved is priceless.

For the record, we have from left to right, Melbourne's 3 most notorious flickrnauts:- Scootie, Los Cardinarlos, and Kerryn. Thanks to you guys and thanks to the other flickrnauts who volunteered to have their portraits taken by me, it was a truly special moment, look at my sets in my flickr stream and see how many are 'portraits, you'll see why. [fwiw, 100 portraits oout of nearly 3000 photos?]

Despite all this I wanna do it again. Any more volunteers?

The first of many.

A new set, from the Hasselblad, and North Carlton's lanes.

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.

I've not a lot to say at the moment, here's another Polaroid image from the roid rage project

"All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music".
Walter Pater

This quote has long fascinated me, don't get me wrong though, I am no musician by any stretch of the imagination, one day I'll learn a musical instrument I guess? But it, the quote, often makes me wonder about my own photography and music, not to mention photography generally.

Everyone can 'listen' to a song, but how many really 'hear' it. Many people can play musical instruments, sing, but how many can write a song, a good one I mean. One that captures people's imaginations, the public consciousness, sticks in history as a memorable moment time or place?

The same applies I feel to photography, even more so now that digital has become so pervasive.

What makes a song or piece of music special?

What makes a photograph special then? How does one create an image that resonates at as many levels as possible, is there even a formula? Does it all matter in the end? Is there a connection between the two music and photography?

Does this image make any sound/s?

Currently showing at the MGA, is The Inaugural William & Winifred Bowness Photography Prize. I recently visited with this show with a group of photography students from work, a fine cross section of the current state of photographic art in Australia at the moment.

For once I was caught out and didn't have either a pen OR a notebook with me, thankfully I managed to scrounge up a piece of paper and a pen from a student, thanks Kirstie. I scratched a few thoughts down on the piece of paper, and if you were thinking of visiting this photography exhibition perhaps my observations maybe of some interest to both of you?

Firstly the notes or more to the point the 'words' I scribbled down in no particular order.

• Unanswered Questions
• Size
• Type C [no non silver, bar one]
• Metallic Paper
• POMO death of magic
• CRAFT
• Art History References

Unanswered questions:-
all the images had a plaque, describing the artist's intentions, some using as much as two A4 sheets other using barely a line. Many though pose questions that they either refused to answer or were unable to answer leaving me wondering if the work was an investigation or a rhetorical question.

Size:-
85% of the work was huge, the rest large, bar one piece, a beautiful set of polaroids taken using a special macro/medical camera. Why does contemporary art need to be so fucking large?

Metallic paper:-
There several images that were printed on this paper, most of which worked well, again though I don't understand this choice, after all it is hard and smooth and cold, not attributes I would want accredited to my work.

POMO death of magic:-
Postmodernism has to my mind been a too intellectual for it's own good, much of today's art has all sorts of ideas attached to it, once you get the idea what is left?

Craft:-
call me old fashioned but whilst craft should be invisible, bad craft should be as invisible.

Art History:-
Several pieces had art history references, so if you had no knowledge of art history then, you would not understand the pieces at all see my last point about POMO and magic.

'The Passions of Light' by Emmanuel Santos

Also on at the MGA, generated a whole list of names of Angels, which piqued my interest, the images themselves however were by and large somewhat twee, which surprised me because Mr Santos has a long history in the Melbourne Photography scene, as a Photo-Journalist documentary photographer.

Still a great survey of contemporary photographic art in Australia at the moment and real swimming pool of ideas and approaches.

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.

I have a LONG association with Kodak. I have been using Kodak Films for nearly 20 years, in particular their black and white emulsions. This morning I was chasing some information about exposure. What a surprise I got when I hit the site, kodak.com, no immediately apparent link for professional photographers, what the hell is going on?

So here's the link for the pro-photographers buried under a menu at the top of the screen.

Compare this to the Australian site below.

Does this mean that Kodak U.S. no longer has an interest in Professional photographers, or have they simply lowered their level of marketing at them? I have to confess I haven't hit the U.S. Website for some time, so maybe this is not a new thing? Given that most pro's would perhaps semi-regularly check the site maybe it's something they are more than aware of already. But as far as I'm concerned, the Australian site still seems to be intent on making pro-photographers more welcome or at least give them an easy entry point to the site in general.

More from the roid rage project.

Tis Fin.

Now enjoy it in all it's surround sound splendour

Recently was asked to shoot a commercial job for a friend for the poster he is designing for the BDYFF [Blue Dandenongs Film Youth Film Festival]. It was fun and lightning paced.

This is a rarity for me, as my output is generally more contemplative and ambiguous.

The above shot, one of my favourites, worked out perfectly, a little puff of breeze blew the stuntman's cape just the right amount to make the composition perfect.

Knowing Trav, the finished poster and al round advertising for the Film Festival will no doubt be funny interesting and engaging.

I learnt a little about working in these situations and may even take on more work in the future with this kind of stuff. One of the distinct advantages to digital no doubt.

...again over on the urban-nature blog

Barb from flickr invited me over to jpgmag.com, a site about getting published and making money. Well as far as I can tell form the brief time spent there this morning. Sadly though I have no images to upload as they ask for high rez versions, so maybe in a day or two I'll upload a couple. The site doesn't seem to encourage social interaction, so I'm asking if either of my readers are in there? Given that the Web 2.0 is all about the user/s?

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.

…some ideas just aren't as good as they first seemed?

Was it my small camera's inability to really capture all the detail I wanted? Was it the moved tripod? I will sit on this one for a few days, we'll see…

Edit, here's all 34 shots

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.

Looking over my left shoulder as I sit in my study at home, this is the image I see…

I remember when I was at Uni, one of my peers claimed he could never make an image unless in a foreign or exotic place, bah humbug I say. I can't walk 10 metres some days without being bowled over by the visual cacophony that is around me. This image proves my point.

I hope.

I have had some interest in a open prac day using the labs at PIC to allow former attendees of my workshops. So now that the year is winding down I guess I better get off my backside and do something about it.

The idea:-
Open access to a Lab of Macs with Photoshop CS on them, access to a scanner, and a printer. I then drift around the room and help people when available.

Times/Costs:-
10:00am to 4:00pm, $50.00 per head, minimum of 6 attendees. Colour film processing [35mm and 120] $3 plus the Prac fee. Cash on the day.

Date
Saturday October 21 or Saturday October 28 2006.

E-mail me with your interest, I am prepared to accept Flickr contacts as well in this endeavour.

I will probably squeeze in one or two more workshops between now and December as well more info on my website.

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.

Here is the first image I submitted.

Peter Marshall over on about.com, had this to say about Robert Adams, one of my heroes and recent award winner, of the prestigious, Deutsche Börse Photography Prize

Adams pictures in some ways buck recent trends both in art and photography. They are relatively small and finely made prints, and in black and white. Shot of course on film. Of the four sets of work, his was the most traditionally photographic, and the kind of work that any new photographer would find most difficult to get accepted by the galleries today, neither commercial nor fashionable. It's good to see it recognised.

Now how to use this to get my solo show exhibited, in 2007?

The article also introduced me to this body of work, taken over a time frame of 5 years by Alec Soth. An eclectic and interesting series of images, with heavy religious undertones, a subtle reference to sleeping and some connections to some of the areas in and around the Mississippi river.

Here's a nicley distilled list of tips to help take better photos. I've just used the headings, the whole article is over on MSN. Aimed manily at people who like to wander the world at large camera in hand.

• Lens hoods, Use them Always!
• Steady your camera, if you want sharp images do everything in your power to make them so.
• Get outside more often, seeing what is going on around you is a good thing, learning to read light is a lifelong craft.
• Get outside when others don't. Capitalise on dramatic lighting situations.
• Find an unusual viewpoint.
• Keep the composition and the background simple.
• Use selective focus carefully.
• Hurry up and wait."Fortune favours the prepared"
• Don't get caught with your camera down.
• Think about different ways of framing your subject, try them out.
• Texture, kind of self explanatory really.
• Mood, use it to your advantage.
• Meaningful juxtaposition, even though I hate that word juxtaposition, it is so true, and in the urban environment everywhere.
• Always bracket [in the beginning, once you understand the intricacies of exposure, this is a last resort, see hurry up and wait.]
• Padded camera bag, handy but not essential.
• Supplementary lenses, handy but learning to see with one lens first only improves your ability to see all the time.

I offer these tips to stem the "oh I'll fix it in photoshop" attitude that is becoming more and more prevalent these days.

...how POMO!

I just realised today that, a while back I grumbled about the physical size of contemporary photographic art, in Melbourne in particular.

And 2 days ago, I was pleased to announce an award given to a photographer who's work I admire whose most recent body of work, is in fact small and finely printed.

*Cue spooky Twilight Zone type music*

On an unrelated note:-
Have a Polaroid?
Want to keep on shooting with it?
Want a Polaroid?
This is the website for you then

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)

So it seems that, in America anyway, some people have the same kinds of concerns now as, "The new Topographers" did in the 70's.

Jeff Brouws, is a photographer who looks like he is grappling with similar ideas and subject matter.

