31.12.04

Why How & What?

I've had a couple of busy days lately. I caught up with an old friend of mine from Uni recently, we had a long chat about many many things, amongst them, the future of photoshop, supperanuation, the amount of fossil fuels left in the world and the way this will impact on people's lives, the explosive growth of digital cameras/photography, alternatives to Photoshop's crappy RAW plug-in, just to name a few.

As a consequence of this discussion, plus a recent visit to an exhibition at ACMI, along with my own frenetic involvement with Flickr, I've decide to jot down my thoughts about what it is that I ∗do∗

The best way to clarify issues for my own benefit I've found, is to use the Why, How and What mantra. Again, thanks to my old friend from Uni who showed me this several years ago.

So here goes, the Why, How and What of Stuart Murdoch and his “ART”


Why?
In the late eighties I found myself in a situation that was untenable as far as gainful employment was concerned. I for many years previous had had a fascination with Photography, I can still remember looking at everyday objects and scenes and recognising within myself a connection or familiarity with these objects and scenes. It seemed a natural progression for me to follow this instinct and pursue a career or at least a direction in photography. A recent overseas trip with a duty free camera purchase combined with disappointment at the resulting holiday snaps drove this realisation even deeper. I returned to school at 25, no mean feat in itself. I spent the next 5 years studying, getting my feet wet, getting my bearings and generally working out where I fitted into the grand photography scheme of things.

After my 3 years of under-grad I realised the direction most suited to me was as an artist, the reason being, I was interested in strange and subtle visual connections, not making money, I was also interested in the craft of photography in particular the photographic print as an ‘object’. Upon graduation I was determined to get some sort of work that involved photography but not in a commercial sense. During my last summer of undergrad, I had been involved in my old TOP school in their photography department, by generally helping out, and the head offered me a job. At last a job doing what I loved, and access to ALL the equipment I needed to do it. For the next few years I simply photographed in my spare time, made prints for any or all exhibitions I could get my work into, in between teaching at night and being a part time photography technician during the day.

The images and prints I made were of the subject matter closest to my heart, made the way I like making them. After all, Frederick Sommer, Robert Adams, Ralph Eugene-Meatyard had all made beautiful images this way and were some of the many photographers whose work I respected and enjoyed. This alone seemed reason enough, besides, in a world that seemed to be getting progressively madder, finding solace and enjoyment in a pursuit such as photography seemed one of my more sane decisions of the past 12 years (since leaving home and graduating) and a relatively harmless one at that.

How?
I have continued to work the way I was taught in my 5 years of schooling, schooling that preceded any form of digital or computer manipulation at all. I used the best camera I could aford, I spent many hours labouring in a Black and white darkroom making the best possible prints I could. I even realised several years ago that it was possible to make heartfelt and interesting images using the most basic of technologies, cheap, plastic and toy cameras (I had been using a large format camera for most of my work from about 1992 to 2000). In the late nineties I procured a digital camera, now retired, it seemed not much better than a toy, as the file size and the quality of the CCD were nowhere near film. I made over 13000 images with it, which I'm still unsure as to what to do with, I did learn however, that it is often possible to produce surreal and intruiging images with it. Which when sequenced in the ‘right way’ could make for some interesting art. I also learned to use it it an intuitive way, to not be afraid to allow it to make some technical decisions. From this point on around 2002 I was actively carrying the camera everywhere, and using it in anyway I could to subvert what it was I saw beyond the photographic. Currently I am using a Nikon Coolpix 5400 to carry out this task.

What?
Beautiful silver Gelatin Prints is what I have been making for most of my time since graduating. This was in a time where digital and computer still generally were having minimal impact on my output. But in the last few years since about 2002 I have been very prolific with my digital output, I now have enough small digital files to publish 5 books a year with 200 images in each for the next 13 years! Self publishing seems an option, and of course since I started on this path the web has exploded and along with it an explosion in online self publishing.

Susan Sontag dies!

