Been tinkering

I made some small changes to the stylesheet of this page, now it's almost 100% valid CSS, and I'm hoping to fix images and how they line up in the document generally This image was shot out the window of a taxi in New York, in a part of town that not many tourists would normally go I guess, to me it sums up the whole feel of a big city like New York

Nikon Gallery added to stunik.com

It's all done pop on over and check it out. Here's that link again for the Nikon Cooplpix 5400 Photo gallery

New Gallery soon to be added to stunik.com

When we were in New York, I bought a new digital camera, a Nikon Coolpix 5400. I bought it for several reasons. My current digital camera was getting long in the tooth slow, to operate and was not matching today's standards as far as image quality was concerned. Still I managed to shoot over 12,000 images with it enough for several years of exhibitions or publication. And it served me well as I was able to produce fairly predictably the kinds of images I wanted with it *most* of the time. Even so it was time to move on as I had had this camera for 5 or 6 years. I chose this new camera for several reasons. It had a "true" wide angle lens, roughly 28mm in 35mm terms, it produced a 5 meg file, enough for small inkjet prints around 8 x 10 inches, it was small and it was easy to hold which in turn made it easier to operate. Already I am up to over 300 images with it (as you would expect I guess since it was bought during the last 2 weeks of our holiday). Overall I am very pleased with this camera and even though I haven't printed anything out yet I get the feeling it will a very good camera. The lens alone is outstanding as one would expect from Nikon. I do however have a couple of niggly "issues" with it.

• If I work at the maximum file size the processing of the images is slowed, 'dramatically'
• When I want to manually set exposure I must use the LCD screen on the rear of the camera
• The camera doesn't come with a lens hood or the ability to screw one onto the lens
• A smaller wrist strap would have been nice
• A flash nipple for studio use would have been nice too
• The battery indicator is inaccurate, it starts showing half full this means it's getting low, then with little or no movement the battery is dead, luckily I bought a second battery but this could prove damaging in certain situations
• I have managed to corrupt a couple of files already, not sure how I suspect it's from switching settings or modes while the camera is processing the files, need further investigation

Despite these things and some of them are small it's shaping up to be a great camera, later this weekend I hope to add a small gallery showing off this camera,and of course my own work. Stay tuned.

New article on stunik.com

Well I did it I wrote the article as promised and is now uploaded

A Photographic epiphany?

Caught Public transport to work this morning. Listened to my iPod as I always do in this situation. Produced a bit of an epiphany If there was just somehow of getting the same feelings across in my still images as I get when listening to certain pieces of music I would be a happy man! Someone has suggested movies, hmmm!

Other folks with cameras

Whilst recently editing down our snaps from our whirlwind tour of the world, I remembered an incident where we were with some relatives in the UK and one of our party took a picture of the rest of the party. I remember watching as he seemed very uncomfortable holding the camera, which he didn't do the best of ways, and he rushed the whole process as well. This has gotten me thinking about how people who use photography in a more casual way might feel about these pieces of hardware? Personally I have been using various cameras of different formats for nearly 20 years, and I can no longer remember what it feels like to hold this kind of hardware in your hands and have it intimidate me. Cameras are, small delicate yet powerful instrument capable of great truths and powerful lies, sometimes simple to operate other times completely perplexing. This power must occasionally frighten or intimidate people. Why? It is after all nothing more than a small machine awaiting your instructions, if handled well it can produce objects of great beauty, capture memories precious to the beholder, or record damming evidence that proves once and for all the existence of something. Perhaps this is what frightens people? I myself am often disappointed when making "snaps" on holidays, but am confident enough to make extra versions of images in case I'm not happy with the first attempt (even more so now with digital cameras) so why don't other folks do this? Is there a generation of people out there, used to film and it's related costs worried about the fact that maybe this picture won't work? Well sadly the more they worry the more likely the picture won't work! As usual I seem to have more questions than answers here, I feel a new Photography FAQ coming on here, we'll see. Time is of the essence here!

Long slow haul

Am slowly editing all the digi images, a couple of interesting shots and when it boils down to it I reckon a small portfolio of maybe 12 to 20 images will result, wish I could say the same about the analog ones i think i'll be lucky to get 4 or 5 out of 14 rolls??

All film processed

Just processed all 13 of fourteen rolls from our recent whirl wind tour, all the European film has some sort of fogging! My guess is that it got zapped regularly as we moved around and maybe the flight from Frankfurt to New York it took a real hammering. All the US shots are ok?