[edit]:- Jeff also has a new book out, check it out on Amazon.com

This then begs the question, "What is new?"

The way I see it these days, nothing, as we are all human and at some level we are still the same we could ever possibly be. Telling our stories in our own unique way is, I guess, what makes art new in some respects, a lesson learnt at Uni, but only now am I REALLY understanding it, exacerbated by the fact that I am about to hit the gallery proposal writing scene again.

Robert Adams in an essay in his book, "Beauty in Photography Essays in Defense of Traditional Values" discusses this issue far more eloquently than I ever could, if you live in Melbourne get in touch I'm happy to lend you the book.

Curious about the beginnings of photography? Start with this history of photography site by Dr. Robert Leggat.

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?

Sadly I have not the cash to visit this show currently showing at SFMOMA, in San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, but err if you know anyone who wants to throw some cash around, I'll gladly go there and give a full report on it. I guess though the best way to see a show like this is Google the names of the exhibitors and put together your own exhibition of work.

The body of work I'd most like to see is that by Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel who are best known for their book 'Evidence' (1977) which used images found from a 3 year search of files and archives of over one hundred American government agencies, educational institutions, and corporations, and published 59 of them re-contextualised as a work of photographic art.*

A view I've long held and felt fairly passionate about but never can quite articulate it as well as I'd like to.

I guess the closest I will come to seeing this body of work is owning the book now reprinted and available of course on Amazon.

*http://photography.about.com/b/a/257686.htm

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

No doubt about these cameras and their ability to distort and misrepresent eh? I mean a mobile phone will record what is presented to it, but it has no option to selectively focus, a fixed lens that is usually wide angle in nature, removing the need for focus and foreshortening everything in it's path, I mean really?

Surely I don't look like this?

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.

Oh to be financially capable of travel at a whim, or at least short notice, another exhibition in the States that I would love to see, talk about a who's who of photographers.

Where We Live: Photographs of America from the Berman Collection

• Robert Adams
• William Christenberry
• William Eggleston
• Joel Meyerowitz
• Stepehen Shore
• Joel Sternfield
• George Tice

Just to mention a few.

About the show, from the Getty site itself:-
Bruce Berman, a film producer and head of Village Roadshow Pictures, hunts for photographic evidence of 20th-century American lifestyles—the homes, cars, churches, bars, and theaters that once comprised our national landscape. He channeled his respect for midwestern painters such as Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton and his love of the bold colors of Navajo weaving and quilts—not to mention his love of Technicolor movies—into a search for color photographs of the American landscape and built environment

Ah the dream of a bottomless pit of resources with plenty of flexible time to use it.

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.

... my most recent purchase, by Robert Adams.

Once again a soft and reflective book, containing some quiet gems that have the potential to smooth anyone's photographic journey.

The inspiration behind photographing in these kinds of places, the way I do.

Rant warning here!

Been looking at a couple of sites that Joerg Colberg over on Conscientious has been pointing out, recently.

Flash player seems mandatory, why?

Apart from the usual usability issues, about flash, what do these photographers do when they want to make a small change to their sites, what of the people in the world not running high speed internet connections and high powered computers?

What if I want to dwell on an image for longer than the flash programmer has deemed suitable, what if I want to choose my own path through the images in their portfolio rather than one deemed a by the photographer, an advantage I guess

I gave up on the 3 sites that I clicked on from the Conscientious blog, and I'm on ADSL here at the moment, even though Spencer Murphy's seemed promising.

…elsewhere on the web, barb and myself have contributed to an online project called discarded object project

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

...or, “ There's only one thing worse than being talked about and that's NOT being talked about.”

According to the Age, the public are getting on on the act of the Paparazzi by using their mobile phones to snap Celebrities in action on the streets.

I have mixed feelings about this. Do celebrities have the right to privacy or would they rather be ignored?

If they have hit the big time and are milking the gravy train then why shouldn't some humble Jane or Joe, cash in on it as well?

Fame, or is that infamy, in the 21st century is a complicated thing, something sought by many, look at Big Brother for example and Australian Idol, yet lasting fame is not easy to achieve, who were the others who didn't win the first BB in 2000 for example?

Personally I enjoy my mobile phone's camera for the creative potential it offers me, if I try and make a portrait with it for example, I'm usually upfront and people I point it at are aware of it's limitations and act accordingly. The whole reason I use it for portraiture. The ability to quickly and easily record fleeting moments is also a bonus for me, coupled with it's limitations in exposure and focus and D.O.F, I'm more than happy to admit that rarely a masterpiece will come from it. But there is still something intriguing about an image made this way.

Creative ideas aside, it has the potential to become a real cultural issue.

• NYT arcticle
• Sunday Times
• Sunday Independent

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.

Joerg Colberg over at conscientious, is pondering the issue of imagery made of disasters which is then paraded as Art in Galleries.

Robert Adams has an answer or two here, in an essay about Frank Gohlke's photographs of the storm that swept Wichita Falls, on April 10 1979, that ranked 4 on the Fujita Scale, he talks about form and meaning, and of metaphor.

“ His composition implies a belief in the endurance of meaning within an apocalyspe.”¹

In the same book he also writes a lengthy article on “ Photographing Evil”, which I'll quote here, in an effort to offer some explanation as to why Photographers need to do this kind of work.

“ The point of art has never been to make something synonymous with life, however, but to make something of reduced complexity that is nonetheless analogous to life and thereby clarify it.”²

Not being the articulate writer that Mr Adams is I am unable to argue at length about the ideas being discussed in his books or offer much but to offer these couple of small snippets of hope for Joerg. Not to mention that I am not one to have the balls or temerity to go to the kinds of places such as war zones or sites of disaster and make images.

Not that I really call myself a writer, so here, enjoy this new set, all thanks to analogue.

Be sure to check the slideshow out, the work itself is nearly resolved, [sequencing is an ongoing and never ending process really] unless I find more walls and concrete.

On a recent trip in a car as a passenger, over an extended period of time, I had another go at making images using my Sony Ericsson K610i 2 mega-pixel camera. The results reminded me of the now famous image by Lartigue, and I decided to try and produce a body of work while in the car.

I was happy with about 12 or so of the shots. They now form my first series based around the idea first popularised by Lartigue with his image entitled, ‘Car Trip, Papa at 80 kilometers an hour 1913’.

This of course gives rise to the idea that photography can still surprise and delight with the way it freezes and captures time.

Technically I think that the reason the poles and verticals look slanted in the images captured by a mobile phone camera pointed at 90 degrees to the direction that the vehicle is travelling is because it is a leaf shutter. The objects that are closest to the camera show the effect the most, with the speed of the vehicle is a determining factor also.

The real magic here is that the images themselves were a real surprise, and a little difficult to predict bringing back that real magical feeling that goes with the act of using a simple machine to freeze/capture/distort the world as it passes.

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.

I have been accepted in to a small artist run space for a solo show in 2007. The space is called Trocadero Artspace, and the show dates are, 21 March to 1 April 2007.

The question now remains, use which 12 images from 'Across the River Styx'.

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.

Just bought Tom Waits' new album.

Not much else needs to be said really.

Except go buy it!

Oh and the photography artwork on the last few albums has been awesome. Self-portaits anyone?

With the social season beginning to amp up, and with a State Election looming, the sad yet inevitable pending departure of this years crop of students, at PIC is somewhat pushed out of my mind. A welcome relief really. Despite the pressures of teaching in a creative field that I also practice, it's always a sad time to see students move on. What perhaps is the most burdensome though is the workload of administrative tasks that predominate my day of late. In fact really it is a constant juggling act that is shared by many in the arts.

Take Tod Papageorge for example an Artist I'd been exposed to in Art School, but had forgotten about. It turns out that he has been teaching for some time at the Yale School of Art.

I am pleasantly surprised by his re-emergence.

One of the reasons his re-surfacing is surprising is that he was a 35mm street photographer in the 70's and the current mood these days is far removed from the idea, that you can follow intuition and wander around and stumble upon photographic gems and 'moments' and then produce a meaningful body of work.

To quote Tod Papageorge:-

...there's a failure to understand how much richer in surprise and creative possibility the world is for photographers in comparison to their imagination.

This idea has turned into a quest for me, using film and the meditative process of reflection after wandering around camera in hand simply 'looking', then allowing a certain amount of time to pass before really examining my proofs and 'thinking' about what is going on.

After all who was it that said… “ seeing comes before thinking”

I really appreciate and am conscious of the sense of community provided by sites like flickr, and jpgmag, but in a noise to signal ratio world [where the signal is low] it's often difficult to get noticed, and noticed for the right reasons.

Sites like jpgmag, seem to have come from that need of recognition that so many folks hanker for. I wish I could say that I don't really suffer this, but hey I'm human and being ignored is something many humans don't shine to very well. So in the spirit of the online community that has developed over the last couple of years around photography, I ask both my readers to vote for my images on jpg mag.

While we're at it, please vote for barb, charlie, donina, gil hamish, mike.

