1 Year Old Today!

Well it's one year today since I started jotting down all sorts of things that relate to Photography, Photoshop and my own cybertravels. How things have changed in the short space of a year. When I first started I was still struggling with CSS (I am still am to a certain extent) and was disappointed at my percieved inability to add images here, worried that I would not be able to write enough, and planning for the big trip Overseas. Now of course I have a pro account at Flickr, and can link back here to add some images or link to my own site, have travelled around some of the large cities of the world and am about to embark on a new trip to South East Asia, albeit for a short week this time, and surprisingly managed to write a few words at least once or twice a week.

In terms of the whole idea of building some sort of readership, pffft, well that was never going to happen, really was it? But some of my friends do read this (thank you all), and on this trip overseas, I'm pretty sure internet access won't be as difficult as it was in parts of Europe,(I hope). So hopefully I can keep folks in touch with our next journey. I know that flickr folks will get to see plenty of pics after the event. As for posting pix during the event and whether or not I will be able to write here whilst gone, well we shall see.

I know I rave on about Flickr a lot, and I'm sorry if you are bored by this but I'm going to rave some more today too. A couple of things have become apparent to me thanks to the whole GNE (game that never ends) idea. Firstly, flickr is addictive, I find myself whiling away many hours reading comments, posting comments, adding work to groups, administering my own groups (3), keeping my portfolios/sets organised. Now after almost 5 months of membership, I'm starting to see who (on my contacts list anyway) are the photographers I really like, who are consistent and who pull the odd shot out of their arses so to speak. Here's my favourite list of flickrites so far. In no particualr order, (and apologies if you aren't mentioned here I can only skive off work for so long).

• Irregulargirl, daring confrontational, edgy and poetic, is the only way to describe this chick's (with 'tude) work.
• Macartsit11, produces, colourful, consistent and creative work, a solid eye, and a recent Mac convert to boot!
• Shoegazer, works closely with Irregulargirl and sometimes their work is swapped and crossed over, so it's difficult to tell who shot what, still great work nonetheless.
• Swissmiss' work is minimal and exquisite, and she occasionally visits an Aunt and documents small impromptu performance pieces.
• Jengray, produces solid analog work often with a 6 x 4.5
• Lunaryuna, a fellow urban photographer, shares similar interests to my self and her work is excellent, she is also quite passionate about the squared circle group.
• Scootie, is the not only one of the few Melbourne members of flickr, who's work is consistently of a high standard, but I have also met him, in the flesh, (as a consequence of joining flickr), two other excellent Melbourne photographers are Mitchie Girl and Subsonix, aka, Dj Mudgutz who happen to be former students to boot!
• Ozlomo consistently produces fine, lomo-shots and is also Melbourne based
• My life as a Haint, is prolific and suitably bent, he manipulates heavily to the point where his images are barely recognisable as photographs.
• Sam_ produces very beautiful urban landscapes, that have a fairly bleak look about them but are strong images nonetheless.

I could go on but I don't want to bore you with ALL the details, suffice to say that if i covered all of my contacts todate I'd have several screens of text for you to plough through.

Some of the other interesting things that have happened to me whilst being involved in the community that is flickr is, I've met folks who are passionate about Vegemite and aren't from Oz. A Cabbie in Brisbane regularly photographs his passengers in his cab, and discovered the joy of walking around looking down.

So happy birthday to you s2arts.blogspot.com, and thanks to all the folks at flickr who are shaping the site into what seems to be a damn fine community, one of those fabled cyber communities I've been hearing about for so long!

Pictures to follow ; )