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?

Fed Square, night shoot, 2005.04.28

Instead of images of/from China, here's an image from a recent visit to my favourite Arcitechtural site in Melbourne, Federation Square. More images of course over at flickr, in my Fed Sqaure set

No manipulation in Photoshop at all, other than resizing for this page.

Ripper of a week...

This week is shaping up to be a ripper of a week. I am spending today out and about with my students doing a gallery crawl, a good friend is returning to Oz, for a short holiday, today, and I'll be having a lovely Sunday brunch with my family, and the I'll be involved in a flickr dilo on Sunday as well, so all in all plenty to look forward too.

The NGV has several shows on at the moment of note.

The gallery crawl is one of the few perks in an other wise poorly paid (but rewarding) job, here's what we are seeing.

• Bill Henson's 30 year photographic retrospective
• Metroplis, a screen based exhibition based on "The City"
• Japanese Studio Photography
• Several smaller galleries around town

I actually got a chance to see the Henson show on a recent trip to Sydney, and was suitably impressed. His early work was I suspect presented for the first time the way he envisaged it. A mss of images displayed Salon style, overwhelming the visitor in it's density of human faces, moving out from the darkness. In Sydney the work was presented chronologically in several rooms each room being used to represent a ‘period’ in his work. This will be one show that will require several revisits I'm sure and thankfully they are selling multi-visit tickets.

Sunday's dilo, or Day in the Life of is a small game that many folks on flickr get involved with, it simply involves shooting all day and uploading the pics to flickr with the tag, dilo. It's an interesting way to get an insight into other people's lives. You post five of your best on the actual dilo page and the rest are set up in your own personal stream for folks to find and look at.

Kodak slips further in the Photography business

This snippet of info from my nifty little app called Net Newsreader, I have simply cut and pasted but it sdoes all the hard work reads all my RSS subscriptions for me and all I do is skim the headlines and pick and choose what I explore furhter, no more surfin' for me.

Kodak reports first quarter losses

Despite a growth in the digital arena, Kodak has reported a net loss of $142 million, or 50 cents per share, compared with net income of $21 million, or 7 cents per share, in the first quarter of 2004. Sales also fell by 3% to $2.83bn from $2.92bn in the same period last year. Kodak Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Daniel Carp says, "While the first quarter's performance was disappointing, such short-term volatility is to be expected as we transform Kodak into a digital company."

Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) 23/04/05 dpreview

Mobile Phone camera and shopping trolleys

Finally have sorted my mobile phone camera image transfer woes, using my new Sony Ericsson K700i, cameraphone, in conjunction with my new bluetooth enabled G4 iBook, I can wirelessly move the files across to the HD and from there edit and or upload to anywhere I like.

Currently I have a couple of sets of images made using these kinds of cameras, shopping trolleys, and portraits.

This kind of camera may well allow me to consider an image a day approach now perhaps a second blog?

Here's a sample of what I'm doing, for the odd occasion flickr is down.

I love the way these cameras so easily distort what is presented to them, the resulting images from this lo-fi camera, conjure up all sorts of ideas about photography and veracity

Hong Kong street Photo

Continuing my series of images from our recent trip to Hong Kong

Tram boy arrested at gunpoint: witness

From the Age newspaper

A motorist has told of the "pretty brutal" arrest of a 15-year-old boy who allegedly took a tram for a joy ride last night.

David Iliff told theage.com.au about eight police cars surrounded the tram, which was at the intersection of Glenferrie Road and Wellington Street, and carrying about 10 passengers.

"A number of police officers had guns drawn and were yelling at the boy inside the tram to open the doors," he said.

Mr Iliff said a female passenger protested when the boy was pushed against a seat and handcuffed.

"She pointed at them (the police) and yelled something ... but the police were pretty angry as well and sort of pushed her aside," he said.

"Once things settled down, they talked to the witnesses, but first of all it was pretty brutal."

Mr Iliff said he was initially shocked by the police's actions."From their point of view I'm sure they didn't know if he had a gun or whether he was trying to kill people, so I guess it was appropriate, but at the same time, it did seem excessive."

Victoria Police were not immediately available for comment.

The boy allegedly drove the new low-floor Citadis tram from its depot in South Melbourne up to 30 kilometres, police said.

Detective Senior Constable Barry Hills, of the police transit division, said the boy admitted his obsession with trams during a police interview.

"He's a nice lad, he's a good lad. I think his obsession just got the better of him," he said.