Thanks to Alec Soth and Joerg Colberg, I've spent some quality time with some interesting links today, A.D. Coleman a photography writer who I respect, has an old school site that is homely yet a bit out of touch with contemporary web design and content delivery. It could be a blog, but I'm not sure it is? Worth revisiting though.

Another gem, by Bill Jay, is a site that allows you to download his writings as .pdf files, again kinda quaint and worthy of further exploration.

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.

Born in 1969, Isabelle Hayeur lives and works in Montreal. She completed a BFA in 1996 and a MFA in 2002 at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Since the late 1990s, she has been known for her large-format digital montages and her site-specific installations while she also produced public art works, videos and net art projects

Also, here is a bad interview by some one who doesn't REALLY appreciate Tom Wait's music. Either that or they just edited it poorly. I have to confess, I've talked about music and art in the past, if I WAS to align myself with a musician Tom Waits would probably come in first, followed by TISM.

Not sure if listing TISM is a good thing though?

Speaking of contemporary edgy punch in the face imagery.

An interesting approach to story telling, and narrative is used on this Website of Tim Hetherington 's work

Just returned from a day or two away, in the hills, with no web access.

I'm thinking of taking a brief hiatus from blogging.

To quote, John Cato, one of the men attributed with setting up photographic studies at a Tertiary level in Melbourne.

“ I use a camera”

Ok so shoot me. In the last few days I've managed to take a small step back and breathe a little, there is light at the end of the tunnel after-all. So without further ado I am going to ramble on for a few sentences, my apologies to both my readers if you came here for something scintillating?

I mentioned recently that I'd been in the hills for a few days, photos on flickr to come, it was a small school excursion, that had me in the hills. Whilst there, I had a "discussion" with another photographer regarding, craft and image making with a camera, and the resulting images, or rather prints.

Basically the photographer felt that the image was paramount, the act of making the image or capturing the moment, the only motivation needed all else was secondary.

Being a camp and a weekend, I was in no mood to try and get him to think any other way.

This particular photographer is prolific, perhaps too prolific. He carries his 35mm film camera everywhere, a good thing I might add, he makes a lot of images, also a good thing. What he doesn't do is take the time to print his images in a way that makes them exceptional. So today I then wondered why not just use a 2 mega-pixel point and press, or a mobile phone? Why lug around a camera tha requires extensive input, pre-exposure and post exposure to make an image? Lo-fi cameras such as my Sony Ericsson Mobile Phone camera and my wife's Minolta 4 mega-pixel camera, now do an adequate job of representing the world placed in front of them, under the right conditions.

This then got me thinking about cameras and our relationship to them. Understanding how these machines work and appreciating their limitations forms a major part of the process of image making. If someone can let go of the technology and understand what a camera is and isn't capable of this act can potentially lead to images that push the boundaries of what a photograph is and what a photograph says.

After nearly 20 years of image making using a variety of film formats from 126 through to 5 x 4 inches, as well as several pro-sumer digital formats, I've come to appreciate the things I've learnt about light and surfaces and composition. I've come to learn the limitations of film, paper, Charged Coupler Devices, digital files and lenses. I've also come to appreciate the way the camera, hides, lies and distorts. Nothing gives me greater joy than to see a well printed image of something that I think I can recognise, as most definitely a photograph of something, but needs a second look to understand exactly what it is.

Only superb craftsmanship can produce this kind of image, and my understanding of image making is that there is a whole chain of inter-relationships that depend on each other to produce quality images. Once one of these links are broken, the results are cut loose and float uncontrollably.

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.

Some would argue that summer is the best time to make photographic images. In Australia, it's the worst time, unless you can be at your location as the sun comes up, or be there an hour before it starts to go down. However this week has proved to be an exception. The haze created by the bush-fires in the countryside around Melbourne, is changing contrast in a way that I've never had to even contemplate before? If it wasn't for the preparations I'm getting into for my 2007 show I'd be out there madly testing and shooting to see what I can get, particularly with film.

Fortunately many others have been shooting around Melbourne in these adverse conditions.

Image courtesy of barb.

Thanks to the interwebs and word of mouth by one of my students, I have some work showing in Melbourne.

The Discarded Object Poster Project, which both myself and barb have submitted work to, will be opening Tuesday 12th, at Bus Gallery Passenger Studio Space, 117 Lt Lonsdale St, 6 - 8 pm.The show runs, until Sunday 17th December. Tours to view the posters around the city will take place on Wednesday 13th and Sat 16th at 12pm, leaving from Bus Gallery.

I never would have thought that word of mouth and the internet would have played a part in my creative output

Barb has had her image of the sunset over the beach published online by the age

A Grass roots campaign, has begun to attempt to re-instate the Citi-bank Portrait Photography prize and exhibition at the AGNSW*.

There is a flickr group that allows you to showcase your best portrait in an effort to show the folks at AGNSW* what they are missing out on, as well.

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?

Photoshop CS 3 is now available in beta!

More learning is just around the corner, so I can keep my photoshop workshops current.

JPG mag has a voting system in place where you can upload and vote on image, if successful you might get your image in the hard copy of the magazine.

I've submitted one image to this months theme, I'd appreciate it both my readers voted.

Why do I feel so dirty?

As I ran a workshop in Photoshop over the weekend I didn't get much of a chance to have a play with Photoshop CS3. One thing though I learnt was that my ability to convert my raw files using Photoshop 7 has been removed! When I delete the beta version hopefully this will correct itself? Another thing I learnt is that you can only use a CS2 license not a CS license number to activate the full functionality of the beta software.

Why am I NOT surprised? Of course Photoshop are determined to sell you the latest, fair enough too I guess, they are a company they need to continue to make money. What worries me though is the must have the latest and greatest mentality that exists in these kinds of things.

Everything I do in photoshop revolves around curves, levels, adjustment layers and layer masks, all features that have been available since version 5. Sure 16 bit editing* has come in since then, sure, the History Palette has also been implemented since then, and sure the Lens Correction filter has been an added bonus as well, do I NEED any of these features, no. Well the 16 bit editing is a bit of a must but as for the rest, whatever. But hey I open an image I crop, I adjust levels, I burn and dodge a little I emphasise colour slightly, I sharpen, all of this is gone globally and or locally on an image, do I need any of the other guff no, but more importantly do my students?

What my students need is to be able understand what constitutes good exposure either digital or analogue, what constitutes good lighting, and good composition, the rest is simply workflow and can almost be automated, on a global image level anyway.

So, do I need photoshop CS2 or 3? No! Would I appreciate it if as an educator I was given a real opportunity to find the strengths and weaknesses of an application by trying it out properly, so I can then share this knowledge with my students. Abso-fucking-lutely. Is this ever going to happen, I severely doubt it.

I want my students to understand first principles, I want my students to understand the idea of finding a workaround, I want my students to be creative and critical thinkers, so sorry Adobe, I'm off to find a creative solution to the problem of modern day digital photography editing and I beginning to doubt that Photoshop CS3 is part of that solution.

...and popular isn't always the best, I'm told that this photo-blog is popular, I can see why it's popular but that doesn't make it good work. It is all obviously processed in a post production tool like photoshop. Over processed at that!

Save the Australian Photographic Portrait Prize now has it's own site please sign the petition and help re-instate this important cultural event.

The campaign to try and re-instate the Citi-bank Australian Photographic Portrait Prize, is well under way. We are starting to receive responses from galleries and curators, and we've had some input from political campaign manager types as well. Kent is constantly tweaking the site [if you haven't yet signed the petition please do so now!]. You can even check out previous winners of the prize to let the gallery know people are interested.

There is apparently a legal workaround with older versions of Photoshop to extend the beta's life, I am still waiting however to hear back from Adobe for the answer. I guess it's to be expected given the Christmas period and all?

So now I ring the help line and get put through to tech help. Tech help claim that it is not possible to extend the life of the licence beta with an older license number, and could I send them the file in question where I read that this could be done.

This is spiralling out of control

I have to find the file and send it back to them!

What ever happened to customer service? The shear fact I was told NO you must have a CS2 licence to do this blew me away! Keep going Adobe, you app is looking less and less likely to be the application of choice taught in MY college

Well I guess for a change*, I have egg on my face, I can't find the read-me file that I could have sworn allowed you to use an older Photoshop Licence to extend the beta of the Photoshop CS3. It seems I was wrong. I cannot find the file in question and the only read-me that comes close only talks about upgrading to CS2, ah well. Looks like Photoshop might be going to take a step back in our program at PIC? There are alternatives.

I've also e-mailed the support team at Photoshop to express my concerns over this issue. Part of me wants to think that they will take notice, but another is more realistic.

Here is a copy of the e-mail I sent:-

Hi I am an educator/artist/photographer, I teach photography and photoshop, to post secondary students, over 100 students a year in fact. Photoshop has been the main photo editing tool taught in our college for many years.

Needless to say I was excited to be given an opportunity to trial the beta version of CS3.

However, my disappointment sank to great depths, after speaking to Technical help today and was told that older Photoshop licence numbers can NOT be used to extend the 2 day trial period of CS3.

