Time runs out!

Intriguing blog, indeed?

Been a few hectic days around here of late. A return trip to Mildura, pulling a furniture van full of furniture, and a funeral whilst there, thankfully the van stayed behind.

Driving these kinds of distances often allow plenty of thought, from the frivolous to the meaningful. The problem is, you can't jot down your thoughts whilst driving, even accessing gadgets that could help in this process are not easy to engage. So I'll just have to hope that some of them come back to me.

We stayed at a relatives house while in Mildura. It's a house we visit at least one every 18 months or so. I always enjoy spending time in other folks houses as it allows you the luxury of just observing light and how it plays around a space.

With 3 days to go I got nothing achieved that I wanted to this term break. Didn't even shoot as much as I'd hoped. Even flickr seems to be quiet these days?

Art and Activism, is this an oxymoron?

This online game allows you to examine your tags at a site called del.icio.us. [It's a site to store and sort your bookmarks, Location free, browser free and OS free.] It may or may not offer an interesting insight into one's surfing habits and interests. Mine makes me look completely 2 dimensional, ah well.

Changes...

Compared to, here and here.

Flickr's down again today!

Programmer - Photographer

A young programmer who has written a neat app to copy files from your iPod back to another hard drive or device, also has an interest in photography. Some pretty good stuff in there. His general site is very nicely designed too. So if you're in the market for some way to get your music from your iPod back to another iPod or some other storage medium, this is a great option.

Light revisited

White...

Flickr is down : (

Orange Triangles

Twists & Turns!

I've been running Tiger X.4.2 for a while now, I initially really enjoyed the widgets of the dashboard Back, didn't mind the power of spotlight, but had been struggling wildly with my browsers, speed and instability. My ram usage was being heavily affected by the widgets. After spending a couple of days at homesick, I managed to catch up on some of my news feeds [what else do you when flickr is quiet and no-one is online and able to chat]. The news-feeds gave me the answer, someone has written an app that allows you to switch off the widgets completely. So I'm no longer using the widgets but things seem to run faster and smoother, unless I'm on flickr, then things just simply slow to a crawl and eventually I'll switch to Firefox which seems to handle the whole site better.

So now I'm back at work and doing a bit more news-feed reading where I discover this gem about the move forward for the web. This then lead to a wikipedia article on the technology being discussed, which lead to a neat little potted history of the web, from a designer/coders perspective.

“ What's this got to do with the photography?” I hear you ask. Well very little, but the web is where I publish most of my work these days, and recently I have hooked up with 26 like minded individuals from flickr and we are planning an exhibition together sometime in 2006, so stay tuned, excitement plus ahead!

On a slightly un-related note I found an article on the world's longest running war, where no shots were fired

My Chilean Gallery

I'm everywhere!

Family, friends, stereotypes and chocolate?

Sunday saw us both at the movies. We decided to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

If you're after a fun light hearted look at childhood stereotypes with lots of singing oompaloompas, don't bother. In true Tim Burton fashion this is a dark tale of Willy's demons, with Charlie being the catalyst that turns Willy into the prodigal son.

The opening sequence is an amazing piece of CG, and when you see the credits at the end you realise that there was enormous amounts of energy spent on this aspect of the movie alone. However it doesn't detract from the story in any way shape or form. The story, which I have never read by the way, is at one level about the tour of the factory, and the children who are punished for their misdeeds throughout. It is also about the importance of family. Handled in a relatively non-sacchrine way.

This version however focuses primarily on the character of Willy. Willy's success it seems is because he is driven character, with a demon. Dealing with this demon seems to be the only way for Willy to regain his chocolate/lolly empire. Which in true Hollywood fashion he manages to do. Charlie on the other hand finds success from other areas and only goes back to the factory after Wily has decided to allow his family to come along as well.

The cast are all stellar in my opinion and if anything, the support actors kind of steal the show, which is never a bad thing in my mind. The story line has only minor variations on the 1971 film with Gene Wilder, but a slightly different ending.

Overall I enjoyed the movie, but I have issues with several areas, the stereotyping of the children,for one, I felt could have been made more contemporary, i.e. TV Mike could have been sucked into computer game rather than into a TV, although his character was obsesssed with video games. Several parts were direct quotes from the 1971 movie, and having never read the book I'm unclear as to the importance of these quotes to the story. So I'll need to find a copy of the book and find out for myself I guess.

One of my favourite aspects of the movie is that it operates at several levels, have fun looking out for other movie references, I suspect there may even be some TV references in there as well, may need to go back and have another look.

My final verdict at this stage is, if you like Tim Burton's style, you'll like this movie, if you want a bright colourful simple song and dance romp don't bother, this movie is dark, and operates on several levels, some of which I don't think kids should see.

Green Curves White Light

I love my job!

Where else could you be able to stop and marvel at the quality of the light in any given situation, and be encouraged no expected to make an image of what you saw?

Well here is that light. The graceful curves and the shadows all compliment each other, the delicate hue of the green is really calming as well. It took half a dozen goes with composition and exposure to get what I wanted, but I'm pretty happy with this one.

Lurgy?

Currently suffering the annual or sometimes bi-annual Pseudoephedrine frenzy, things could be quiet around here for a few days?

Walking Melbourne?

I often like to wander the streets of Melbourne, [with my camera of course], walking allows a much deeper insight to the culture and feel of places like the CBD, here's a web-site that will help you focus my future walks around Melbourne, hope you both can find some use for it.

Sometimes I only need walk in my backyard.

Spring.

Symbolism?

Recently I wandered off to post a letter, [kind of ironic I know] when I noticed this bag caught in tree. The tree was full of blossom, as were the nearby trees. The wind had been pretty strong for a couple of days, and this bag had lodged there as a consequence no doubt.

I glanced up more interested in the blossom and all it's promise and the gorgeous light that was happening, it was late in the afternoon. When I noticed the bag, stuck in the tree. I was mesmerised for a moment. Then quietly pleased as I had made a point of carrying my camera with me, as always. So I made several exposures, and compositions, resulting in this final choice.

What first struck me though, was, the bag's tenacity in what seems an otherwise futile struggle. A struggle to not get blown away to who knows where. Then there was the tree's will in keeping the bag there, in some kind of deadly embrace, which seemed poetic, or maybe it was more metaphoric? The dark symbolism of the deadly consumer item, trapped and held against it's will by the most powerful symbol of spring itself. Two symbols engaging, or was it a struggle, maybe something more gentle like a tussle?

All of this occurring as the sun was getting low in the sky, after what had been several lovely spring days windy but lovely.

Ah yes indeed, spring IS just around the corner.