Well I made it, 1000 images on flickr, decided to make an image though, as it just gets too damn difficult to choose from the archives, or current images.
26.2.05
21.2.05
Hunter S Thompson dies?
Well it's a sad day indeed for the world and for journalism, Hunter S Thompson is dead.
I can personally attest to the fact that he made me fall off a couch while reading his tome ‘The Great Shark Hunt’, Thankyou Hunter for sharing your wit and insights with the world, sadly this is another nail in the coffin for a free and democratic press in countries like USA!
20.2.05
19.2.05
15.2.05
13.2.05
US gearing up to attack Iran now?
When will it end, it seems they're off again? How many more countries are they going to occupy?
U.S. Uses Drones to Probe Iran For Arms (washingtonpost.com via Yahoo! News): "The Bush administration has been flying surveillance drones over Iran for nearly a year to seek evidence of nuclear weapons programs and detect weaknesses in air defenses, according to three U.S. officials with detailed knowledge of the secret effort."
Photography time and photoshop?
This image is from my new digital phone camera, which has a function that allows, me to make panoramas, (without the use of photoshop) a no mean feat in itself, but having examined this one after the fact, I realised that there had been a considerable amount of time in between the 1st and the 3rd shots resulting in a some strange looking body language, and poses. This has me thinking about time and photography, it's long been a well known fact that photography is a slice of time, but what about the idea that several slices are rejoined to form a cohesive whole, yet slightly disjointed whole?
hmmmmmm?
Indeed hmmmm…
Art Photography book production
I have started small run publishing of photographic art books, and late last year produced my first book, entitled 'Typologies I' the intention was to produce a series of typologies, an idea I may or may not run with. So the next book is tentatively entitled “ Art & Mathematics…” This is the current opening image from it, click it and you can visit flickr where I have a set dedicated to it's production, this is the main reason I use flickr, to create sets of digital images for later use… oh and to have a little fun too with my camera! I have in the past talked about work-flows and analogue, well I guess this is the equivalent of a proofing and editing process that used to be done with real physical prints, now I can sequence and organise my prints and get a rough idea how they sit together before even hitting Indesign™.
12.2.05
Name popularity ranking
In completely unrelated news, how popular is your name?
You maybe pleasantly surprised?
Wikipedia Definition of Photoshop
What is Photoshop? It's a popular high-end image editor for the Macintosh and Windows from Adobe. The original Mac versions were the first to bring affordable image editing down to the personal computer level in the late 1980s. Since then, Photoshop has become the de facto standard in image editing. Although it contains a large variety of image editing features, one of Photoshop's most powerful capabilities is layers, which allows images to be rearranged under and over each other for placement. Photoshop is designed to read and convert to a raft of graphics formats, but it provides its own native format for layers (.PSD extension).
Adobe Photoshop is a bitmap graphics editor (with some text and vector graphics capabilities) published by Adobe Systems. It is the market leader for commercial bitmap image manipulation. It is usually referred to simply as "Photoshop". As with most of other Adobe's applications, Photoshop is available for Mac OS and Microsoft Windows; versions up to Photoshop CS 8.0 can also be run under operating systems such as Linux with an emulation program such as CrossOver Office. In the past, a port to SGI IRIX existed, but this was dropped before version 4.
The development of Photoshop started in 1987 by the brothers Thomas Knoll and John Knoll, although it was not until 1990 that the program was first released by Adobe. The program was intended from the start as a tool for manipulating images that were digitized by a scanner, which was a rare and expensive device in those days. Although primarily designed to edit images for paper-based printing, Photoshop is used increasingly to produce images for the World Wide Web. Recent versions have been shipped with a separate application, ImageReady, which provides a more specialised set of tools for this purpose.
As of 2003, Photoshop is at version 8, called CS by Adobe to reflect its integration with their "Creative Suite". Photoshop CS features a revolutionary command : 'Shadow/Highlight' which allow user to 'suppress' highlights and/or 'push out' shadows while maintaining most of the 'image details' (i.e. the histogram would remain virtually unchanged). It also comes with Adobe Camera RAW, a plugin developed by Thomas Knoll which has the ability to read several RAW file formats from various digital cameras and import them directly into Photoshop. A preliminary version of the RAW plugin was also available for Photoshop 7.0.1 as a $99 USD optional purchase. The term photoshopping is a neologism, meaning "editing an image", regardless of the program used. Adobe discourages use of the term [1] out of fear that it will undermine the company's trademark; an alternate term which leaves out the Photoshop reference is "photochop".