Given that I am unable to reasonably evaluate the software, I will no longer be in a position to advise as to it's suitability for my students. The outlay for my college is very high and I am not prepared to pay for a product that MAY not suit our needs.

I will be advising ALL my future students to seek out and find alternatives to Photoshop, and personally will investigate options open to myself and my students for cheaper smaller and faster applications to use to edit their photographs.

Yours Sincerely

Stuart Murdoch

*For those of you who know me this is a joke.

Here's the final word on the issue of Photoshop and their money grubbing attitude, at least they responded very quickly, pity about the grammar and spelling.

Dear Sir,
Thankyou for your email.

http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/pdfs/200612/121406Photoshop.pdf

Above is a link that has information about Photoshop CS3 Beta Version.

I certainly understand your frustration about not being able to fully use the Trial.

Though it is a trial version and only last for 2 days, it might be possible to download the trial onto another computer, I hope this may be helpful?

Adobe Customer pride themselves on being good at what they do, and giving 100% commitment in all they do.

We of course are binded by rules , that for example apply to trial versions being available for a certain period of time.

I hope this is of some assistance.

Warmest Regards and Season's greetings are sent to you!

Paul.

Bruce Fraser and Ruth Bernhard both died before Christmas.

Farewells; like eulogies, are difficult at the best of times for me anyway.

Bruce was responsible for creating the colour profile "bruceRGB", a profile we use at my work, my condolences to his family.

Ruth was a little known woman artist renowned for her study of the female form, who was mentored by several of the greats in the history of photography, I hope I get to live as long as you did Ruth.

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

Many people like to personalise their computers in many ways, using different icon sets to the ones that come with the computer is one of them. I am no exception, of course though I like to try and find photography related ones. Rarely is there much out there. As a consequence,I make my own using my small collection of cameras, I photograph them and make icons using the neat little free-ware app called cocothumbX.If you have a mac and would like some let me know I'd be happy to share them.

While I am sitting here writing this on my g4 iBook laptop, my G3 desktop machine running OS 8.6 and Photoshop 5 has the ubiquitous clock icon spinning away madly. I have a 70 meg file open and am simply copying and pasting to clean up an the image I am working on. I have been 'cleaning up' this image for over 3 hours. Not unusual in this day and age of high rez scanners capable of capturing everything as well as the grain of the film.

Earlier this morning I wanted a rough proof of the final 15 or so images I had scanned ready to edit down to the final 10 that will fit in the space.[yesterday I spent a few hours mocking up a 3d version of the space to visualise how the prints will look in there]. Given I had no way of connecting my older computer to my modern printer, or even connecting it to my new laptop, just getting a printed proof of the images proved a task in itself.

All up I'd say over 2 days of work have been spent on this show so far, and for which I have little to show. I remember thinking along these lines whilst doing my masters project in the late 90's. I seemed to spend equal amounts of time wrestling with my computer as I did actually making things. At one point I lost an entire week over an extension for my graphics tablet. This sort of stuff never happens in a darkroom, well rarely. You go in, set up your chemistry, get it to temperature and start printing. After an hour or two a decent but wet print should be in your hands and after a week of leisurely 6 hour days 12 - 24 prints should be ready to mount.

With computers forming such a large part of my creative output these days, it feels like things move at a far less productive pace. Even working between an Os 3 generations apart has it's moments.

Why am I using what is effectively a 10 year old OS and software? Both my astute readers may well be asking. There are several parts to this answer, some of which I have elaborated on in the past, others I may elaborate on in the future.

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]

While I take a break from the tedium of spotting prints, check this photographer's work.

A bit over 12 months ago I afforded myself the luxury of wandering around my local suburb, camera in hand open to anything that caught my eye, those were the days.

Light like this is rare, this time of year.

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.

So begins the creative process of print manipulation. This in some ways is the hardest aspect of all. Where to start? When to stop, are all compounded by digital technologies. At least in an analogue environment you had to make a small test to determine a start time around which all other moves were based. With digital, well there it is on the screen, what more needs or can be done is the question you must ask, and hopefully if you have access to a good printer profile you can "preview" your image and make some decisions in the right direction.

Printing, on the other hand isn't going to be so straightforward? First question, how big? Well I know the answer to that up to 1 metre square. Next question. Inkjet print or Type C print?

Each have their relative merits, Type C prints, are tested for their durability, and being a chemical process are known to last for a certain amount of time, Inkjets are claimed to last as long, but of course this is based on accelerated testing methods, not real life, I have some inkjet prints made in 2000, they are ok but not perfect, unlike all my silver gelatin prints which ARE perfect still some dating back 20 years. The advantage of the inkjet printing is the vast amount of surfaces and materials one can have work printed upon. There are also some very nicely created printing profiles out there, that when used with a particular paper give almost silver gelatin photographic results.

Of course if I was simply, printing largish silver gelatin prints between 8 inches square and up to about 24 inches square, I would use silver gelatin paper. Which brings me back to where I started, and instead of spending my holidays on a computer, I would have been locked away in a darkroom making prints.

Indeed, "Everything in Photography is a trade off".

Yesterday I talked about where to start with creative manipulations on a print. Last night I found this article on the online photographer's blog, dealing with interpreting print making in a digital era.

Well Inkjet printing now becomes more of an option, I had heard about a profile or rip that allowed very good control over b&w prints from Epson Printers, a quick e-mail and I found the profile/rip in question. Now I can run my own small tests at least before I make any final decisions one way or the other.

Well the initial worries about finishing my images in time for the show in have subsided; for the moment.

I am trying currently to spend quality time with the images I have and just make minor tweaks here and there. Not unlike a conventional darkroom where you make a test strip then a work print then several versions of that work-print until you are happy with the result.

This process in a darkroom environment, for me anyway, has always been one where decisions are easy to make, and sometimes the neg just prints beautifully, other times it has you scratching your head for hours, or even days, at worst months.

The speed of digital is of course somewhat of antithesis to this approach and somewhere in my Masters project back in 2000 I noted this. [One day I'll upload part of the written component, the actual body of photographic prints produced lives online in 2 places, flickr, of course and stunik.com*] So to tweak put away then come back a day or two later seems to be working for me at the moment.

The converse of this is true also. When do you stop? When is an image finished?

I guess time is a deciding factor here. The best way to avoid this maybe to prepare images at the same time as writing gallery proposals and when a show gets accepted, cull down from a body of work already made?

Hopefully both my readers can see the differences between these "work prints" and the original scans that I uploaded as part of my 'Across the River Styx' 2007 proposed set on flickr. These are work-prints in their 2nd draft.

*this is a page buried deep in my old site in a dusty and cobweb ridden-corner that is unlikely to get a facelift, unlike my photoshop workshop page.

In response to a reader request*, I am posting two images in a side by side comparison, both are work prints.

I am going to leave any discussion about them till after the weekend, as I am running a weekend workshop in Photoshop this weekend, to pay for the mounting costs of the show of course. I will say this much, the change in orientation on this first one is an aesthetic choice and may yet change back depending on final planned hanging.

Original scan from proof.

First Work Print

This one has a long way to go? Original Scan

First Work Print

Not too much to say really, hardly surprising after 2 days of talking about photoshop.

This scene at the end of our street is one I've had my eye on for a while, very happy with this shot, the sense of pace and light combined with the weird combination of the play equipment and industry speak volumes to me about modern suburban living, in Australia anyway.

I'm also really enjoying ShoZu at the moment an application that allows direct uploads to flickr straight from my mobile phone, best of all it's free.

Insert the image.

Duplicate the image layer.

Adjust top image layer, using appropriate tools.

Curves have been applied.

The result.

Add another layer to start making some local adjustments.

Start tweaking numbers

In this instance I've increased the value by about 10 units, almost a zone.

Brush all layers in and out in varying opacities as needed, be careful about when to stop. The conversion to jpeg seems to have buggered up the subtlety of the brushing in, trust it is smooth and subtle.

The power of this Application is that you are concentrating on the image, surrounded by minimal palettes, no other clutter on the desktop, and the application is only working and using the pixels you need to see and work on.

Kent, a friend, [and damn good photographer to boot] from Sydney was interviewed by the Sydney Morning Herald recently. He is also being interviewed by Radio 702 at 8:45 am tomorrow, 18.01.2007.

Go Kent, let's hope that the Citibank Australian Photographic Portrait Prize either gets re-instated or picked up by another gallery.

Kent's radio interview on saving the Australian Photographic Portrait prize, should be able to be downloaded from the ABC 702's pod-casting page. The morning show, where Kent was interviewed, may also eventually upload the interview.

If somebody finds a down-loadable pod-cast first please let me know, so I can link to it.

Well Done to Kent, all his hard work paid off and now according to the Financial review, the show will move to Canberra in 2008

Here's the news lifted directly from the petition site, which by the way you can still sign to show your support for the show.

I've been busy in the darkroom of late, but I am starting to think about a new workshop looking at Phone cameras and online publishing, as the new school year looms.

