Resilience

A return to my roots—but with colour.

Edit 06.01.01
Now blogged elsewhere on the web, at urbannaturegroup.blogspot.com

Technorati tags:-urban, nature, digital-photography

Motion in the Ocean

No best-of's for 2005 here!

To quote U2, "You glorify the past when the future dies up!"

However, remember this?

Which then spawned this?

Well apparently it then spawned this?

Atget Re-Photographed though.

Time and Photography

Just added another gallery to my already growing number of galleries at flickr. This one looks at time and photography, inspired in part by a section of Stephen Shore's book, 'The Nature of Photographs' that deals with photography's ability to change our notion of time. Quoting directly from the book.

"A photograph is static, but the world flows in time. As this flow is interrupted by the photograph, a new meaning, a photographic meaning, is delineated."^§

The impetus to push it further started on the summer equinox, with a small series of shots involving the rising sun on a windy day and a clothesline. So given the ease that I can shoot multiple frames from a single viewpoint it seemed logical to expand on this idea. It is not the first time I've done this. I have in fact used this technique on and off over the last couple of years with digital cameras, but now it seems to make sense as an idea unto itself. I know the idea has been explored by others in the past, now though, we have huge networks of machines communicating over vast distances with each other enabling people to see and connect in ways unheard of. Allowing others to see our slices of time minutes after the happen.

Technorati tags:-photography, time

^§The Nature of Photographs ISBN# 0-8018-5720-1 pg 37

Post Humanity?

How Human are we in this Cyber World we live in?

This guy left a comment recently, I'm not sure if it was meant to be funny or not, but in checking his blog and trying to determine this I found a prolific writer, who either is really unwell or just a "sicko". I can see no reason why anyone would spend so much time writing so extensively if they were a "joke" or some sort of fabrication, but to where your heart on your sleeve in such a public yet anonymous way is obviously enormously therapeutic. How do you in this day and age of faceless and anonymous computer writing really get to know or understand a human being? All this adds to, is the further deepening of mystery that is the human condition I guess?

Normal programming to resume shortly :)

Beautiful Light - How Appropriate

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.

Photo taken on 23rd Dec 2005

One of my favourite photography books

I bought this book in 2001. It is "The Nature of Photographs"by Stephen Shore.

According to my review on Amazon, "I stumbled across", it and and in the process gave it a rapturous review. Well now its worth $150.00, and that's US Dollars! I bought mine for the grand-sum of $18.00 Australian, in 2001, talk about investment very nice, and rightly so it's a great book and I pull it out every now and again and re-read it. Of course it doesn't refer to the huge revolution that digital/screen based photographic image-making has had on photography, but it's not meant to be a do all; and end all; kind of book, just a quiet gentle treatise on what photographic print can be or mean.

On holidays now for 6 weeks so postings here will frenetic or sporadic, depending on my mood. Also am planning on giving the Canon 350d a real test against my Nikon Coolpix 5400. Which in some ways is not a fair comparison, as they are 2 completely different cameras that allow the user to shoot in a particular way or not.

Photoshop tutorial blog Oi vey!

Technorati Tags:- Photo-Book, Photography, Photoshop.

Talk about the shallow end of the meme pool!

Boy meets Mom on blind Date! courtesy Yahoo news

Trippy Man!

Well the year is winding up. I'm happy with the way things have panned out on flickr, I've met some great folks and even seen some innovative uses of flickr itself. The Melbourne flickr crew got together for a X-mas do recently, here's some snaps, currently dealing with battery issues to get at the rest [my images], [MitchieGirl's]. Boy - ouch my head the next day! It was fun all round and I really liked the location, thanks to Scootie and Donina for organising it, will return camera in hand sans-alcohol for a revisit - one day.

Last week rationalised my archived images on CD, from 5 boxes to one using paper sleeves instead of Jewel Cases, and in the process have actually felt inclined to go back through my archives and start uploading some images. It's nice to know I can grab them all in one hit in a hurry know if needed, and lug them around or flip through them looking for a particular image quite easily.

This particular image I will never be able to reproduce, it's come about from a strange design feature, or is that fault, from my old Kodak DC260 camera. When the card started to get full it would compress the images and give them a whole new file name usually something like EX00000.jpg. Now also the battery readout on the LCD was notoriously inaccurate. So sometimes it would just die with out warning occasionally mid-processing of an image.

Meanwhile Elsewhere on the Web

I get a mention on Digital Photo of the Day, pretty happy about that, nice get to get noticed.

I need to re-edit this image it looks quite red in safari - too red in fact, compared to this one.