The term photoshop is also used as a noun referring to the altered image. This is specially popular amongst members of the websites Something Awful, Fark and Worth1000 where photoshopping is an institution, with the goal of altering an image, subtly or blatantly, to make it humorous or just clever, by appealing to both the slapstick- or intellectual-level of humor, often via the use of obscure in-jokes and pop culture references. A very recent and even more obscure variety of this, is the so called "Fake": extreme parodying of the current celebrity culture, by blending famous faces with nude or pornographic images. Photoshop competitions in all these varieties have become a favourite passtime for many professional and amateur users of the software. The term is sometimes used with a derogatory intent by artists to refer to images that have been retouched instead of originally produced. A common issue amongst users of all skill levels is the ability to avoid in one's work what is referred to as "the Photoshop look" (although such an issue is intrinsic to many graphics programs). Photoshop is generally considered one of the best (if not the best) image editing programs for raster graphics, but it has the disadvantage of a high price. This has allowed competing programs such as Jasc Software's Paint Shop Pro and The GIMP Team's GIMP to become popular. To capture this lost market share, Adobe has introduced a much less expensive program called Photoshop Elements that consists of Photoshop minus some of the high-end output capabilities, useful for editing photos from consumer digital cameras and for doctoring images for the web but not as useful for professional prepress work.
Release history
Photoshop 1.0 (Mac OS) : February 1990
Photoshop 2.0 (Mac OS) : June 1991
Code Name : Fast Eddy
New Features :
Added Paths
Photoshop 2.0.1 (Mac OS): January 1992
Photoshop 2.5 (Mac OS): November 1992
Code Names : Merlin (Mac), Brimstone (Windows)
Photoshop 2.5.1 (Mac OS): 1993
Photoshop 3.0 : September 1994 (Mac) - November 1994 (Win)
Code Name : Tiger Mountain (Mac OS)
New Features :
Tab Palettes
Photoshop 4.0 : November 1996
Code Name : Big Electric Cat
New Features:
Adjustment Layers
Editable type (previously, type was rasterized as soon as it was added)
Photoshop 4.0.1 : August 1997
Photoshop 5.0 : May 1998
Code Name : Strange Cargo
New Features:
Color Management
Photoshop 5.0.1 : 1999
Photoshop 5.5 : February 1999
New Features:
Extract
Vector Shapes
Photoshop 6.0 : September 2000
Code Name : Venus in Furs
introduced the 'liquify' filter
Photoshop 6.1 : March 2001
Photoshop 7.0 : April 2002
Code Name : Liquid Sky
New Features :
Made text fully vector
Healing Brush
Photoshop 7.0.1 : August 2002
New Features :
Adobe Camera RAW 1.0 (optional)
Photoshop CS : October 2003
Code Name : Dark Matter
New Features :
Adobe Camera RAW 2.0
Shadow/Highlight Command
Match Colour command
'Lens blur' filter
Real-Time Histogram
Coming soon my critique of photoshop and what you aren't told about it.
This article is from wikipedia, and is used here without premission. I also have another article on my website that looks at the history of this behemoth program.
7.2.05
Digital Photography Manipulations?
Digital photographs manipulated in photoshop, are they somehow less “ photographic”?
According to some folks over at flickr yes.
This notion displays a lack of understanding of the entire photographic process to my mind. Manipulating photos in a program like Photoshop™ is simply processing. All photographs are processed. Analog ones in chemistry, digital ones in a computer. All digital photos whether scanned form film or downloaded from a digital camera require some level of manipulation, the degree of manipulation required depends on several factors, the means by which the image was captured, and the output device, (there maybe others but I can'think of them just yet).
So here's a scenario, you choose to shoot in RAW for because like me you don't trust some camera manufacturers idea of what an image should look like. This image upon downloading requires processing of some sort, otherwise you have an image whilst full of digital information visually may express nothing, or what about the other extreme, you are travelling and don't want to fill up your cards to quickly, so you settle for a jpeg from the camera, even these are not as crisp as they can be and require some intervention in the process. My point is digital manipulation is no more unphotographic than push or pull processing, burning or dodging or spotting, there is no cheating going on. Anyone who thinks there is doesn't understand the process.