From the BBC

Author Susan Sontag, widely regarded as one of America's leading intellectuals, has died aged 71. The writer, who had suffered from leukaemia, died at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Calling herself an "obsessed moralist", Sontag was the author of 17 books and a lifelong human rights activist. She wrote best-selling historical novel The Volcano Lover and in 2000 won the National Book Award for another historical novel, In America.

Popular essayist
Her greatest literary impact was as an essayist, however, with her 1964 study of homosexual aesthetics Notes on Camp establishing her as a major new writer. The essay introduced the "so bad it's good" attitude toward popular culture, applying it to everything from Swan Lake to feather boas.

Some Key Works

  • 1964: Notes on Camp
  • 1977: On Photography
  • 1978: Illness as Metaphor
  • 1992: The Volcano Lover
  • 2000: In America
  • 2003: Regarding the Pain of Others

In Against Interpretation, Sontag worried that critical analysis interfered with the "incantatory, magical" power of art. "I know of no other intellectual who is so clear-minded with a capacity to link, to connect, to relate,"

Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes once said. "She is unique."

'Zealot of seriousness'
Sontag, who described herself as a "zealot of seriousness", was also a human rights activist and an outspoken opponent of US foreign policy.She prompted controversy when she wrote that the September 2001 attacks on the US were not a "cowardly attack" on civilisation, but "an act undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions".She also criticised US President George W Bush over the US-led war in Iraq.

In the 1990s Sontag travelled to the then Yugoslavia, calling for international action against the growing civil war. She visited the besieged Bosnian capital Sarajevo in 1993, where she staged a production of the play Waiting for Godot.

Sontag had been treated for breast cancer in the 1970s.

28.12.04

CMOS camera phones!

When will it end? This article hinting at CMOS chips in camera phones! from The Asia Times

"The company said it also plans to invest some 50 billion yen to build a new facility and introduce new machinery at the Kumamoto Technology Center for production of CMOS image sensors for camera phones"

As Sony appears to be upping the ante with camera phones by adding CMOS chips, the 'digital camera revolution' just keeps escalating. I personally don't want to see the complete removal of the crappy quality these cameras are capable of, but by the same token I can appreciate the way they the camera phones, impact on people's lives. Galleries of images made from this kind of phone have sprung up on the web and places like Flicker and I of course have one myself, will this sort of device contribute to the greater good in understanding who we are, or just add to the visual pollution we are bombarded with daily? FWIW I am not seeing a rise in enquires about my photoshop classes, our short course in photography at PIC, or our two year diploma course at the Photographic Imaging College.

Some links?

27.12.04

Some recent images.

x-mas hats

purple building and plant

Old news?

Old political news? From a Reuters article dated the 21st of December.

26.12.04

Flickr how I love thee?

My new obsession explained.

Boxing Day 2004

Christmas day went really well in this household yeseterday. I managed to snap off over 40 photographs. I particularly was trying to show a sequence of the table being set up and decorated, I'm still debating as to whether or not I am going to put them online? Feeling a little sunburnt though, otherwise I feel suprisingly well considering the amount of alchohol consumed. Seafood all round it was, yummo.

24.12.04

X-mas Eve 2004

It's X-mas Eve and the weathers cooled just nicely, if it stays this way it'll be nice tommorrow. Last night we foolishly ventured out to the shops, Oh my Fucking God! Highpoint a local complex was open 24 hours and by crickey folks were taking advantage of it! I took my camera along as usual. Damn battery ran out got a couple of good shots though, too lazy to post 'em here, so i'll just link to 'em over at flicker.

  • Our steps under mixed lighting handeld so well by digital
  • Hangin' out the car window, minimal indeed.
  • Blur galore dunno where from though?

Yes indeed the light was awesome, and when I get around to it I will add them to their own Nikon Gallery over in my site.

But back to the crowds! I don't ever remember shooping this close to X-mas being that bad! It was six deep in both directions and sometimes the same in some of the shops, maybe this arvo I'll pop out to the local shops (on foot) and see wazzup?