Without my camera phone I could have not made this image, would I have even contemplated making it without my little Sony Ericsson k610i?

Does anyone have any thoughts about their phone cameras [or phone cameras in general], has either of my readers changed their approach to their image making because of them, or are they just a chintzy little tool to be used selectively for a lo-fi grab when a bigger camera is not available?

So yesterday I posed a question about Phone Cameras and thanks to all who responded. I've got to confess it's was a slightly loaded question, as I said I am thinking about putting together a short course/workshop in Phone Camera use and this is all heading somewhere.

Personally when I am trying to share some knowledge about anything I often try and list a series of pros and cons about what it is I'm try trying to share. And sure enough there has been some additions to the list by my readers.

While Phone Camera's up until recently had such poor levels of resolution, and small storage capacities, the whole idea of doing anything other than sending the photo to another phone user or posting on the web or e-mailing these images, were incomprehensible to phone users. Now with increased resolutions and phone storage capacities their uses are able to be extended, with some provisos.[Avant-garde image makers think differently I believe.]

Remember these are the modern equivalent of the 126 and 110 cameras of the 70's the latest incarnation in the idea that George Eastman brought to the Western world way back in the 1900's. Many many family histories have been recorded using these small cameras, not so many serious bodies of work though?. I am at a loss at the moment to remember anyone who has used a 126 or equivalent to produce a serious body of work however, and I don't consider Lartigue a candidate here as cameras were still in the realm of the wealthy middle and upper classes of the time.

Has anything changed since then that would allow people to make and record their lives differently? Well computers and the internet have impacted dramatically, the way folks capture and share images, these cameras are more than perfect for recording family histories, and small and easy enough to share almost immediately. With most people's expectations of these images are along the lines of, can I see what is important, faces scenery etc, these cameras then serve this function well under the right conditions, outdoors in bright sun for example. They are then able to say to themselves, "I'll send it or have it printed for my Mum/Aunty/Friend".

Such is the proliferation of these small cameras, that no longer do you even need a computer for this, most photo labs, in Melbourne anyway, have the ability to accept all sizes and shapes of memory cards to enable printing from any cameras including phone cameras or accept bluetooth transfers. So already we have the ability to not only electronically share our phone camera images but now print them out using traditional min-lab i.e. small prints.

I believe that electronic sharing of these images is more than enough to justify their use, the proliferation of photo sharing sites out there along with websites interested in the idea of alternative image making means a body of work can be produced and shared easily and quickly with as many like-minded people as you can find. Provided you accept the limitations of these cameras, and plenty of limitations they have.

So what other things can we do with these cameras? Well unless you are prepared to accept great seas of digital artefacts and horrendous lens aberrations, it's highly unlikely that you will be making 1 meter wide prints and exhibiting them, if on the other hand you are happy with a small print there are some other options outside of online publishing. With access to any desktop publishing software and a decent quality printer, you can print your own cards and books thus adding some meaning to the work you are making using these discrete little cameras. Possibly even creating a level of revenue that could justify the time and effort spent on printing them. There are even several online services that allow you to upload and publish, books cards and calendars, to an online store. This is based on the premise of a small book as file sizes are still on the low side to make anything bigger than 6 inches by 4 inches. I guess though, a 4 or 5 mega-pixel phone camera is only months away?

Hmm waffled on a bit today sorry?

Anyway here's my table of pros and cons.

I guess if I really thought about it, photographers like Garry Winogrand [his wikipedia entry] and Robert Frank, have helped the cause of the snapshot Aesthetic, I wonder though what Mr Winogrand would have thought of mobile phone cameras, as for Robert Frank, I'd like to ask him personally about his thoughts on the matter?

It seems I'm not the only one musing on the implications of phone cameras.

Thanks to Joerg over at Conscientious here's a little movie on the very influential photographer Stephen Shore, and one of my favourite photographers.

His large format colour work of the 70's helped make colour an accepted art form. The type of camera he uses, and 8 x 10 inch, using colour neg/C41, and the approach is at the other end of the scale to the way a phone camera user would work.

So yesterday I finally got to print a print on our Epson 2100 printer at PIC. Close very close, some work required, and the profile from, Roy Harrington, is very good straight out of the box.

Or is it?

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

... can it make everything beautiful.

Back at work and too busy to talk

Yesterday at work, we were discussing an exercise the students undertake to understand Depth Of Field.

Historically, we get them to take 1 shot at 3 different apertures in one location on a tripod then shift focus and repeat, finally focusing on infinty and repeating again, as well as a portrait at 3 different apertures, on a tripod.

A year or so ago I did this exercise using a Canon 350d, and the differences were NOT as apparent, as a traditional 35mm camera, I left it at that and haven't given it much thought since.

When I mentioned this in the meeting a passionate discussion then ensued as to why this was the case as we are contemplating getting the students to do this assignment using digital cameras. Beginning students need to see big differences quickly and the 350d wasn't giving the results I'd expected.

As a result, we found the answer. It has to do with surface area of the light capturing surface and size of circle of confusion. The smaller the film/sensor area the more D.O.F you have.

Let's let Bob Atkins explain it.

The difficulty for us to teach the principles of D.O.F is that all cameras have different sized sensors and only cameras like the $4,000.00 Canon have 35 x 26 mm sensors. A camera few students can afford and the type that is not held in stock by us because of their delicateness.

Today I am going to shoot the exercise on the Pentax k100d, which has a larger CCD than the Canon 350d. I may post the results over at flickr, we'll see?

Some more links:-

• http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/tech/dof.html
• http://photo.net/learn/optics/dofdigital/
• http://www.outsight.com/hyperfocal.html#digital
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field

I shot the first half of the DOF exercise on Friday. I used a zoom and a fixed lens. Just looking at the lens markings on the zoom confirm yesterday's post.

The second half requires either a portrait or a still life.

The reason we use either a portrait or still life is, because when the subject is closer than 8 times the focal length of the lens the relationship of f/g and b/g DOF changes.

The top image was made using the fixed 50 mm lens, which actually has an equivalent 35mm focal length of about 80mm

Here are the two lenses used, it's interesting to notice that, the Zoom lens made for the Digital camera, has a smaller spread of distances under 1 metre than the fixed lens.

Based on this mock-up, I feel 9 prints will be too many.

Fantastic work

Trying a new photo site, aimed at selling mainly, so not that much use to me, we'll see, already a few flickrnauts moving in.

Pressure is mounting for the upcoming solo-show, have collected 2 images from a Pro-Lab, not happy with the 'look' of the prints at all. However, I have been fortunate to have been put in touch with an Art School that prints large format. Had a quick chat last week with the guy in charge of the printing and am now proceeding with 7 inkjet pints 1 metre square.

Now I've just got to find 7 times $140.00!

Outside said art school I found this piece of graffiti, and of course the only capture device I had was a mobile phone, I made 2 images with it and chose this as the best one that expressed the idea.I felt the context from the surrounding Architecture was needed.

Yesterday I started to ramble on a little about the image I made using all I had at the time, I think I wanted to philosophise a little about that, but neglected to do so, and today I'm focused on re-scanning 7 images for the Solo show which opens on the 21st of March at Trocadero*. Today I've uploaded another image, taken this way, and again this image is made for similar reasons, it was the only device I had at the time and the characteristics of it suited the image. I wanted to exploit the features of the device and have an incredible amount of DOF. Capturing the objects themselves and the reflection across the street was the catalyst for this. Which I hope in turn says something about shopping, consumerism, light, photography, and representations of the human form... as well as ideas of beauty.

Must see exhibition.

Fashion Face: Fashion photography by Robyn Beeche 1979-1989
2 March - 21 April 2007.

Based in London throughout the 80's, Australian photographer Robyn Beeche's photographic style moved from the realm of straight fashion photography into that of high art, melding make-up and costuming to create fantastical tableaux and exotic narratives. [Image above left: Robyn Beeche, Arrows, 1979] from the R.M.I.T website.

The sentence that really caught my eye however only appears in the printed material that hit my desk yesterday.

Long before the era of Photoshop, Beeche was pioneering a technique of photography that used extensive make-up, body-paint, props, and costume to create elaborate tableaux

I wonder what Adobe thinks about the idea of pre-photoshop? I'm lead to believe that that they discourage the use of the term "photoshop" as an adjective. How has photography's perception changed since the introduction of Photoshop? I still have an article at home somewhere from 'The Age' many years ago that looked at what photoshop was capable of.

Photography @ Wikipedia, they now have a photography portal [not sure how long though?], a long time ago I wrote something about photography in there, can't remember what though? One day I'll write something about modernism and fine art photography.

Interesting camera, for those wanting to see beyond the visible spectrum.

...Photography

One of six

A correction.

Sitting here at home today, designing my catalogue for my solo show, 'Across the River Styx' I realised I originally posted the wrong dates.

The correct dates are:-
21st of March, to the 7th of April 2007.
Trocadero Art Space, Level 1, 119 Hopkins St,
Footscray,
9687 6110

Opening night is the 24th of March.

Once I have completely finished the catalogue, I will upload a pdf file for either of my readers, who might like to see it.