6.2.05
Learning Photography & Flickr Updates
Photography Books aren't just about pictures, once again Peter Marshall over on photography about dot com has an article worth reading. so if you want to learn how to take better pictures or learn how to ‘read’ your own and others photos then have read of his article.
Recent addtions to my flickr account/site:-
- Portrait of a place
- The Flood of 2005
- Chase #7 a kind of scavenger hunt game, currently with about 80 participants.
- Melbourne's Trams crickey never thought that I'd become a tram spotter?
For both of my readers, I have also uploaded an image from my desktop of the info from the folder where I store my camera files. It's been a busy 5 weeks I can tell you but I just know things will slow down, particularly in the winter months when daylight is short and workloads are in full swing! Still 1442 images is nothing to sneeze at, of course not all of them made it to flickr but those that did I'm pretty happy with and of course will use the sets feature to ‘organise’ the images for further publication elswhere, probably as books.
4.2.05
Melbourne Floods
We had some serious rain here in Melbourne over the last 2 days, our local creek almost broke it's banks. Last night I went down and snapped off a few shots, so I'll post them later at flicker.
I took a couple of panoramas using the panorama assit option on my Nikon Coolpix camera, and then tried to assemble them in photoshop. The results are OK but because I didn't use a tripod they are a little wonky, which is easy enough to fix in photoshop, or i can just leave them as a slightly off and wonky ‘Cubist/Hockney’ style image.
1.2.05
see no evil....?
What fun you can have if you have the inclination!
Briefly:-
tripod,
3 shots (with self timer in this case)
opened in photoshop
shift dragged two images on the top,
create masks through them so you can see the other layers below.
31.1.05
Photoshop Manipulations
29.1.05
First Ericsson Mobile Phone images
Here is an image made with my Ericsson K700i. It isn't the first but it seemed to me to justify the extra cost of e-mailing to myself to have it posted at flickr, of course on a real monitor, it falls apart, but on y mobile phone screen it looks sensational. the colours are what really drives me here, and the way the mirror looks like a planet earth, looking down in dismay at the discarded shopping trolley, in all that crazy mixed up light it's just great I reckon?
This phone camera also has a built-in function which allows you to stitch together 3 pictures to create a panorama. Now whilst these images are by no means accurate renditions of the scene presented it certainly gives the feel of the scene as it was experienced.
I think I am finally coming to terms with what these new technologies mean to my own creative practices. I can really appreciate the way that images can be produced quickly and spontaneously. Then once on the web can be organised in seamless and intergrated bodies of work that are interconnected.
27.1.05
My most viewed image on Flickr?
My last post from home for the summer of 2005, leaving later for work. Anyway, the most viewed image of mine at Flickr? Strangely its a screen-grab of my favourites, with 211 views, prior to that, it had been a shot of a mannequin dressed as Santa outside a shop in Fitzroy. Strange very strange indeed? I mean I can understand the mannequin shot but a screen grab of other folks photos that I enjoy?
26.1.05
Photographic Flickr frenzy!
FWIW, I have uploaded over 150 photos in the six week break from work, with probably a 25% hit rate means I've shot more like 600 in this time frame!
With me back at work tomorrow, I suspect the upload rate will drop right off, who knows, it's all just to easy to shoot process and upload these days.
The total amount uploaded so far to flickr is about 783 images but a substantial number of these are from the archives.
Ericsson K700i Review
Update on the phone review.
The darns thing stitches panoramas together, has a black and white function, as well as sepia, negative and solarised. My god when will all this end? The downside to this camera is that I am unable it seems to turn off or change the ghastly shutter/clicking sound. Buggah!
Mobile Phone Camera 2
Here is my new mobile phone.
A big thanks to Matt at Telechoice in Northland for the help in upgrading at no cost. I chose this particular phone because it was one of the few that was listed on the Apple site as bluetooth compatible
Well so far so good, have almost completed setting up the phone, once I have the bluetooth attachment for my laptop it's away I go with my idea of seriously exploring these cameras as cultural tools. Flickr is probably where most of them will end up, who knows. For the time being here's my ‘thoughts’ on the camera.