As we now currently have broadband at home I'm listening to SomaFM and boy do they play some irreverant stuff, it's actually their special holiday mix. I just wish they'd up their rotation a little I have been listening nonstop during waking hours since Monday, and I've had to switch off once coz it got to repetitive.

Preparations for tomorrow begin in earnest now, I'm boiling the spuds for the potato salad, making the sangria mix and generally tidying up.

23.12.04

Hot weather & flickr

Today is our first 100 degree day in the old money so to speak, 38 degrees Celcius, was the forecast and I suspect it's hotter than that right now. Gets a bit hot in the small room out the back I call home this time of year, but as we are in a weatherboard house and there are lots of doors and windows that face all 4 points of the compass we are lucky when the change finally does come through.

So here we are 3 days into it and what have I spent 60% of my time doing? hangin' out at flickr. Have joined several groups. The squared circle (two entries already, A day in the life of, missed the lastet deadline, so we'll see how I go with the next one. Machinery - 4 entries two from my exisiting account and 2 from a shoot in the shed using a portable flash. Trippy Pix and Minimalism. getting real busy in there now, what the hell am I too do when I start back at work? Stil want to add some updates to my own site, particularly the Nikon Gallery. Ah time! When is there ever enough?

On a slightly different note, I got my first 4 books back from the binders on Monday, and to say I'm stoked is putting it mildly. Four A5 sized 16 page boooks with 12 images and text a delight o hold and to handle, can't wait to give 'em out one Christmas Eve. Itchin' now to start and make some more!

4 self published books

22.12.04

Santa IS Evil!

The links just keep on comin'

Don't be scared of Santa?

Pre-Christmas Musings?

As Christmas draws nearer someone over on the Creepy Christmas group at Flickr found an article about the increased likelihood of death around the "silly season" Well I'm gunna trump that with a table that *almost* proves the increased chance of an assault around Christmas. It's taken from a report I downloaded written for a Sydney Hospital. it's entitled -
'Investigation of the Incidence and Analysis of Cases of Alleged Violence Reporting to St Vincent's Hospital', by Marjorie Cuthbert, Frances Lovejoy, Gordian Fulde. See table below, from page 5 of the document.

Presentations of alleged assaults (Admissions in brackets)
25 December - January176(55)
February113(33)
March169(35)
April147(36)
May118(30)
June131(44)
Total1038(199)
Surveyed512(60%)Completed forms

Don't get me wrong. I love a good feast with family on X-mas day. However my definition of what constitutes a family has changed over the years. Let's assume that a family by definition is a good family, a good family implies that it functions as a unit. Well I argue that there are no functional families at all, only degrees of dysfunctional families. As was driven home to me YET AGAIN at a recent birthday party for my wife's niece, I recently posted a comment on it allbeit a short one, and of course now I can't find it.

21.12.04

Pause and Effect

Currently reading a book that examines interactivity and narrative, "Pause and Effect". Having only read couple of sections at this stage I'm more than impressed with the ideas that are coming across - so far stay tuned for more about this book.

19.12.04

Photography Articles from about.com

I love my little news reader aplication. NetNewsWire. I can gather so much information so quickly using it, here's a couple of articles on about.com that I think are interesting.

Workflow: Filing and Finding.
The third of a short series on how to manage working with digital images, Workflow: Filing and Finding takes a look at issues such as storing of digital images, choice of storage media, finding your digital files, using suitable file...

Andreas Gursky: Does Size Matter?
Currently one of the biggest names in art photography, Andreas Gursky is also making some of the largest prints, and fetching the largest prices in the auction rooms.

At least I'm being seen!

Want to see my most viewed images at Flickr, go ahead?

18.12.04

As the year draws to an end.