So many photos

Still thinking about how I am going to organise the snaps from the trip, over a Gig of images of varying sizes and taken with 3 different cameras, (which all produce different file names) iPhoto doesn't do to bad a job of organizing them by date, but if I have a mixture of images from several cameras on the same day it gets a bit tricky, need to do a serious edit and get an interesting set of images together so as not to bore folks too much. When I set out I had something particular in mind for the end use of my Kodak dc 260 images, all low rez and for the web only, as we were going to have storage problems whilst away, even with the iPod. The trouble was I couldn't get the iPod to read the 128mg card, so they had to stay put the entire trip, but even that plan went awry. I decided to capitalise on the cheap prices in the states and purchase another new small camera. This camera uses another file naming convention and now I have 3 sets of images at different sizes and with different ideas in mind for their final use. I still need to think how I am going to get the images online for the relos O/S, and perhaps writing up the whole trip itself, something I had hoped to do here on this blog, but Internet access was either expensive or hard to find (often both) that that idea fell in a heap real quick.

Poor service websites

Have had a quick poke around the internet, and found this site that rates airlines by official complaints, guess who cam in second worst, yep United Airlines, also found a consumer site that enables folks to write their own stories. Wish I had found these earlier. Also found a complete site devoted to United Airlines complaints, it seems that the figures on the infoplease.com site are wildly underestimated, judging by the number of angry responses on this site

Airlines and service?

We flew with 3 separate Airlines on our recent journey, Singapore, Lufthansa, and United Airlines (from the US). In hindsight I will *NEVER* fly with United again if I can avoid it! The other two airlines provided stunning service. From the levels of service we received with United it's easy to tell that they are feeling the pinch from the market, in that, they for example would give free drinks on their International flights, but only if you asked for one, Lufthansa and Singapore on the other hand constantly roamed the aisles with soft drinks all night, the flight attendants too, didn't seem all that concerned with people's well being, again Lufthansa service levels excelled here. United's ticket mechanisms is atrocious as well. We had to ask 3 times to be seated next to each other, once we were even told *we* were at fault by not asking for seat allocations when we paid. Still it will be many years before I can write a list of pros and cons on 3 international airlines.

A few facts on our trip

Here's some facts and tidbits about our recent trip. We travelled through 9 airports and they are:-

• Singapore
• Frankfurt (3 times)
• Heathrow (twice)
• JFK in New York
• Chicago
• San Francisco
• Los Angeles
• Melbourne (Tullamarine twice)

Of course we took lots of photos

• Our Photography in digital form comes to over a Gigabyte.
• Analogue film shot 14 rolls or 120

Our daily budget:-

• One hundred Euros in Europe, often ample
• One hundred Pounds a day in the U.K. again ample only because we stayed with friends and relatives
• One hundred Dollars a day, in the US, just adequate, remember to add tax and and tips!

Photography shows visited

• Robert Capa retrospective, Prague
• Cartier Bresson, retrospective, Berlin
• Bill Brandt retrospective, at the Victoria and Albert in London
• A contemporary show at Photographers Gallery London
• A sample of the collection of the archives from the V and A
• A Graduate Show in London
• Contemporary Chinese Photography show at the I.C.P in New York
• A Gary Winnogrand show at Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco
• As well as Ralp Eugene Meatyard Nicholas Nixon,and Richard Misrach, from storage at Fraenkel Gallery
• A contemporary curated show at the SF Camera exhibition space
• And collection of my favourite photographers, from the archives at the CCP in Arizona
• Frederick Sommer
• Lee Freidlander
• Joe deal
• Edward Weston
• Gary Winnogrand

Finally....

Well we finally made it. After a long 13 plus hour flight. Things here at home still seem a little strange, but it was fun buying some basic stuff from a shop yesterday and not having to anything to worry about, like, language or prices or tax or tipping. Our final couple of days were spent in Tucson Arizona. It was hot, and the landscape was stunning, and the real reason we went there, the CCP was everything I had hoped. I saw some stunning prints by Frederick Sommers, and several other of my favourite photographers.

Buddy can you spare some change?

I'm in San Fran now, there are heaps of beggars on every corner and it's saddening to not be able help in some way, it's ironic too, USA is one of the most affluent countries in world and still they can't effectively deal with issues like homelessness?   On a brighter note the trip has been awesome never a dull moment with one high following the next, have gone on a book buying frenzy that i'll be paying for, for many years, still it's worth it.   Ok gotta go it's all running on time here!

Famous faces

At last I find myself in a position to use the Internet non-stop uninterrupted for a flat fee for the first time in the whole trip so far. I am doing this from television monitor in the hotel room we are staying in in New York. The Waldorf Astoria no less! In whose elevator tonight I saw Sean Penn. Who by the way was doing a lousy job of remaining low key. Other famous faces I have seen on this trip include French actor from Amelie, who had an affair with the woman behind the bar,we were in Montmartre at the time, and as always he had that fleeting look in his eyes that suggested he wanted to be left alone, so I left him alone.

At last a moment to....

...a moment to sit still and write a few thoughts down on our trip so far. Here's what we have done so far in a nut shell

• Flown from Melbourne to Frankfurt
• Trained it to and from the following cities Frankfurt, Paris, Rome, Florence, Venice
• Walked around looking at Art in ALL Cities
• Walked around looking at Shops in ALL cities
• Walked around a lot in ALL cities, *this close* to being lost OFTEN
• Braved 3 underground public transport systems, successfully
• Argued with officials on Trains and buses in at least 2 countries

The weather has been fabulous, the prices reasonable and tourists everywhere, now I know what it feels like to be stuck in a crowd at a Grand Final - without the atmosphere- meandering pushing shoving queuing. It has all been worth it though, I will do it again at the drop of a hat, especially Florence, or should that be, Firenze?