I like the backlit keypad, and I like the icons and the rollovers attached to them, the menu system was very quick and easy to work out too. However the small gripes I have a this stage are, the Navigation key, this is small for a person of my size and I seem to be either missing it all together or hitting it when I don't want to. The built in ring tones are somewhat limited in their choices and because I don't have the bluetooth all configured yet I don't think I'll be able to download any other options. I am also a little perplexed about the e-mail configuration, and I'm waiting for some messages tom arrive that are supposed to help me set it all up, I've been waiting since about 8:00pm last night?
Still all in all it's shaping up to be a great phone with what appears to be pretty reasonable image quality. Stay tuned for the snaps dear Reader.
25.1.05
Flickr Downtime again?
Hmmm it seems flickr is down again for a couple of hours, uh oh! For two hours! Ai Carumba!
24.1.05
Digital Photography on the fly
Yesterday, I found a train that is in the process of being dismantled. Of course Melbourne's graffiti community was onto it, or should I say had been onto it really. So I popped on over and snapped off a few shots with my Nikon Digital Camera.
The Graffiti artists were hanging around working whilst I was still there. Some of my initial impressions were, that these guys and they were all guys, seemed to be much older than I'd ever expected them to be. The smell of enamel paint hung thick in the air, caps of enamel paint cans were strewn everywhere, along with empty stubbies and plenty of the detritus of a train dismantling. I hope to go back and have another go at making some more images, before Smorgons finish the job, stay tuned fine reader. The images are simply edited in Photoshop for the web, no other editing has occured what you see is what you get!
23.1.05
Sets at Flickr?
One of the reasons I am hangin' out at flickr is because it allows me to create sets - quickly and easily - and it helps me to then sequence my images as if I was preparing them for an exhibition. these days I make books rather than exhibit. So I now have a new set at Flickr, possibly a new book as a consequence? Inspired in part by Frederick Sommer's new site
22.1.05
Art Photography?
Interesting photo project?
Over three months, Danish designer Simon Hoegsberg stopped 150 strangers on the streets of Copenhagen and New York City and asked them what they had been thinking about the second before he hailed them. Using a microphone and a dictaphone, he recorded their answers, then snapped their photos. The result
21.1.05
Photography book collecting, and how should I archive my images?
A man who takes after my own heart as far as photography and book collecting goes. One day I'll catalog my entire collection and post it online, I have a piece of software that does it effortlessly.
Am reading more and more about photographic image management. Read this morning how someone uses a small app from Adobe™, to organise and categorise his images. Currently I use an app called iView (the free lite version, no RAW file support). But don't do much more than drop a CD's worth (however long it takes to fill one) into the app to create a file, and give the file a meaningful name for easy referral at a later date. Later when I need to find an image I just open the iView file or files and ‘browse’ for the image I want. It is a completely visual process, that ties in with my memories of time and place, seeing a few images around the time the image was taken often is enough to jog my memory and hone in my search. So far this process works for me, of course though most of my work is personal and predominantly about the landscape or culture, I have few images of events anniversaries or birthdays, these are the times I want to party not make images so I don't make them.
All Honkey Dorey so far but what about in ten years time? Will I still be making images in the same vien? I've already changed my focus by shooting for screen and small prints only now. And even this year when i printed my first small run limited edition book I just went off gut instincts and chose a handful of images that seemed to work, all visual. Does this make me to easy to please? Are other people more demanding of their images?
Just thinking out loud I guess?
Spam or Link to Photoshop workshops?
Something that appeared to be spam that *may or may not* be spam turned up in my inbox today? A site called yahblogs.com has added me to there database? Hmmmm we'll see what transpires.
Here's what the e-mail said:-
This email is not SPAM.
We are just letting you know we've selected your content.
Have a great day!
Sure enough when I checked the site mine is listed not very high in the photoshop term search though?
Speaking of which my last photoshop woorkshop for the summer holidays is this weekend, the 22nd 23rd of Jan 2005 from 9:00 am to 4:00pm, I have one place left so contact me if your interested? The cost for the two days is $230.00 this includes all course notes and materials needed for the coure and lunch both days. So maybe I'll see you there?
20.1.05
Porn.............
Quotes on Truth and Photography?
Well whaddya know, looks what pops into my inbox from an e-mail list I'm on. Some very tasty quotes about what Photography is or isn't.