Senior Constable Hills said the boy went on a test run on Friday night, stealing a tram from the South Melbourne depot and driving it to Port Melbourne, back to South Melbourne, then back again.

It was an escapade reminiscent of Nadia Tass' 1986 film Malcolm, in which an eccentric inventor played by Colin Friels loses his job as a tram driver after a joy ride on the tram tracks.

Last night, the boy allegedly drove out of the depot about 8.50pm and went to Port Melbourne. He then used the tram's directional rod to change the tracks and divert the tram towards Clarendon Street in South Melbourne.

Police said he altered the tracks again to travel down Glenferrie Road, where he picked up passengers.

Constable Hills said police were alerted to the theft by staff at Yarra Trams' control room about 9.20pm. No passengers called police.Senior Constable Hills said passengers only became suspicious of the boy, who was wearing a jacket similar to a tram driver's, just before his arrest.

"There was a couple of moments when the driver overshot the stops and was confronted by a couple of passengers, and that's when they've become a little wary."

Three sets of keys are needed to operate the Citadis trams.

Senior Constable Hills said the keys were believed to have been stolen three weeks ago from the Box Hill depot, but said the theft was not reported. "It does take considerable effort, time and concentration to drive these trams." Senior Constable Hills said the 15-year-old used the test run on Friday night to work out how to use the complicated braking system.He rejected suggestions the boy may have been taught about trams by well-meaning drivers, believing he learned simply by observing the drivers at work.

Although he stressed the potential serious consequences of the theft, Senior Constable Hills said the boy should not abandon his dream of being a tram driver. "I believe that if he stays on the straight and narrow then it's certainly not going to affect his future," he said.

The boy, from Sunshine, was taken to Boroondara police station and charged with nine offences, including two counts each of theft of trams and conduct endangering life.

He was bailed to appear before the Melbourne Children's Court on June 20.

Absolute Power corrupts absolutely

Today's quote comes from Ian Lobb, the creator of Lobster, the droplet that improves colour control in Photoshop.

And I'm paraphrasing here:-

“ Photoshop has the power to make all the images in the world look the same.”

More software monsters?

From Dpreview dot com

Adobe acquires Macromedia. Adobe has announced an agreement to acquire Macromedia in an all-stock transaction valued at $3.4 billion. Graphics software giant, Adobe, will acquire the web and application development software company Macromedia at the close of fourth quarter 2005. A press release issued today said the two companies will provide customers with a 'more powerful set of solutions for creating, managing and delivering compelling content'. More...!Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

Macromedia's spin on it all

Adobe's spin on it all?

Sigh, yet another Monster is created?

Will need time to assess and digest this one?

Visuals from Hong Kong

Another Hong Kong snap, processed in Photoshop, and Lobster.

Probing Questions answered

Ever wondered?

• Can the human eyeball be knocked out of the head?
• Was Walt Disney a fascist?
• What's the origin of "cut to the chase"?

Here's where you'll find the answers to these and many more probing questions. Thanks to Ian for sharing

Hong Kong Photography

Continuing the series of images, manipulated of course, Using Photoshop, and Lobster made whilst we were in Hong Kong Recently, this image sums up my thoughts on the island quite succintly.

Photoshop 10 years behind - still!

Photoshop CS2 was announced recently. The link here to digitalphotographyblog, claims to revue the software, all I read is an Adobe marketers list of "new features", nothing new there I guess? What I find interesting though is the appearance not once but twice, the phrase "non destructive editing". I am flabbergasted, that this has been made public? I mean I have long know about this and it is something very easily, demonstrated to astute students, even on poorly calibrated equipment, it's, the destructive editing is not even subtle! So what's going on over at Adobe? Is Adobe gearing up for a major shift in how it makes Photoshop work? Will we finally see an end to it's memory hogging and wasteful practice of loading ALL pixels into memory, will we get a faster and more intuitive package that responds to the slightest gestural movement of the hand and pixel?