Well this is it. Work has finished for the year, I now have to start knuckling down and getting ready for 2005, which I think is going to be even bigger than 2004 in many ways. I've started shooting images for my interactive idea/piece and am getting ready to write out lessons and notes for my students too. Several deliveries from Amazon are here too ready to be read, 'Pause & Effect, the art of interactive narrative', by Mark Meadows, and 'Experience Design' by Nathan Shedroff, are just two of the many books I hope to read over the next 6 weeks. Of course I am also pretty obsessive about flickr too. Having made a conscious decision to shoot at a lower than 8 x 10 print size this means I can upload straight form the camera with no manipulation photoshop if I so choose. The flip side being that I won't be able to ever print anything larger than about 4 x 6 inches. Which I happen to think is a perfect size for the books I have always wanted to make and will produce my first prototypes this year.

DARK DAY FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS

From Alternet.org

"In1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that forced a long-overdue investigation of a very dark chapter of recent U.S. foreign policy the Reagan-Bush administration's protection of cocaine traffickers who operated under the cover of the Nicaraguan contra war in the 1980s," Robert Parry of Consortium News writes. Webb paid a high price for his "Dark Alliance" stories written for the San Jose Mercury News. He was attacked by journalistic colleagues and demoted by his paper, causing him to quit. Despite CIA internal investigations that later validated much of Webb's reporting, his career never recovered, and on Friday, Dec. 10, Gary Webb, 49, died of an apparent suicide. "Unintentionally,Webb also exposed the cowardice and unprofessional behavior that had become the new trademarks of the major U.S. news media by the mid-1990s," Parry writes. "Foreshadowing the media incompetence that would fail to challenge George W. Bush’s case for war with Iraq five years later, the major news organizations effectively hid the CIA's confession from the American people."

SOURCE: Alternet, December 14, 2004

17.12.04

Popular Culture?

Well, phone camera postings on Flickr are up even further, 28,600 as of this writing!

Speaks volumes I think?

Ghandi quote

"You may never know what results come
from your actions
but if you do nothing
there will be no result "

Voodoo Art?

X-mas function produces Art?

Normally chicken entrails are used here but I thought these arrangements of bones may send out some messages or clues to the eaters personalities?

bonesbones 3

15.12.04

Flickr Groups

Flickr has groups.

Groups are thematic collections of photos by often disparate people.

My favourite is Creepy Christmas where I have made two contributions.

Viewed 42 times so far!

My most popular digital photograph so far on flickr? No photoshop manipulations at all, it's all in camera

14.12.04

So you think HR departments are run by humans? Check this out. It's from an e-mail I received from a freind who got it from a HR firm for a job app recently.

"Thank you for your application for the above position. This letter is to inform you that you have successfully progressed to the Second Stage in the recruitment process for Careers At XXXX. You have been placed in an actively managed database that is reviewed on an ongoing basis and as roles become available. The Program is structured so that there is no "Official Intake", rather it is a continuous, ongoing employment process. "

So sweat away to your hearts content on that next job application. Just don't lose any sleep on it's appearance, as I doubt anyone looks at it anyway till it's down to the last 10 or 20 perhaps? I always been furious, that these things demand word documents, and could never really understand why? Now I know. It seems that the file is sucked in by a computer and the data in it is extracted and added/compiled into a database. This database then cross references you and and the job at hand. If all is honky dory you move along in the process.

So I guess that the answer to getting an interview is, to put the right kind of words into the CV application. Forget about how it looks. Of course this means nowt if your going for a job at a small business. Generally the boss there hires and fires in person.

12.12.04

Documentary on Islamic Terrorism

Want another perspective on Islamic terrorism, sick of Fox Media's stranglehold on the information coming out of this whole conflict? Try the Australian Broadcasting Commision's site 4 Corners then.

Sadly even our cable connection chokes on this, so if you can put up with it do so.

4WD death machines?

It's the nut behind the steering wheel really. For all those 4WD drivers out there in Suburbia, a message.