"The demise of the relative and analogical character of photographic shots and sound samples in favour of the absolute, digital character of the computer, following the synthesizer, is thus also the loss of the poetics of the ephemeral."-- Paul Virilio, _Art and Fear_
"When the world, or reality, finds its artificial equivalent in the virtual, it becomes useless."
-- Jean Baudrillard, _Impossible Exchange_
"Don't you think the world's greatest game artist ought to be punished for the most effective deforming of reality?"
-- ~eXistenZ~, dir. David Cronenberg
"To have a regard for reality does not mean that what one does in fact is to pile up appearances. On the contrary, it means that one strips the appearances of all that is not essential, in order to get at the totality in its simplicity."
-- Andre Bazin, "In Defense of Rossellini"
From a C-theory article by Nicholas Rombes.
Veracity or Truth?
An artist who intrigues me at the moment is Larry Sultan he works in colour and in spaces that are used by the porn industry but the scenes he photographs are often disquitening, no “ action” takes place, there are often awkward moments of solitude, people sitting quietly in parts of the scene that either seem out of place or hard to locate. The colour in some of the shots I've seen on the web are fantastic compostions, this shot in particular has the small splash of hot pink in the lower right corner that just balances all the other colours in the room perfectely, the model appears to be completely bored perhaps waiting for something to happen? All the images I've seen so far form his book, ‘The Valley’ suggest to me that this work has the hallmark of of Robert Frank's most famous, work ‘The Americans’. A must buy when the money starts rolling in again.
From the Amazon dot com book description:-
Since 1988, Larry Sultan has returned time and again to photograph on porn sets in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley--the Silicon(e) Valley of the porn industry. But The Valley is by no means a documentary on porn filmmaking. Rather, it is a dense series of pictures of middle-class homes invaded by the porn industry. Sultan's lens focuses on pedestrian details--a piece of half-eaten pie, dirty linens in a heap, "actors" taking a break--that offer clues to a bizarre other-world. The lush and intricate images adroitly play with artifice and reality, adding up to rich, elliptical narratives that circle around the concepts of "home" and "desire." These images of homes and gardens, porn actors and film crews, studio and location shootings are an ambiguous meditation on suburbia and its trappings, family and transgression, loss and desire, the utopias and dystopias of middle-class lifestyle. The Valley and its many-layered photographs outline the complexity of domestic life at the beginning of the 21st century, opening up new perspectives for photography through its innovative combination of staged and documentary photographs. In 1998, an English magazine asked me to go on a porn set. I flew down to Burbank Airport with my wife, and we went to the house they'd given me the address of. It was a dentist's house on Van Alden. That name had all kinds of connotations when I was in high school. Because the Valley is so haunted for me by the ghosts of childhood, all of these street names have Proustian connotations. All I have to do is to say: Havenhurst, Van Alden, Vineta, Dubois, and a flood of associations comes back to me. [...] After the first five minutes of the strangeness of it all, I started to look around, going to the bedrooms, wandering through the house. It felt like a permission to go into a house in L.A. and to imagine how someone would live their life in this house. I made the pictures for the magazine. I left and thought, "This is it, this is what I have to do." --Larry Sultan
Uh Oh, too popular creates problems for Flickr
Growing Pains: "For the first few days of the New Year and now again this week, we've had some problems keeping up with the volume of images uploaded. This has resulted in people occasionally being unable to upload, and some weird things happening (multiple copies of images being uploaded, extremely long waits while uploading, etc.) We are all working on this as fast as we can. This post will explain the problem and what we're doing to fix it (the good news is that it should be fixed quite soon).
How it works
Flickr is quite a complex piece of software. When you upload a photo it is passed through a load balancer (among other things) to one of the servers in the web-serving and image-receiving cluster. One component of the server receives the image file itself along with any associated metadata. Another places and holds the image in a queue for processing. A third component processes the image: converting it to the right format, making all the different sizes that are used on the site and extracting the EXIF - and soon, IPTC - data.
The queuing component then passes all the new files along with the original and the metadata to a fourth component that copies all the files to multiple storage servers (hooray for redundancy!), ensures that they're safe, and then updates the database with the location of your photo and all the metadata.