File, has some great stuff and a couple of big names too. Checkit

While researching some idea for titles for my solo show in March, I noticed that my own set for the show, ranks number 10 in the google listings, yesterday anyways.

What a pleasant surprise. Hope it helps with the publicity?

I nearly forgot...

Maybe I should have named my upcoming show at Trocadero Artspace, 'The Wasteland'?

Technorati Tags: exhibition, photography

Maps, have long held a fascination for me in my imagination. This morning while adding some details to some images on flickr, using a geographical mapping tool, I kept switching between map view and satellite view, just to get a better idea of where I was and the location I was trying to pinpoint. The two views, offered a richness of information I'm having trouble articulating? Both identical views, yet both so different to each other, the sense of scale for one thing that was imparted was hugely different, perhaps this is based on my own knowledge and realtionship to the location?

When flickr is back up and running I will post the two maps side by side here.

It's back

Also I'm honoured to have another image blogged on the urban nature blog

Technorati Tags: CGI, interwebs, geek, maps, puppy

Technorati Tags: phonecam, mophone, lofi, low-rez, photography, abstract

Tomorrow I get my first gander at the solo show images, on the monitors at the printers. This can mean one of three things. They will need tons of work or, they will need some work, or they will be ready to go. Fingers crossed folks.

Technorati Tags: computers, photography, photoshop

Submit a piece to this gallery and have your work exhibited in Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, in the show entitled, "The rapid mutation of amateur photography in the digital age"

They are asking some pertinent and burning questions, among them:-

Does the digital shift constitute a revolution, or merely an evolution?
Does the shift represent a real democratization of photography?
Is citizen photojournalism worthy of its name?
Does the shift threaten the livelihood of professional photographers in fundamental ways?
Does the shift represent a shift towards more authenticity or truthfulness — or less?

Looks like others are thinking along the same lines, which is good I enjoy a good quest.

Technorati Tags: art, interwebs, photography

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

So yesterday I spent some time in VCA's Lab looking at my work on their monitors, with Andrew. Very very happy. Things are moving along nicely. The monitor differences were noticeable enough to come back and do some more tweaking at home, but not so much that I'm feeling swamped by it all.

The monitors they use are quite expensive and very finely calibrated, mine is a good monitor and is probably due for a calibration, I however prefer my monitor, a CRT, over theirs, LCDs. I am now actually getting excited about the show. For a while there in January it was all a bit nerve wracking, particularly in terms of timeframes and workloads, but thanks to Live Picture, things are on track. One day I'll write extensively about the experience of using Live Picture over Photoshop — if both my readers haven't already deduced from my ramblings how easy it is to use, how elegant fast and graceful. Some days however you feel a little guilty spending so little time hammering away at an image, these past few weeks has been just like that.

On an unrelated note, I will be without interwebs for a couple of days this weekend. I may however still be able to post to my Mophone Blog, so if you're interested pop on over there and have a peek, who knows what might turn up?

Technorati Tags: art, Inkjet Prints, interwebs, Live Picture, photography, VCA

Inspiration is a funny thing you know, last weekend I was in the Otways, on our Annual PIC student camp. [I have been visiting that region in Victoria now for nearly 20 years.] In that time my ideas and motivations for making images has shifted dramatically.

This weekend just gone I simply shot a series of portraits of the students in one plain simple location. It was a combination of ideas that have been brewing in my head since art school. No attempts at grand landscapes, no studies of light or macros of nature.

It's kinda interesting to think back over those years of lugging around cameras and tripods, of developing film and studying proof-sheets. My output has dropped dramatically, but my signal to noise ratio is higher than it has ever been.

Maybe I'll think out load a little more about this. I'm aiming to have my prints for my 2007 Solo show at the printers, at the VCA, later this week.

Technorati Tags: solo show, Inkjet Prints, landscape, location, otways, photography, pic, VCA

Am really enjoying the challenges of my mobilephone these days.

Technorati Tags: carpark, lofi, low-rez, melbourne, mophone, phonecam, photography

Some interesting news, I submitted some work to an online exhibition, it was exhibited in the space recently, in Switzerland, and I didn't even leave Melbourne.

This is the e-mail I received from the gallery yesterday.

Dear Photographer,
Your image was shown in the Musee de l'Elysee's exhibit ‘We are all photographers now!’ in the last few days. Enclosed you will find an installation view of your image that shows it in the wall.
The visitors to the exhibit are fascinated by all the different photographs that are being shown from participants like you from all over the world. Thank you again for participating and please feel free to upload more images to the site allphotographersnow.ch.
We also sincerely hope you will visit the museum. The dates of the exhibition ‘All photographers now!’ are from February 8th, 2007 to May 20th, 2007.
From the team at the Musee de l'Elysee</blockquote>

So there ya go eh? My first overseas showing.

Technorati Tags: landscape, photography

Great quote, by Richard Avedon on portraiture, with reference to Kissinger in particular, thanks to David for the heads up from Kottke's site.

Kind of interesting really as photography has become a powerful medium, that can be exploited by the photographer and the photographed. Many many more people are being smart about it and turning the tables in their favour these days.

Technorati Tags: Kottke, photography, portraits, truth

Paid the final deposit yesterday, my solo show is signed sealed and delivered. Sadly though the invites have been delayed, but soon, very soon.

More information has come to hand on the opening night, it is on from 4:00pm to 6:00pm, at Trocadero Level 1 119 Hopkins St. Footscray, not unusual I guess in some respects, perhaps a little early, but hey more time to party afterwards.

Technorati Tags: Inkjet Prints, photography, solo show, trocadero

Don't know why but I was a little surprised to receive a text message yesterday announcing the arrival of the printed invites for my show at Trocadero. Surprised by the text message NOT the announcement.

Anyways, if you want hard copy invitations, I can arrange it to be delivered, I suspect however that a quick visit to the gallery, at Level 1 119 Hopkins St. Footscray, you'll be able to pick up some invites there. In case you have trouble finding the place, you actually enter from Barkly St., not Hopkins.

Contact me if you want a real invite, and I'll do my best to mail them out ASAP. [A word of warning, I'm a terrible at using snail mail, a real snail myself]

Technorati Tags: australia, photography, invitations, melbourne, solo show, trocadero, exhibition, gallery

Contact me if you want one.

Technorati Tags: exhibition, gallery, invitations, photography, solo show, trocadero

Just an interesting link today, thanks to 1000 words of flickr fame.

I am dropping the files off at the printers tomorrow, fingers crossed! Tomorrow week I start hanging the work.

Technorati Tags: inkjet, photography, prints, trocadero, VCA

Oops here's one I nearly forgot to publish.

So how much impact does the camera of choice have on the way an image is interpreted? Historically one "read" an image made with a 35 mm differently to one made with a 8x10.

Take this image for example.

The lighting is non-descript, there is lot's of digital artefacts and noise and if you view it large on a screen at flickr, you will see all the lens aberrations that are par for the course on these kinds of cameras. How do you read this image then?

Gary Winnogrand was a well know photographer in the 60's and 70's. He is famously quoted for saying, “I photograph things to see what they look like photographed”. This approach forms part of my attitude to using these kinds of cameras to make images.

Of course sometimes I like the documentary approach of folks like, Bernd & Hiller Becher, or Robert Adams, or Joe Deal. Other times I am fascinated by the way the camera can be used to distort the world, into strange and unusual ways, this tool is perfect for that approach.

But the trade-off is limited photographic controls such as aperture and shutter, and selective focus.

More to come… I hope.

Technorati Tags: cameras, lofi, low-rez, mophone, phonecam, 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

So again here's a low-rez, lo-fi image, of indeterminate subject matter, other than that one may have a vague idea that it is probably a photograph, there are no real indicators of what it is either way.

Does this a) make it a worthwhile object of contemplation, or b) yet another piece of detritus in the ever growing heap that is digital image making?

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

Nice work all shot at night

Even darker

My kind of article

Technorati Tags: photography

Technorati Tags: cameras, lofi, low-rez, mophone, phonecam, photography

Technorati Tags: conceptual, lofi, low-rez, mophone, phonecam, photography, fork, forks

According to PDN these are 30 upcoming and photographers, to keep an eye on.

Technorati Tags: photographic, photography

I managed to get a second image in the, Musee de l'Elysee's exhibition in Switzerland, "We are all Photographers Now".

See the image I submitted,on Flickr, better still see the real thing on the Wall at Trocadero Artspace, Level 1, 119 Hopkins St. Footscray, from the 22nd of March to the 7th of April, 11:00 am to 5:00 pm Wednesday to Saturday.

Technorati Tags: exhibition, gallery, landscape, photography

Here is my exhibition catalogue for "...across the river styx", if either of my readers wish to download it. A pdf file, 1.2 meg.

Technorati Tags: exhibition, photography, prints, solo show, trocadero

...bar the shouting.

It took a mere 3½ hours, but would have been impossible without Marcus & Nikki. [Thanks guys, once again I'm indebted to you.]

