Suburban....

...Zeitgesit? Tweaked using Photoshop, and Lobster

Facing East

Once again, captured that lovely late afternoon light that Melbourne is so capable of producing, then of course needed to be emphasised using Lobster and Photoshop, which by the way went swimmingly, thank you to all particpants, I hope you gained something form the whole experience as I know I did, don't be shy keep in touch, and share your images with me and the world at large.

Drive-by shoot

One of my secret hobbies is to do this — dangerous as it is! Sometimes this approach yields interesting results. Even without the Photoshop tweaks, minor as they are.

Elizabeth St. corner Latrobe....

Looking up, resized in Photoshop.

Nick Cave at Festival Hall

Last night saw myself and Nik at the Nick Cave concert, at what was my only Festival Hall concert in 20 odd years. Festival Hall in Melbourne was the place to be seen and the venue of many a sell out sports or entertainment event for decades.Probably best known for staging professional wrestling and boxing matches, many a riot started at The Hall, and some even spilled into the street and parking lot, none last night thank god, but as always a couple of idiots nearly spoiled it for others.
Festival Hall was built by John Wren in 1915. Rebuilt in 1956 after being burnt down the year before, it was the Olympic Games venue for gymnastics and wrestling. In the 1950s and 1960s it became an entertainment centre, with famous appearances including Bill Haley, Frank Sinatra and the Beatles. By the 1990s it had been overtaken by more spectacular venues, but the Wren family remained in ownership. The last time I was there, was to see Billy Joel, probabaly in the early 80's. Lots of things have changed since then, the most obvious being the licensing laws, see the two beers in my hand. (Two because I knew I would never find Nikki again if I wandered off later to get another beer.)

(Teaked in Photoshop of course)

Some of the other less obvious things were the technological ones, and no Nick Cave wasn't using a radio mike. Mobile phones. Yes folks people were snapping away madly at the concert, with their phones, I had a go at one stage, but the light levels were too low and by the time Nick Cave came on I was too taken away by the moment to bother pulling mine out again. Digital cameras were out and about too. I didn't take mine in as I wasn't sure about security, and had no intention of having mine cloaked or being generally hassled by the folks on the doors. At one stage I was convinced that I saw someone videoing a couple of songs with a small digital still camera!

I can't for the life of me, remember the song listing, but I do remember being impressed by the level and quality of sound, you know you're at a Rock 'n Roll gig, when you can feel bass drum in your shins and in the floor - awesome! The crowd didn't seem to me to be THAT up to speed with Nick's repertoire as the crowd reacted the most to some of the earleir stuff, one of which was so old I didn't know at all, Nik my wife who's been a ‘Cave fan’ longer than I've known her, went off with the crowd, but all the other songs I knew and enjoyed. The crowd while it seemed large to me wasn't overwhelming and if I really HAD to I could have found the bar and bought a beer or two. Boy though by the end of the night my feet were killing me!

As we left we caught up with the lovely Ed 'n Cindy, who, even though we knew were going to be at the concert, didn't manage to locate till the end, and as it turns out, were a mere 3 or 4 meters away from us at the front of the stage, the whole time! Nik grabbed a bottle of water at the nearest Kebab van on the way to the cars then it it was off home, I'd come straight from work. Driving home I played the ‘The Lyre of Orpheus’ and when it came to the track ‘O Children’ I had to wave an arm out the car, the way Nikki had been waveing her arms to the song at the concert. All up a great night was had, by all concerned especially my gorgeous wife Nikki!

Blue?

To some the camera has an albeit mistaken belief that it holds some form of objective power, to reveal more than it can hide, if this is the case, what does this image reveal?
A colour one we call blue and a light squiggle in the on the bottom right. Not much else.
The colour is what draws me to this image, and even though it has been tweaked slighhtly in Photoshop, this is pretty much the colour it was when I downloaded from my Nikon Coolpix 5400.

Autumn Light

Despite Autumn's alleged onslaught, we are still having gorgeous days.

Image manipulated with Photoshop and Lobster

Daylesford Fotobiennale 2005

I'm pretty excited about the upcoming Daylesford Fotobiennale, running from the 3rd of June to the 3rd of July 2005, in particular I may even add some work to the ‘Little pictures, Big Ideas’, show as well, stay tuned for that one?

The Magic hour

Possibly one of the last times this term/semester I'll get a chance to go out and shoot as my fancy takes me. Thankfully the light was awesome all day, and as I was out and about during the magic hour I captured this shot, hand held I might add.

3~4

Over the weekend managed to capture that beautiful late afternoon light, tweaked in Photoshop of coure, using Lobster as well

New Photography book

I just received my latest Amazon purchase, Frederick Sommers' most recent publication, Photography, Drawing, Collage.

I was fortunate on a recent trip to the United States we stopped in at the CCP in Arizona, they have an extensive collection of his prints there. And I spent a lot of time there looking at his wonderful images that are meticloulsy printed. The reproductions in this book are some of the best I've ever seen, and of course the book is peppered with gems of quotes like this one

“ …The value of a work of art or scientific formulation lies in the precision of positional relationships”
From a talk given at the Art Institute of Chicago, October 1970, revised June 1983

Sunrise 05.05.04

Most mornings, I'm up before the sun comes up, this morning it looked like this

Don't call me a Geek!

Are these guys geeks or what, a software install party!

DILO - a flickr game

Recently participated in a mini DILO (Day in the Life of) over at flickr. Normally these fall on the summer and winter solstices, but the admins of this group decided on a mini DILO as the past couple had occured during a week day. Needless to say it sounded easy at first but by about 4:00pm I was struggling.

My day got off to it's usual start, light breakfast, checked out flickr and off we went for a not so typical brunch with my Mother who just happened to be in town. Brunch was at Southbank and we decided to park in North Melbourne, and walk the 6 or so kilometres there. I shot from the hip on the way, and got a couple of nice surprises but took my time on the way back where I got a couple of good ones too. The saving grace was the couple of junk/antique shops we hit towards the end as well, which in some ways in not THAT different for us on a Sunday.

Here's my favourite image from the day.

All up I shot 180 plus frames, and managed to edit this down to about 36 or so shots for my DILO submission.

As an aside, flickr is real slow this morning, hmmm popularity has it's price?