The new Camera Raw 3.0 workflow allows settings for multiple raw files to be simultaneously modified and batch processing of raw files, to JPEG, TIFF, DNG or PSD formats, can now be done in the background without launching the main Photoshop executable. Integrated, non-destructive cropping and straightening controls allow raw files to be easily prepared for final output.¹

I'm no soothsayer, nor a real industry pundit, but I'm not holding my breath for an application as graceful and elegant as Live Picture was nearly 10 years ago. Back then RAM was exepnsive, and processors expontentially slower, yet I could open a 200+ meg file in a fraction of the time Photoshop does it now. My editing was never final, I could always change anything to any degree, even after saving and closing the file, remember this was 10 years ago. Photoshop back then at Version 4 only had ‘revert to saved’ or one step of ‘undo’. Needless to say, this puppy won't be rushing out in the middle of the year and purchasing an upgrade of Photoshop, it's more than adequate now with what it does, and I've still got my copy of Live Picture running quite nicely on my Laptop thank you very much, when it comes to big fine art prints.

¹My emphasis source.

More Honk Kong Stories

I still have some stories about Hong Kong I wanted to share with you, both.

One of the days we were in Hong Kong, was a public holiday, which really only means that the Government run places are closed, schools and the like. Anyway we were out and about doing the touristy thing most of the day, and we encountered 5 groups of young people doing their homework. This homework consisted of surveys on a variety of topics, ranging from what we did in Hong Kong to comparing our two countries International Airports, Hong Kong International is brilliant by the way, only two years old. Anyway the surveys were really ways for the students to practice their English, which varied from poor to very good. Often a tape recorder was involved as well, not sure where that fitted in?

All of the students were polite and inquisitive, and very obviously studious. One of the last surveys we participated in was down on the promenade that offers good views of Victoria harbour, and virtually no retail space, anyway I took this survey, and it was conducted by 4 very polite and friendly young men. The first question on their survey was about Gender and the boys in eager anticipation had ticked the wrong box at the top of their form. So suddenly it seems I have miraculously switched genders, when I pointed this out the lads, there was a huge outburst of laughter, and I suspect that after we had finished no end of ribbing, but they were still pleased to have completed another survey. We always were asked to have our photo taken at the end, we gladly did, sadly we only snapped a couple of snaps of our inquisitive students ourselves.

On our last day which we spent on Hong Kong Island we spent some time in Hong Kong park. This is a truly weird experience, usually most metropolitan parks attempt to mimic nature in some way. This park had all the usual lakes and seats and ice cream stands, as well as an aviary. A beautiful big one at that, the experience of walking amongst these birds was great, the cacophony as we walked in was not deafing but certainly loud enough to make you know where you were. After attempting a couple of meagre shots of some of the brightly coloured parrots in amongst the trees, I noticed something odd about some of the larger trees, they actually seemed to be made of concrete, they were! Which was really weird because it was fairly well done, and you needed to look real close to work it out.

The park also had a playground of course and it was surrounded by cameras, surveillance cameras! Surreal was the experience no less, here we are in the big City surrounded by huge tower blocks, and in the middle of the park a playground surrounded by closed circuit TV cameras?

From the Hip, Hong Kong

Resized and manipulated in Photoshop to enhance the diagonal of the image showing warmth and coolness, age and youth, technology and tradition.

Politics, Art and the Internet?

Today's political thought for the day comes from a nice little essay over at Znet, please read it.

One of my favourite artists is having major retrospective show at the Met in New York, the reason he is a favourite considering he's actually a painter? He was a connected with one of my favourite Photographers, Frederick Summer. Last year I was fortunate enough to see some real Sommer prints at the CCP in Arizona. Exquisite doesn't begin to describe them, I just wish I had more time to look at them, one day, one day I'll go back.

I sometimes wonder, what Mr Sommers would think of digital photography and technologies? He is renowned for his painstakingly beautiful silver gelatin prints, and his respect for the process involved, the computer has in some ways liberalised this and in other ways cheapened it. I can for example go out, shoot any number of images, dependant only upon my storage medium that I'm carrying, come home and automatically process them quickly, and with a minimum of effort, upload them to the web and head out again for more shooting. Is this a good or a bad thing, does volume of production lower the value of an artistic object? This very argument was had by a bunch of young enthusiastic 1st year art students back in the late 80's, I was one of them, it wasn't resolved in my mind and still isn't although I'm heartened by what I see as a burgeoning art movement involving photocopiers, the internet and public walls.

Flickr is having a massage, so I'll post a few images here, ones that I wanted to work on more on my crt monitor, as the light in Hong Kong really had me tricked, resulting in more underexposure than I would have liked, fortunately they, the images I made in Hong Kong are rescueable.

Another Hong Kong Photo

Shot on the streets of Hong Kong and manipulated slightly in Photoshop

Daily photo from Hong Kong

I plan on posting a photo or two over the next few days from our recent trip to Honk Kong, enjoy this one, won't you?