The first one is always the longest and the hardest, the rest took, a fraction of the time. The hardest decision all night was which print goes where?

Compare it to the empty space.

Those are prints on the floor weighted down to flatten them after 4 days in a tube.

Technorati Tags: australia, exhibition, gallery, melbourne, photographic, photography, solo show, trocadero

Well what a great night, thanks to all who popped in and said hello, my head's a little sore this morning, but it was worth it, afterwards several of us went to eat a meal and then on to FAD gallery in town.

Apologies if I didn't get to speak to you, even I was overwhelmed at times!

Now that it is all over and done with, and as I sit here in Melbourne's glorious winter light, I'm contemplating my next move.

One move is this body of work, tentatively entitled "maps" which, is still growing and being expanded upon, whether it will be ready for my next show remains to be seen, do I even want to exhibit it traditionally? A book of work has long held an appeal for me and in this day and age of dtp and online publishing tools , it seems more than realistic, to make a book, or publish it as a website.

Another option is an upcoming staff show, historically, the staff at pic have occasional group shows of their work, I'm hoping this year will be one of them.

Before I get to carried away, I guess I'd best catchup on my film processing, now sitting at 6 rolls of 120.

∗ For either of my readers who may care, I've been archiving my exhibitions on my static website since the late 90's

Technorati Tags: exhibition, gallery, opening night, photography, solo show, trocadero

I'm going to go grey for a few days, with the lead up to the end of term I still seem to be busier than I'd like.

Technorati Tags: lofi, mophone, grey, melbourne, phonecam, low-rez, photography

Technorati Tags: lofi, low-rez, phonecam, photography

Technorati Tags: mophone, phonecam, photographic, photography

Technorati Tags: grey, lofi, low-rez, mophone, phonecam, photography

As I am on term break from one of the schools I work at, things may hot up here for a while. My solo show, at Trocadero comes down on the 7th, so if you haven't had a chance to see it, check it out, the prints are something to be seen, even I was impressed when they finally hit the wall. The next body of work is forming well, and I've a couple of small projects in mind in the interim. But other than catching up on some shooting and film processing things are otherwise quiet. Also I recently found an awesome location and plan on shooting out there over the next week or two.

Meanwhile here's an interesting article written by, Wayne J. Cosshall, it rather succinctly sums up an aspect of what photography both digital and analogue is really about, for me anyways. Lets' see what the crew in the Melbourne Flickr pool have to say about it?

My online experiment in photo publishing is trundling along well, after a couple of hiccups a week or so ago. Occasionally, I have a little trouble choosing images, which is part of the experiment, and usually more driven by me simply commuting to and from work and not really being attuned to my surrounds and the light notice anything worth capturing, and therefore not having enough images to choose from despite me upgrading to a 512 mg card for the phone camera.

While we are on photo-blogging. I am trying to locate a photographer, who, used to post to Usenet, low rez b&w on a regular basis. I've had a bit of a dig around using 'Unison' [a neato little app if I may say so] and have had no luck in there, [given the wild west nature of Usenet, I need to be careful where I look], so if either of my readers remembers this person can they send me the name of the group they posted too?

I have 2 friends who are who will be in a position to use the interwebs for news from distant places, looking forward to what Thomask sends back from his trip OS, and what Gayle and I manages to upload, Thomask will be in a highly technologically advanced culture,[so I'm lead to believe] and Gayle and I will be in a place where the internet is scarce and expensive [I think?].

Technorati Tags: geek, location, phonecam, photography, photoshop, solo show, trocadero

So much for the deluge?

For either of my readers should they care, a new set on flickr, again made using a mobile phone camera, and attempting to 'abstract' the everyday.

While I'm at it, check out Brendadda's blog, some great work and ideas as well as links to other great flickr photographers, now if I can just get some links happening here I'd be really happy.

Technorati Tags: abstract, art, lofi, low-rez, mophone, phonecam

Some indication of where some of my images have been made over the last 3 or so years.

Technorati Tags: flickr, location, melbourne, photographic, photography

Now after 3 pieces in the Show in Switzerland, here's a youTube piece on the opening night.

Technorati Tags: conceptual, exhibition, gallery, photography

Went to the CCP yesterday, to see the Anne Zahalka Show, while I contemplate my response, consider this.

"The photographic process looks after itself when its natural inheritance is honoured. It can not understand any other way of working. But when what is passed on represents a loss, the process collapses."
Les Walkling

Technorati Tags: CCP, conceptual, melbourne, photographic, photography, pomo, portraits

When I recently heard about the current show at the CCP of Anne Zahalka's work, I was quite excited.

I spent some time at the show on Wednesday just gone, and well, to be frank, I was disappointed.

The show is really well hung, the staff at the CCP have done a great job. The large light box, in gallery 3 is mind blowing. The rest of the work itself however has a level of inconsistency about it's printing that makes me wonder if it is even by the same artist? I was really looking forward to seeing the work in gallery 2, her best known I suppose, but was sadly disappointed by the prints, they seemed to lack any richness, and I was not even sure they had been shot on medium format, due to poor sharpness and what appeared to be chromatic abberations. The body of work in gallery 1, the Artist series, really has me perplexed because it is so obviously digital, but the material it is printed on takes it almost to a sculptural level. The ideas themselves are of course engaging and humorous, but I'm kind of left gasping when there seems to be so little to tie them together.

Technorati Tags: CCP, conceptual, exhibition, gallery, melbourne, photographic, photography

Here's a body of work, that examines how people like to "represent" themselves

Also, and extended portrait of 2 girls over 10 years

Technorati Tags: ezine, magazine, photography

... of a mobile phone camera user.

Technorati Tags: art, lofi, low-rez, melbourne, mophone, photography, sculpture

One of my main influences in photography, Robert Adams, is having a show in San Francisco, at Fraenkel Gallery at the moment, anyone spare me a couple of thou for a quick visit? Maybe one of my international readers could pop in and check the show out?

Technorati Tags: art, gallery, photography

I haven't seen this kind of high contrast work since, Ralph Gibson in the 70's.

Anders Petersen, is said to be the European equivalent of Robert Frank?

Technorati Tags: art, contrast, photography

Explored a new location today. I shot 4 rolls, nearly 5 in one small section alone, I suspect a few more visits will be on the cards over the coming months. Today the light was to die for, it will only get better over the coming weeks.

Originally had planned to shoot further West, but when I poked my nose in first, and saw the potential, I knew this was going to be the place to hang around as the sun set in the west.

Getting home and checking the location out on Google Maps just made it even more exciting.

This location is going to see a lot more of me. It gives me easy access to the exterior of all sorts of factories, and damaged urban environments.

Technorati Tags: australia, b&w, light, urban landscape

Friday just gone saw me at Heide Museum of Modern Art. The show I saw was, entitled, “Perfect for every occasion: photography today.”

Without getting into specifics, I am more than stoked to have seen such a lively and healthy showing of the state of current contemporary photographic art practice here in Australia.

My main favourites were:-

• Patrick Pound's prints from mobile phone images.
• Debra Phillip's beautiful and considered photographic installation
• Paul Knight's large and very European feeling colour images.

At first when I saw the beautiful giclée prints by Patrick Pound, I didn't believe that they were images that hadn't gone though some post processing, until I got home. I was able to mimic the Henson-esque like softness of the images by simply focussing up close on an image, as he had indeed done, and with some simple moves in photoshop hey presto, all I would need is the cash to print them as giclée prints.

Debra Phillip's were seemed to me to really honour the traditions I've come to love in Photography, but not in a fawning or servile way. Everything from the framing down to the sequencing really worked well, it was a cohesive and resolved body of work.

Paul Knight's work which are large scale prints of slightly ambiguous subject matter reminded me of an amalgam 2 European Photographer's work, Boris Mikhailov, and Thomas Struth.

There was a noticeable number of New Zealanders represented, and of course some work that for me just clutched at straws or were simply post-modernist ideas, the usual one trick pony type stuff.

Overall, I really enjoyed the way several people were approaching the use of image capturing devices and how they responded to the idea of output, I would have liked to have seen some mention however of images being used in an online context. Overall the show was witty endearing challenging beautiful and engaging.

Technorati Tags: conceptual, exhibition, Heide Museum of Modern Art, melbourne, photographic, photography, pomo

An interview, via BRS

An interview with Wolfgang Tillmans

Magnum Photos turns 60 this year

Technorati Tags: art, interview, photographer, photography, Stephen Shore

After a glimpse of a household object caught my eye this morning, I wanted to write something about humour and modern art, but the pull of the glorious sunshine and the list of more important things to do tugs desperately for my attention.

Here's something worth a look, if you're in Melbourne this month. Zephyr Gallery in the Docklands, has a show of photographs Elvis Impersonators. The book and sales of the prints will raise funds for the Mirabel Foundation, the work is by Saville Coble, the show runs from the 1st to the 30th of May. at Zephyr Gallery 60 River Esplanade Docklands Melbourne.

On a personal note I may not get a chance to see the show, as sadly the web site for Zephyr gallery is actual an Ad Agency website, and am unable to garner much more information. The 'Docklands' website has some more information, scroll down to read it.