11.12.04

Drop shadow text effects using CSS

For the handful of you who use a real browser like Safari, you might notice that I have added a little drop shadow effect to the text in the header of each page of my website, this effect is only viewable in Safari as it's a CSS 3 spec. Thanks to the new forum from WestCiv for this heads up. WestCiv make a neat liitle app that writes CSS in a WYSIWYG environment, it sped up my learning of CSS dramatically.

Brunch in the Western suburbs of Melbourne

Internet Publishing reaches new high?

Or should that be a new low?

We hit our favourite coffee shop this morning for brunch, then had a bit of a browse around the shops, join us on that brief tour. Now here I sit at home an hour so later, and the images are online and organised.

Some look like they may need a little tweaking in photoshop but otherwise I'm happy

Learn how to be a Virtual Tour Photographer

Just found this on Virtual Tour photography, and have of course downloaded the pdf file. Seems pretty funny.Chris Bachelder's Lessons In Virtual Tour Photography, is the name of the book, the site seems to be a book review kind of thing.

The opening paragraph of the sales blurb reads...

The wealthy photographer Ansel Adams once wrote, "A good photograph is knowing where to stand." How simple, how true—and how difficult! Even though Adams's heart failed him well before the whirling magic of virtual-tour technology was introduced to our world, his mysterious words ring true. In the high-tech, "fast-paced," paperless freelance international real-estate-photography industry of today, those eight words still cut. Because a good virtual tour—just like a good photograph of a boulder, or a pinecone—is knowing where to stand. And in Lessons in Virtual Tour Photography, available now, for the first time, as an e-book, you will learn where to stand, and how to know where. But that's not all you will learn! Picture this: You, conversant in the three types of display apartments........

10.12.04

Huh........what IS the date?

In typical "I have no idea what the date is state", I wrote this entry? It seems I'm out by a week nothing unusual there!

9.12.04

Storms in Melbourne

Melbourne had a typical summer storm this afternoon, the sun came out as it often does in these situations after it had all blown over. This is one big bonus for me, the light in these situations simply is awesome. Between the station that I caught my train from, to home I took nearly 100 digital photos. Admittedly almost half were of the flowers on our front porch. But that was when the light was just getting freaking awesome! So looks like I'll post not only to flickr but also add a new page to my Nikon gallery. Still thinking about tweaking them in Photoshop though, especially after reading about the Infrared effect earlier today.

Infrared Photography Links

Some interesting Infrared photography links.

Some interesting tips on using photoshop and the LAB colour space to change the appearance of images amongst other things. Might give it a try myself

Wishlist for christmas.

I want one!

Holiday period at flickr?

I feel that I have detected a pattern over at flickr. Last weekend there seemed to be a flurry of images uploaded, by my contacts at least. So we'll see what happens this weekend, the following weekend of course is Christmas, so, will there be even more images like this one or this one or will the site go quiet for a while? One things for sure, us folks down here in the southern hemisphere will be posting madly BEFORE our northern cousins. If folks do post on the day, does this make them loners or the sad types? Given the immediacy of this medium I don't think so, there is of course the global nature of it (the medium) as well.

Well bugger it I'm gunna post on the day, both on flickr and here.

Peace AND Respect.

8.12.04

Robots Making Art?

Robots making Art? What tha?

Just started using a cool new app for organising snippets of info called voodoopad give it a whirl you'll like it.

7.12.04

The democratisation of Photography part one?

For anyone who cares, there are over 25,000 camera-phone photos on flickr at the moment. Things are now starting to make sense from a democratic* point of view, but what about the important messages, how do they get through? Not that I am denying anyone else's right to snap with one of these cameras but what if you are trying to get an idea or message across? Maybe it's time to re-read Marshall Mcluhan's 'Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man' ?

*When I say democratic point of view I actually mean the 'consumption' of photography and it's perceived uses in relation to the WWW.

More thoughts another day?

Camels at Rockefeller Center

Well, Jason, and you don't know me by the way, it could only happen in New York eh!

Camels at Rockefeller Center,originally uploaded by jkottke.