Movement over Water

I love this bridge, there are 2 of these in Melbourne.

Taken from the window of a moving train. Edited using Graphic Converter rather than Photoshop

Technorati Tags:-GraphicConverter, digiphoto

High Modernist Photography

Meanwhile normal programming resumes with an idea for a CD cover or interface design I want to start working on. I've always been a fan of high modernist photographers such as Paul Strand and Edward Weston, this object appeals to me as a consequence. Some editing in photoshop, but mostly in camera in my studio-shed.

Technorati tags:-high-modernism, photography,digital-photo, photoshop

Treadmill Bikes & Bio-feotal-pigs!

Ok here's some goofy news that I doubt the veracity of, if somebody from the US reads this perhaps they can follow it up?

Ever wanted to take your treadmill outside and enjoy the geat outdoors, frustrated by the lack of mobility of this piece of gym equipment? Worry no more. The treadmill bike is here?

While I have no reason to doubt the veracity of this next story, you can just never tell on the WWW. Time based performace art reaches a whole new audience with the use of blogs and the interent.

Quoting the blog directly here.

We found these bio fetal pigs in our ceiling when we were changing the ceiling tiles. They were left by the previous owner Gael Bennett, in 1997 specifically for us ( or someone) to find later.

Like Music, like CG generated rock clips, thenyou'll love this webpage.

Insomnia has some advantages!

Technorati tags:-insomnia, treadmillbike, bio-fetal-pigs

Bonus Photoshop Workshops

Ok, just ran a weekend workshop. It went well - as usual ;) One attendee suggested that I run "catchup classes". So that is what I have done, set aside some dates for one photoshop catchup classes in January 2006.

Technorati tags:-Photoshop

Good Samaritan

I want to tell you a story

A story that is small yet significant, profound but simple.

To tell this story, I need to start at the beginning. It's mid-week, at the end of the fortnightly pay cycle. Generally my pay goes in late in the afternoon, sometimes early in the evening. This particular night I am on my way to the train station to catch a train to the "Last Supper", the final get together with the current bunch of second year students, who have just finished, their Diploma of Arts [Applied Photography]. When I got to the station the plan was to buy a ticket that I can re-use for 10 trips, useful for an irregular PT user like myself. They cost $29.90. I got to the station and tried to buy one of these tickets. I wasn't able to, the transaction was declined.It seems that my pay had yet to go in!

So here I am standing at the station, iPod blasting in my ears, staring off into the distance wondering where I could buy one close by - on credit. When a woman who was walking past stops and says something to me. Something I could not understand as my iPod was turned up quite loud. After quickly yanking out my earphones for my iPod, I heard the woman ask
"Do you need a ticket?"
"My ticket is still valid, you can have it if you like."
As if I'm going to refuse an offer like that. So I gladly took the ticket, and headed off to the party.

So thank you kind woman, you have proved to me once again that people are usually kind, and helpful.

Three of four, new set set additions and 40,000 +

Number 3 in a small series of images made at the Queenscliff Music festival.

This weekend saw the usual jaunt into town, and as always the CBD was overflowing with possibilities. Once this sequence of images from Queenscliff is finished and I've processed, them to fit this page I'll start uploading the results here.

In the interim, I want to announce a couple of new sets of my work at flickr.

• The Basement, brand spankin' new
• Adventures Over 50 [while this isn't that new I shot a lot on the weekend with my ISO pumped up to 400]

Finally my photo-stream on flickr has clocked the 40,000 + mark, again try getting that kind of coverage in a small inner suburban gallery.

However, one of the things I don't like about flickr is that visitors to my stream get to see only my recently uploaded images, in the order that they are uploaded. Now as both my erstwhile readers will know, this is not how I work.

My methodology involves, wandering around with my camera and making images of anything and everything that catches my eye. Then back at home edit the images in terms of quantity, processing and context, ready to upload, once uploaded they are placed in their applicable sets.

Personally,I would like to see the option for guest and visitors to be able to choose how they see your photo-stream, i.e., do they simply wish to see the most recently uploaded, or the most recently added to set or even maybe the newest sets.

Finally after viewing this set on flickr you'll never look at a wheelie bin the same again!

Technorati tags:-flickrphotographphotoblogwheelie-bins

Shade

Number 2 in a small series shot at the Queens Cliff Music festival.

Technorati Tag:-digital-photograph

Waiting for Lunch @ Queenscliff

Recently visited the Queenscliff music festival, lugged my camera along - of course, bit dissapointed in the end results ah, well, here's the first of several I thought worthy of posting here.

Technorati tags:-Queens-CLiff-Music-Festival