Technorati Tags: exhibition, photographer, photography

[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: abstract, lofi, low-rez, mophone, phonecam, photography

Technorati Tags: abstract, art, lofi, low-rez, phonecam, photography

I want one!

[posted with ecto]

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

Technorati Tags: abstract, art, australia, phonecam, photography

This location, [a recently opened bicycle track called Federation Trail] yielded one of my biggest creative outburst in many years, I proofed 12 rolls of 120 film yesterday in the darkroom, time now to mull over the results now and see if more visits are on the cards?

In the interim it's back into the darkroom for a couple of other ideas I'm working on.

Technorati Tags: australia, landscape, melbourne, buried sewer, urban, urban landscape, western suburbs

Soft Laboratory have produced a Raw Processing tool that I am about to download and trial, stay tuned for the results.

This paragraph in this Month's Mac world was what caught my eye.

“The range of control is phenomenal. A piece of software with this level of command is welcome and will suit the ultra-fastidious image worker The GUI is attractively and professionally executed.”

I am constantly on the look out for ways to subvert the use of Photoshop, this looks like it maybe another tool in the arsenal of image processing work-flows that hopefully will give Photoshop a run for it's money.

Technorati Tags: software, photoshop, tools, colour correction, geek, art, processing, raw, photographic, photography

Technorati Tags: art, low-rez, melbourne, mophone, photography, urban, urban landscape, western suburbs

World Pinhole Day tomorrow.

"What is Pinhole Day? Anyone, anywhere in the world, who makes a pinhole photograph on the last Sunday in April, can scan it and upload it to this website where it will become part of the annual Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day celebration's online gallery." Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

Technorati Tags: lofi, photography, pinhole

Many pictures turn out to be limp translations of the known world instead of vital objects which create an intrinsic world of their own.
There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph.
-Robert Heinecken

Technorati Tags: photography, quote

Interesting body of work

Technorati Tags: photographer, photographic, photography

Went shooting last night, decided to go the blurry & atmospheric option.

Will return with tripod and black & white film as the concrete in there is a sight to behold.

Technorati Tags: photography, blur, urban landscape, light, low light, iView Media Pro, australia, handheld

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

...my next move. After yesterday's post regarding what to do, the ONLY digital shots I took were on my mophone, the rest on film. But now after looking through the pool, which I might add is a fair microcosm of what flickr has become, I'm thinking I may not add an image, we'll see what the film turns up?

[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: 24 hours of flickr, australia, flickr, handheld, interwebs, light, lofi, low-rez, mapping, melbourne, mophone, phonecam, photography, web 2.0

This local service station is drawing in me in further and further

Technorati Tags: photographer, photography, landscape, melbourne, mophone, light, australia, urban, urban landscape, Parr, Eggleston, phonecam, art, contrast

Browsing my news reader app this morning, I found this blog that I'm behind on reading. It is a left leaning discussion of photography. Read it if your sick of kittens sunsets and flower macros.

Technorati Tags: art, art theory, photography, politics, blog, theory

Terry Lane, over at the Age, is claiming that Photographers better watch out, as Mums armed with DSLRs are taking work away from them. He has a point, but I can think of plenty of Melbourne based photographers who were simply smart business operators with a camera, this is nothing new in the arena of professional portrait photography. In the ever spirally contest to produce the next big look, Pro's have been squabbling for years. The chase for the dollar is getting a little tougher, in the end only the fit survive.

Personally I could care less. For me, photography gets less and less about a good photograph, but more and more about what defines a photograph.

Thank God for my teaching gig eh.

Technorati Tags: art, photographer, photography, portraits, professionals

As I sit here putting off last minute preparations for Australia's if not the world's first workshop dedicated to mobile phone photography, I want to refer back to yesterday's post. Yesterday, I said:-

"Personally I could care less. For me, photography gets less and less about a good photograph, but more and more about what defines a photograph."

Well thanks to brendadada, one of my flickr friends who pops in here occasionally, I have been thinking a little more about this.

I don't want to waffle on to much about this, but, this idea of what constitutes a good photograph occupies my mind more and more these days. By good I mean an image that conveys something, successfully, anything, but without resorting to anything more than the use of a lens and a light capturing and storing medium. Over my 20 years of using light capturing devices to make images, I've learnt plenty about these device's inability's to capture the world as WE see it. Ansel Adams in part with Zakia, developed the zone system to deal with film and paper's lack of ability to capture ALL light as we see it. I know and appreciate the differences between some lenses and some film/developer combinations amongst other "photographic" issues. Even so when it boils down to it, an mage is an image, and to quote, Steve Edwards

The image supplies little in itself. What counts is its use and the power to fix a particular interpretation of the events, objects or people depicted.*

Image making has now become even more ubiquitous than even George Eastman could have ever imagined when when he coined the phrase, "You press the button we do the rest". Millions and millions of images are made every minute worldwide. These images are adding to a growing stockpile of work. This stock pile means that there is nothing left un-photographed, if there was even anything left to photograph in the 80's when post-modernism pronounced the death of the "Artist."

This then leads me to wonder, can a image made using a lens and a light sensitive material become and anti-photograph, but still retain SOME reference back to a photograph, after all some people are still entranced by the look of photograph and their ability to translate what is placed in front of them, I guess this what I meant by:-
"Personally I could care less. For me, photography gets less and less about a good photograph, but more and more about what defines a photograph."

More to come perhaps after this workshop in Mobile Phone Image making.

Technorati Tags: abstract, art, conceptual, gallery, light, low-rez, mophone, phonecam, photographer, photographic, photography, technique

...I haven't posted a picture in a while.

Technorati Tags: light, lofi, low-rez, melbourne, mophone, phonecam, photograph

Only 13 days late! A new online magazine worth a look. Art Signal from Spain.

Thanks to Jim Johnson, over at (Notes on) Politics, Theory & Photography

Technorati Tags: art, art theory, magazine, photograph, photographer, photographic, photography, politics, theory

The Kamchatka peninsula is one of the most remote and barren places on earth. In the latest stage of his mammoth Genesis project, photographer Sebastião Salgado finds an eerie beauty in a land of volcanos and bears.¹

Nice images indeed, however why is it that some photographers pay so little attention to the details of their images? Looking at the sky in the background there seems to me to be evidence of poor manipulation, is this by Salgado himself or by a sub-editor or editor of "The Guardian"

To do this correctly would be so simple in photoshop even? The rest of the images are magnificent and worth a look; even "on screen"

Read the interview while you are there too

Technorati Tags: b&w, landscape, light, photography, photoshop

Not sure what this is really worth, but well maps and photography what more can you ask for?

Technorati Tags: flickr, mapping, maps, photography

Just couldn't resist this last night.

Technorati Tags: landscape, light, lofi, low-rez, melbourne, mophone, phonecam, photography, urban, urban landscape

There's been some stirrings at JPGMAG.com. Derek and Heather have moved on from the magazine.

It is strange yet heartening to see such a public display of quasi-corporate machinations and politics. I did have an account there but it was never a major focus of my creative energies so I've deleted it, in true flickr fashion there is even a pool of images of screen-grabs that people have taken as they delete theirs.

Technorati Tags: jpgmag, truth, web 2.0, magazine, online magazine, photography

I buy a lot of books on photography, thanks to Jim Johnson, this new Duane Michals book looks like one worth getting.

Not only is Mr Michals a witty and intelligent photographer but the book seems to take the piss as well.

Technorati Tags: book, Duane Michals, photographer

Stumbled upon this website of an exhibition of mobile photography, entitled 'Visual Urban Abstracts', on show in L.A.. Sadly, I won't be popping in to see the collection of small, prints mounted on aluminum.

Technorati Tags: art, low-rez, mophone, photography

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 Daylesford Foto-Biennale 2007, is upon us for the second time. I attended the inaugural event in 2005,[and undertook a workshop there] there was plenty of great work and the fantastic workshop I attended was run by Les Walkling.

This year it seems even the ABC are getting involved.

Technorati Tags: 2007 Daylesford Foto Biennale, art, DFB07, 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

Technorati Tags: lofi, documentary, low-rez, melbourne, mophone, Australia

Technorati Tags: Australia, documentary, lofi, low-rez, melbourne, mophone

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

Technorati Tags: concrete, flickr, grey, concrete canvas

Here's a link sent to me, that describes itself as the Canon Virtual Lens Production plant.

Thanks Anton for the heads up.

Technorati Tags: lenses, Canon

Putting out the bins this morning, the sunrise was astonishing. So here's the sunrise a mere hour or so after it was shot, THE main benefit of digital photography.

However, the batteries in this camera were doing strange things the morning, and the horizontal I shot was corrupted in the process somehow. Ah well the vagaries of photographic life.

Technorati Tags: Australia, landscape, light, melbourne, sunrise

Fancy writing for about.com?

There's a vacancy there for a photography writer, I gave it a go but didn't get far?

Technorati Tags: web 2.0, blog, photography, blogging

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

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