Camels at Rockefeller Center

Maps, Journeys, Location, Self

Ideas come at the funniest of times?

I'm up early, 5:30 am to be exact. Laying in bed this morning, I had an idea in that half awake half asleep state of mind. It's scribbled down in my journal... now... of course.

It will be interesting to see how it, the idea, develops when I refer back to this and the ensuing entries involving it's development and constructiuon.

The first questions now are:-

  • Navigation/Interface
  • Sound?
  • Interactivity?
  • Should I use text?

Some other initial thoughts, how does one "draw a visitor/user in"? Will the journey itself be enough of an experience? Do I attempt to make a single finished piece?

So many questions, just like at the beginning!

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
Marcel Proust

For the benefit of both my readers, this idea/project will take the form of an interactive screen based art piece. Which is a whole new direction for me.

6.12.04

A rethink on digital and analogue workflows?

In my earlier post on comparisons between work flows in analogue and digital I realise now I made one HUGE assumption. That people work in a similar way I do. This is a gross miscalculation on my part. Often folks have ideas and then execute them or some people work totally on intuition. So my observations about the impact of digital on photography is not as broad and as sweeping as I would have first hoped? Just writing this stuff down helps clarify it in my head for me, though.

Even great painters like photography!

Albert Tucker, ART and Photography.

The companion exhibition of photographs.

More on what is ART?

Got this from the ABC news site. So I pinched it from them, they got it from the AFP

Urinal pips Picassos in art poll

In a result that probably confirms many sceptics' prejudices about modern art, a 1917 men's urinal has been voted the most influential artwork of the 20th Century in a poll of the great and good of Britain's art world. The white porcelain urinal was mounted upside-down in a New York Gallery by French artist Marcel Duchamp. In one of the very earliest examples of conceptualism, Duchamp declared it was art simply because he stated this was so.

According to the survey of 500 movers and shakers in British art, the work Fountain, is more important that anything produced by the likes of Picasso and Matisse. Duchamp's work was the overwhelming winner of the poll, which has been undertaken ahead of next week's annual Turner Prize, Britain's leading modern art award. In second place came Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon of 1907, regarded by many as the origin point of modern art.

Andy Warhol's iconic pop art screenprints of Marilyn Monroe from1962 have come third.

"The choice of Duchamp's Fountain as the most influential work of modern art ahead of works by Picasso and Matisse comes as a bit of a shock," admitted Simon Wilson, a British art expert hired by the poll organisers to explain the results. "But it reflects the dynamic nature of art today and the idea that the creative process that goes into a work of art is the most important thing - the work itself can be made of anything and can take any form." Even without such polls, the often unorthodox works honoured by the Turner Prize tend to launch an annual debate in British newspapers as to what is, or is not, art.

Among the nominees this year are a pair of artists who digitally recreated Al Qaeda head Osama bin Laden's former home in Afghanistan. Last year's winner, Grayson Perry, was typically attention-grabbing: A burly man with a fondness for oversized party dresses and pigtails, his delicate ceramic vases are decorated with often disturbing scenes. The Daily Telegraph, often a despairing conservative voice on arts matters, is unsurprised by Duchamp's victory in the poll. "In this strange world where babies are made in test tubes and people pay to drink water in restaurants, the result is perhaps not all that astonishing," its arts correspondent sighed wearily.

In the poll, Guernica, Picasso's Spanish Civil War masterpiece of 1937, was voted fourth, followed by The Red Studio by Henri Matisse, from 1911.

- AFP ABC

5.12.04

Brazil the movie

Tonight one of my favourite movies is on TV, oh to be able to stay awake!

Meanwhile I process the thought... and I quote, "there are no functional families only degrees of dysfunctionality!" Is it possible to have a family go OFF the dysfunction scale?

This is one of the reasons I so enjoy flickr, in a funny way it helps me clarify my own work.