The problem
In a nutshell, the problem is that at peak times, more photos are coming in than we have the capacity to handle. However, it manifests itself in many ways:
The load is not balanced very well - one server might have hundreds of images sent to it while another only gets a dozen in the same period of time.
The queue is strictly 'first in, first out', so if someone uploads 500 photos all at once to the same server your photo was sent to, you get a long wait.
Processing images, especially the large ones, takes quite a while. While a 640x480 cameraphone image has 307,200 pixels in it, a 3,008x2,000 image (like those from modern DSLRs) has a whopping 6,016,000 pixels in it., and we've got to look at all of them.
Under extremely high load and long queue times, parts of the system can 'freak out', for lack of a better technical term,
In another sense, the problem is simply one of growth. While we're used to rapid growth, and have planned for it, the last month has been even 'growthier' than normal. To give you a sense of the whole Flickr system, on a really busy minute in a busy day: 8 new people sign up, 400 new photos are uploaded resulting in around 44,000 new images being saved, 5,000 pages and 60,000 images are served, and over 100,000 database queries are processed. That's a lot.
The solution
The easy part of the solution is getting more servers. We ordered many more when the problem first arose and they should be here soon. Once we get them set up, configured, installed and testing, we're rolling. We had been waiting on adding additional hardware pending the big move we just completed and now have the extra space and power we need to add machines with abandon.
The harder part - what we're all working on now - is making the whole system perform better, even when the loads are very high:
The queuing component is being improved by changing to what we call a 'fair queue' - when you upload a few images right after someone else uploaded 100, yours will be interleaved with theirs, resulting much faster processing for you and the wait will be distributed (this is in testing now).
The processing process (ha!) has been optimized to move images through about 2-3x as quickly as before. (This is in testing now.)
Load balancing will be improved after some changes to the setup of our internal network (this will take a little over a week)
More testing is happening constantly to prevent any freaking out (multiple copies of images being uploaded, uploads failing, etc.)
Better feedback about and handling of high load situations is being added - this is already present when you upload via the website, and will be rolled into the uploading applications as quickly as possible.
In the meantime
We ask for your patience while we work through this, and if you are having problems, help us by giving us some of the details in the official thread. Happily, only some users are experiencing problems, and even then, only some of the time. Unhappily, if you're one of them, it can be really frustrating. If you have pro account and feel like your Flickring has been unduly hampered, let us know and we'll try to make it up to you."
(Via FlickrBlog.)
19.1.05
What am I reading?
Glad you asked.
Yesterday just read "McLuhan for Beginners" next onto "The New Media Reader" whilst popping in and out of "Pause and Effect" which has been a very interesting read.
More later we're off to see "A Very Long Engagement" a perfect way to escape the heat.
17.1.05
MLE to close?
From a blog by a former employee of MLE:-
Media Lab Europe is closing its doors forever. The ambitious attempt of both MIT and the Irish government to establish an international research lab has failed. The press release, issued on January 14, 2005 reads: "The Board of Directors of Media Lab Europe announced today that it is putting the company into voluntary solvent liquidation."
Social Experiment site…
New site…
well not that new really but here I am, another one called furl.net is out there too, for some reason it hardly gets a mention in my cbyerspace, yet del.icio.us seems to be mentioned everywhere I go?
16.1.05
Changes afoot?
14.1.05
12.1.05
First webpage ever?
The First Website Ever: "Ever wonder what the very first page ever on the internet was?
Yeah, me neither. But here's a link anyways.
Via Google Blogoscoped."
podcasting?
From John Allsop's site dog or higher.
podSites - a slice of the web for your iPod: "
A few weeks back we published our CSS Guide as a 'podGuide', specially for reading on your iPod. And as mentioned elsewhere, the response was quite extraordinary.
In the wake of that, Russ Weakley, who we organized the Web Essentials conference with in September last year and I spent a fevered few days brainstorming and prototyping, and the result is podSites
Think of podSites as an equation
iPod Notes + podCasting = podSites
The site has detailed information on how to develop podSites, and how to publish them using podCasting. It also features a podSite directory where you can submit your own podSites, or download podsites published by others, and a very cool podSite emulator, that takes your content and shows you what it will look like on an iPod.
So get on over and start podSiting :-)
John
“ oh yeah, and a better year all round to all in 2005. Last year was not one of the best.”
(Via dog or higher.)