This one is of ‘Nathan Road’

Hong Kong Photos on Flickr

See how other folks on flickr photograph Hong Kong?

Friday 9:30 am Hong Kong

This may well be my final post here from Hong Kong, the internet access I am paying for here in the room runs out at about 3:00pm local time, it's now 9:00am, so whether or not I get a chance to post again remains to be seen.

Thursday was a funny one, really, wandered around a couple of shopping districts, on the penninsula intending to do a bit more ‘culture’ only to discover the 2 cultural institutions we wanted to see were closed. Nik needed to do some more shopping so after a nice lunch, I spent the rest of the afternoon in the hotel, uploading pictures to flickr and catching up on e-mail as well as chatting to Ed. The evening saw us, having cocktails at a bar called Felix, (designed by Philip Strack) on the 28th floor of the Pennisula Hotel (Hong Kong's swankiest) overlooking the harbour, (awesome view) followed by dinner in a swanky restaurant, called Spoon. Great restaurant experience all round, but the food and service really took the cake!

Currently have uploaded 79 photos, from the trip, all up I've taken about 806 photos, I've only loaded the ones that required the least correction as I prefer to use my CRT monitor to make these desicions, so more images will be added to the Honkers 2005 set probably during the week next week, when I am at home.

Live from our Hotel in Hong Kong

Yesterday we went to Macau, it's a strange boat journey of about 50 to 75 minutes, depending on the boat, you catch. Macau, is a nice island bigger than we/I thought and we only spent a couple of hours there, had pizza in a small side street, checked out the streets and architecture, we caught the wrong bus back to the ferry, and had to quickly catch a taxi, to back track!, The cost $10.00 Hong Kong Dollars, roughly $2.00 Aus, truly amazing. Nik had trouble with the boat, but gladly didn't need the «bag», I was only worried about the odd surge here and there. The trip it was in a catamaran, both ways, but the one coming back was bigger, and faster and smoother, than the one coming over.

It's weird being surrounded by the Asian tourists. You get so used to seeing them in Aus and being bemused by them and now here we are surrounded by them and in a manner of speaking connected to them in more ways them one. It's been overcast nearly everyday, and this has played havoc with my exposures, normally I set program mode to -1 stop, ( I like using program in these situations allows for more spontaneity and quicker work) this underexposure covers me for Aussie lighting conditions, but here it seems too much! Done lots and lots of shopping, some Museums and Cultural stuff, Nathan Road is just bizarre and everywhere there is decay and rust, usually augmented or surrounded by Neon. Spruikers constantly harass you around the hotels, mainly for getting tailor made suits. The crowds don't really peak till around 7 or 8 at night, with shops not really trading till 11:00 or so, so Nik can shop till almost 9:00pm, every night if she wants?

Monday saw us on Hong Kong island, via a tour group, (fuck I hate those thing), still it was only for a few hours, and as a consequence I got to experience this small temple overlooking a bay, Stanley Bay. The tram ride up and down Vic peak was awesome, and the views were great despite the overcast conditions. We left the group behind, after the Victoria peak part of the tour, and made our own way around various parts of the island, even found a small photo-gallery or two.

We had dinner that night up at Victoria peak, a very pleasant end to a hectic day.

I've added the photos to date of Hong Kong to flickr

Day two in Honkers

Well it's day two here and we have covered a few miles indeed! Got to check out several districts around the place and have ended up here in this little groovy bar called MiX. Which has, again free WWW, but not only that this time I am writing from a cute little iMac! This place is in the bustling business district, the language spoken here seems to be, mainly English, which sounds a bit strange after spending the last couple of days hearing the locals talk, with barely a tourist in sight! The main things we have done today, are, visit the "Jumbo" floating restaurant with a rip off ride on a Sampan, visit Stanley Bay, and actually get past the tourist traps that are supposed to be markets, and see the city from Victoria peak. We were given as part of our package, a "tour" this is where you usual get dragged around like sheep kind of tour and see the sights, one of these sights was a jewelery making factory, which in reailty are nothing more than thinnly veiled attempts at making you part with you dollar, we survived, without a. falling asleep or b. parting with any cash

The best part today I think has been the view from Victoria peak, despite the pollution.The other execllent sight today was the small temple that few of the other toursits on our free tour bothered to visit at Stanley. Yesterday's pic count barely made it to 200 and today I've taken less, mainly because we've been stuck in a bus with a couple of loud yanks and a handful of whiny poms! Still when I do get around to uploading, will try tonight form the hotel as I have checked it out and it all seems to work nicely, there will more than enough to choose from.