First edit for challenge #31

Here's my shortlist after my earlier post in regards to editing and shooting to a brief, I've still got a few days left to shoot, so the choices may grow.

New Directions in Photography?

Currenlty am working on an online competition submission (against my better judgement), I have already submitted two images to since acquiring my Nikon Coolpix 5400 Digital camera, and of course have failed dismally. So even though I can better expend my energies elsewhere with things like Lightwave, I am having another go, partially because this time it's a 'topic' that I can really really relate to. The topic is, 'Buildings in Decay Decline and Abandonment'.

Who would have thought though that it would be this difficult. Two shoots in as many days, 70 -100 images a lot of which I find interesting, and more than adequate for my own work yet strangely difficult to feel really happy with. Is it the immediacy of the process, the ease at which I can capture and quickly review results that causes this consternation? This is essentially a huge shift in my usual workflow developed over nearly 20 years of making fine prints.

This changed workflow is, I think, one of the greatest hurdles to my practice of Art based photography using digital. In the past there was the initial euphoria over pressing the shutter then a short time later more excitement as you pulled the still wet film from the tank, then, a day or two would pass and maybe just maybe the proof would look good. Back out I would go with my camera, when I next had a chance, and more of the above, either as re-shoots to correct errors in the original proofs, or to take the idea in new directions, or just to follow and chase light or locations. At some point during the year perhaps when the light was bad or when I didn't have time I would sit down with the proofs made *over a period of time* and evaluate the results. These proofs would find themselves in a box that was carried everywhere and looked at in quiet moments. Eventually connections could be made between the physical objects, between the proofs themselves. They were then often sequenced and organised and re-sequenced until enough images were made for an exhibition of some sort. Some times the exhibition came before the conclusion of the collection and collation of the work, but still the *process* of collection comparison and collation was intuitive, tactile and able to mimic real space and time, by the sheer physicality of the objects themselves.

This is all changed now with digital.

Now the images are collected and viewed on the spot. Proofing happens on a screen. Images organisation is hampered and limited by the size of the screen and the space it occupies. Now images are more limited in their sequencing. no longer can I look at images in a micro way whilst simultaneously maintaining an overview of the *whole* body of work, I can only fit so many on-screen and only in a hierarchical way, either by file name, of physical space occupied on the screen.

Have I just talked myself into a screen based method of communication?

You will notice here that I haven't even mentioned Photoshop at all. Photoshop is just another tool another way of bending and shaping and manipulating my images, it has little or no impact on my work, other than perhaps allowing me to consider the shift towards colour.

4.12.04

Copyrights or wrongs?

An issue close to my heart, well several issues actually, freedom of information, copyright, and intellectual property, being squabbled about in the courts in America.

History of Colour Photography

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) was a photographer in pre-revolutionary Russia, photographer to its ruler, the Tsar, and commisioned by him to document the land and its people. He developed a method of taking colour photographs by taking 3 separate exposures... [About Photography]

Voyeurs of the world Unite!

Want to become a voyeur?

Think that looking into other people's inner most secrets is somewhat erotic?

Got something you want to confess to?

Visit www.grouphug.us for your answers then!

s2art's flickr contacts

My small homage to flickr and some of the talented folks hangin' out on that site. I just can't get enough of the place, the way folks are willing to experiment with composition, light and subject matter. The way you can make your own little mini-galleries and sequences, it's truly awesome.

Of course this is one of many such sites out there. I have looked at several and this is the only one that really has appealed to me. So much so I upgraded to a pro account after my free trial ran out. Anyway here's my blogroll if you like of noteworthy contacts from flickr, in no particular order.

2.12.04

Yet another self portrait?

Why is it that so many people turn their cameras on themselves? Is a good portrait one that has a happy face or a serious one? Anyway, here's me sitting at my desk at one of the jobs I have, at a place called pic photographic imaging college, I teach photography and photoshop there, I also teach computer mediated art at VU where any day now this portrait or perhaps the next one I shoot will appear.



a self pportrait