9.1.05
Tsnumai victims hit again!
Dignitaries get in the way of relief efforts! From The Age.
On a brighter more photographic note:-
Here's a show worth checking out.
Upcoming Destiny Deacon exhibition
From Ozarts.com.au
"...Bringing together works spanning ten years, as well as new work created especially for the MCA, this exhibition combines different aspects of Deacon's practice - photography, video, installation and performance..."
8.1.05
Tsnumai Help
Tsnumai Relief sites and revenue raising has popped up all over the Web, sadly I'm "in between" contracts and am not in position to donate YET, here's a link to a worthwhile auction on e-bay where the proceeds will go to OxFam's relief efforts
7.1.05
USB SD cards
SanDisk SD card with built-in USB: "SanDisk has today announced a unique SD card which has a hinged portion, flip this over and the card becomes a USB 2.0 Flash Drive. This neat piece of engineering means that you can flip the card out of your camera and straight into your computer without the need for any card readers or cables. Clever. SanDisk expect to be able to produce this new card in capacities of up to 1.0 GB, they will have more detail and initial samples at the upcoming PMA 2005 show."
6.1.05
Photography Links
Some photographic links
- Intriguing European Photography.
- Found photographs
- A photoblog of sorts
- PhotoLA 2005 This show and several others around the US don't seem to have their own sites? The Stephen Cohen Gallery site lists 3 major cities as having upcoming shows, or having had shows last year, L.A. New York and San Francisco.
- Surreal Landscape Photographs
- San Francisco's Photoalliance SOFMA's permanent modernist photography exhibit, part of their collection has one of my favourite photographer's work.
Sadly we missed the show in San Francisco by days, and look who was a guest speaker!
Damn Damn Damn!
Joel-Peter Witkin is the recipient of numerous NEA fellowships and was awarded the Commander of the Legion of Honor, Paris. His uniquely dark and evocative representations of the human figure have been exhibited worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art New York, Guggenheim, The Whitney Museum, and San Francisco museum of Modern Art.
And while we're at it, the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra is having several shows over summer that might be worth catching up on if you can get up there.
4.1.05
30 milion photos a day!
Flickr stats from the Flickr blog
Some interesting statistics:
• The number of images uploaded has tripled over the past two days, January 1 and 2
• Normally we serve about 15 million photos a day, now were serving about 30 million
• About 20 images are uploaded very second; when an image is uploaded, processing it takes a few seconds, because 5 images in different sizes are made, and because we keep live backups on site, each image is each saved onto two different servers"
(Via FlickrBlog.)
3.1.05
Last images of 2004
Some new images, all manipulated in photoshop, the blur though is in camera. Taken well before midnight on NYE. (Perhaps even a homage to Ralph Eugene Meatyard?)
Of course most of my image making efforts happen online now at Flickr.
Upcoming ICP show, in New York
I so wish I was back in New York now, the ICP is having a show of work by one of my Favourite photographers - sigh
“ …In his largest group of photographs—referred to here as the “Romances”--Meatyard sought to evoke a world not normally acknowledged by the human eye: the unexpressed relationships between people. These staged images are almost literary in their implied narratives, what writer Guy Davenport has called “charming short stories that have never been written.” Although they present strange juxtapositions and embrace accidents, these unsettling pictures are not so much surrealistic as transcendental. With a quiet spiritual force, they suggest the complex emotions associated with childhood intimacy, innocence, loss, and destruction.”
From the ICP site itself.
2.1.05
Digital camera sales continue strong growth
"A study by InfoTrends/CAP Ventures predicts that worldwide digital camera revenue will reach $24 billion by the end of 2004, and will exceed $30 billion by 2009. Europe, the United States and Japan top the table for digital camera sales this year while it is expected that Asia and Rest of World (ROW) regions, which currently has a combined share of 10%, will share 33% of the revenue by 2009."
( Via Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) ).
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!
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?
- Camera Phone workflow is this an oxymoron?
- But is it art?
27.12.04
26.12.04
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!
22.12.04
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.
| 25 December - January | 176 | (55) | |
| February | 113 | (33) | |
| March | 169 | (35) | |
| April | 147 | (36) | |
| May | 118 | (30) | |
| June | 131 | (44) | |
| Total | 1038 | (199) | |
| Surveyed | 512 | (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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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