Hot off the press from Honkers!

So here we are tavelling around (In Hong Kong), this time only for a week though. I'm writing this from a hotel coffee shop just off Nathan road (crazeee). It's Sunday arvo here, and even now the streets are teeming with people. We have already braved a small street cafe for lunch, which was inresting and reasonably priced. The flavours were not the typical Chinese flavours that we get at home, and yet they weren't the same as any other flavour of Asian stryle food we eat there either! With an interseting ordering sytem that revolved around a tick sheet that was handed in at the counter on the way as you paid, it was fun to eat there. Will be prepared to give it a go again, for sure, like we've got any choice really, as the hotel food prices are... well... hotel food prices. Beer on the other hand is going to be a bit of a struggle I think some of the local 7-11's are looking ggod at this point.

The flight, here was not too bad, got a bit of a kip on the way. It was a night flight that left Melbourne after 11:00pm, so there wasn't much to see, except for a stunning sunrise over the wing of the plane this morning, stay tuned for the pix from flickr no doubt, I'm hoping to upload from our hotel room, which has paid broadband in the room. The day before I left I got a chance to wander around twon and make a few images in the laneways around Fed square and in Fed square itself, again if I can get them up to flickr from the hotel room I will. Shot around 200 images which for me is lot and speaks volumes about how digital has changed my approach to my image making. I have shot 133 images already in the few hours we have been here in Hong Kong! None of which will suspect will be really capable of giving off the right feel about the way this city just seems to teem! On this short trip, it's a real different feeling not having to worry about rushing off somewhere. Unlike our last trip which seemed to be one constant run from one hotel room to the next station to the next hotel room and so on. Gven the time we have here, and the fact I am using free internet, expect to see at least 2 or three more updates here while we are gone!

1 Year Old Today!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pictures to follow ; )

Twelve months is a long time in the blogosphere!

Well tomorrow is the date that marks the 12 month mark for this blog, given what's coming up over the next few days I doubt I'll be able to do anything particularly exciting, we'll see maybe the day after?

Washington Post reader definitions

Once again, The Washington Post published its yearly contest in which readers are asked to supply alternate word meanings.

1. Coffee (n.), a  person who is coughed upon.
2. Flabbergasted (adj.),  appalled over how much weight you have gained.
3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.
6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.
7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle (n.), an olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence (n.) the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller
10. Balderdash (n.), a  rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle (n.), a  humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude (n.), the  formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a proctologist immediately  before he examines you.
13. Oyster (n.), a person who  sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions.
14. Pokemon (n), A Jamaican proctologist.
15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), The belief that, when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent (n.), the opening in the front of boxer shorts.

You mean these words have different meaning to these?

Thanks to Chris for sharing

Easter, a quiet time all round really?

Both of my readers, who know me, will know that I am a big fan of Apple computers, here's an interesting timeline that shows the development of the macintosh as a personal computer

Still posting away madly at flickr

Still using Lobster to manipulate my images in PSP

Recently we were in Sydney to celebrate our 3rd wedding annivesary, took 400 plus photos over the 3 days, and after almost a week of editing and post-production produces this resulting set on flickr.

I can't sing enough of the praises of lobster the plug-in for photoshop that compensates for the colour shortcomings of the app

2005's must see photography exhibition

This exhibition will be in Victoria soon.

High Speed Photograph

Most viewed image on Flickr

Lewis Baltz - George Eastman House

One of my early influences in photography

Lobster-Photoshop comparison

A side by side comparison of two images, one manipulated in Photoshop using Lobster and other tools, the other straight out of the camera, (with a small amount of un-sharp masking applied).

Photoshop, Farker, Lobster, Flickr, Striker!

Downloaded a new app. today. It's called Farker, and it's an RSS news-reader that displays somewhat goofy headlines from all over the world, also allowing folks to comment on them, some pretty hilarious stuff in there.

Here's an example:-

"Backstreet Boys plan comeback tour. Publicity stunts begin with drunk driving charges"

or this one:-

Aromatic Patrons of CA library asked to leave, proclaim, “… reading stinks anyway!”

pffft, what can I say?

Over the last couple of Mondays, been attending a workshop on Photoshop, run by the inventor of Lobster™ a powerful editing plug-in that gives photographer's complete and correct control over their colour manipulations in Photoshop. Download the demo version, and download the notes/tutorials that go with it you'll be amazed at how it transforms your digital darkroom approach. I have been enjoying the workshop from several aspects, being taught again by a former teacher ( who is an excellent teacher by the way) and seeing how someone else teaches the Photoshop™, as well as getting to peek at Photoshop™ from a slightly different angle, and using it in a slightly different way.

Flickr has been down for some time today, bit of a worry I hope they don't do a dot bomb on me? I'm planning on using the service for some serious artistic investigation over the next few years. I also wanted to link to a couple of the images I made whilst on the School camp over the weekend, will have to wait awhile I guess, or maybe I'll just embed directly here?

On a different note I am not working today, because, and I quote

TEU representatives met with the Vice Chancellor recently to continue negotiations to seek to achieve an agreement for a 2008 expiry date and 22.5% pay rise as outlined in the NTEU's Position Paper on our  EB settlement.
The Vice Chancellor was adamant that she would not be agreeing to either the 22.5% pay claim nor the 2008 expiry date for the agreement.

My small contribution to the news aspect of blogging.

Digital Images from NYPL

A new free online service is being offered by the New York public Library. It allows people to download any of their 250,000 images to do as you please with. A real nice research tool I guess and I suppose depending the quality of the files maybe even possible to own a classic photograph or two.

Final Days of summer

Off to the annual "Kamp Krusty, this year it's shaping up to be wet and possibly wild. This image was made about the middle of the year, last year, during a mid year camp we held, so this in itself will be an interesting return journey for me.

This region of Victoria has had a fascination for me for many years now, I think I have been camping there on and off for 20 or so years, focusing on a couple of spots in particular in the Otways. One place Stephenson's Falls (see image above) has had a special connection for me, and after all these years I have a series of images made there that could constitute a body of work. So dear reader stay tuned as I prepare to head off west for the weekend several cameras under my arm ready to shoot shoot and photograph anything and everything that catches my eye.

10 years is a long time to tread water

Sunday's thought for Monday, with thanks to anti-pixel dot com, who has managed to say it in a much more poetic and veracious way than I ever could.

Beware of incompetent people:
"Incompetents have fewer options for self-preservation than the rest of us and will fight like shithouse rats when cornered and expected to perform. Their cunning is often inversely proportional to their talent, and it is this, sycophantically applied, upon which they rely."

1Kb

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.

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!

990

Well 10 photos to go to hit the ton, hmmm wonder how long THAT will take ha!

IE 7 pffft!

I could give a rat's arse about IE7 these days!

14.02.2005

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."

Christo, Flickr and NYC Gates

The Gates in NYC just opened a few hours ago, flickr of course was there in full strength.

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™.

Gigapixel Photography?

Wow is all I can say!

Mobile Phone Images @ Flickr

47299

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Photoshop Manipulations

Here's an image manipulated in Photoshop to look like a cheap plastic camera!

It's amazing that given the technology available to us like photoshop folks are still find ways to subvert that technology

Personally I can take or leave photoshop, so long as the image is a good one.

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.

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?

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.

Flickr Downtime again?

Hmmm it seems flickr is down again for a couple of hours, uh oh! For two hours! Ai Carumba!

Urban Landscapes 23.01.2005

A couple of the shots from yesterday.

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!

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

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

From Jeffrey Zeldmans's site

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?

Porn.............

Fashion masquerading as soft porn, well what can I say, some fashion is just fashion, this is soft porn no doubt!

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.)

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.

MLE to close?

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?

Changes afoot?

Saturday night produces a plethora of images the pick of the bunch are over at Flickr of course!

Sadly Reg is almost ready to hang up his lid so to speak, so any day now we'll be bringing home a new child!

Tony's birthday bash 2005

Total Fire Ban Day?

Is today Victoria's first total fire ban day?

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."

(Via Jeff Clark's Vacant Canvas - blog.)

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.)

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..."

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

Veracity?

Want to know what an "un-manipulated photo is?"

Pfffft ha ha ha ha!

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."

(Via Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com).)

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.

• Thousand Mile stare
• In a new light
• Surface beauty
• Policeman's Stare

Food Photography?

Like flying, like food? Think twice.

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.)

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.

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) ).

Sorry to be a bearer of bad news but...

"Prisoner numbers have increased by more than 40% over past 10 years"

(Via Australian Bureau of Statistics.)