Day 1, Melbourne to Paris

The flight on Singapore Airlines went quickly, they had awesome inflight entertainment, I didn't even turn on my iPod, the inflight entertainment on the Lufthansa leg (Singapore to Frankfurt) was not as entertaining, but it had, I felt, better service. We landed in Frankfurt tired but glad to be there. With lots of time to kill we caught the train into the station from the airport, after a kindly chap helped us with the ticket system. Once on the station we stowed our gear, and hit the streets, Frankfurt seems a nice city, on the surface, we were only there for a couple of hours after all, clean and comfortable. We boarded our train to Paris with no worries and off we trundled. So far so good. Our first 'encounter' occurred when we crossed over the border between Germany and France. A ticket inspector comes into the carriage asking for our tickets, (we had purchased a 3 country Eurail pass)no worries so far. However, he 1 misread our tickets, and 2 we had not marked them appropriately. He then proceeded to tell us in broken English that this ticket was expired and he was going to have to 'void' it and charge us a fare from Frankfurt to Paris, €150.00 each! He left with our tickets, despite Nik's protestations and returned with a portable card machine. Charged us the appropriate amount and despite Nik's questions left with our ticket. ( All this was being discussed in poor English through his side kick, a Bridget Bardot lookalike with a train conductors hat). Several minutes later she returns with the ticket and her side kick who was apologizing profusely, He had read the ticket incorrectly, however we had failed to fill in our travel details, so he wrote us a note about the mix up and left us to our devices. We than arrived in Paris in one piece, with the station coming to life as these places do at this time of night!!

Now boarding.....

This will be my last entry from my trusty laptop for 6 weeks. In 10 hours we will be boarding a flight to Singapore, from where will continue on to Paris, via Frankfurt. It still feels a little surreal all round, but as I was packing my bag yesterday it all started to sink in. If it wasn't for all the "extra" house work this weekend I don't know how I would have coped at all. Let's not forget the iPod, it is still only 1/2 full and if I had time I would put our entire Cd collection onto it, I reckon I have about 85% of it on so far, which is 2495 songs, 9.36 GB. Getting them organised in a way that will make for quick easy listening pleasure is the next step, "smart playlists" seems to be the way to go. My entire library is listed on my website, but it's an XML file and I'm not sure how to tie it all in with html etc, next research project I guess. And of course this morning I am up early "again" partly because I am excited, partly because I am, a little *seedy*, and partly because I think I might just catch a glimpse of the actual aircraft that is whisking us off in 10 hours time! Hopefully I'll be able to get to an internet cafe every two or three days and keep up the writing at least, and maybe some folks will get personal e-mails from us too, stay tuned. Meanwhile, for your viewing pleasure, I have uploaded my last Melbourne shoot for some time, as I said in an earlier post, it's funny how you look at the places you are familiar with, with different eyes when you are leaving. On a low-brow note the fifth evictee from BB made a surprising political statement upon exiting the house which I'm sure put the whole production team in a spin, they certainly were at a loose end as to what to do, and kept cutting to the house and to ad breaks, poor old Gretski had real trouble maintaining any order in the crowd, there was shitloads of booing, great television, that control room must have gone off last night, woohoo you go pal stick it right up 'em!

Two Sleeps to go

To quote one of my favorite bands, TISM, "...what a week I've had". Marked all my VU students work and there was one HUGE surprise, and several outstanding pieces. Looking forward to next term when we tackle something a little closer to my heart. Several of the students at PIC are really shining at the moment as well. I am really pissed off that I'll miss the midyear folio presentations coming up in 2 weeks though. "Good luck guys!" This week also saw an old teacher of mine, who is now a CEO of his own small company, come to the school to talk about his product and it's relationship to Photoshop. He is an inspirational teacher and the lecture itself gave me food for thought on my own teaching practice. Thank you Ian we will organise to purchase a copy, or two, of your neat little idea real soon. There is nothing like the prospect of leaving your home town to "see it" through new eyes, to make an effort to visit places you've been meaning to see for years. These last few days this is how I've felt about my home town Melbourne. I've been living here since I was born, with a short stint overseas in my early high school years and I made an effort one day this week to head into town and wander around an "look" at the place I call home. Of course a camera accompanied me and I have added a few of the images to my site. The one thing that struck me most, after the beautiful light, was the amount of tourists around given that it is mid winter almost. The irony of me noticing "tourists" was not wasted either.

Not long now

Every time I hear an aircraft fly overhead I get excited and I start to think about leaving. Which leads to thoughts about where I will be this time next week. So yes I am now starting to get a bit excited. Before we go though I need to fill my new present with lots of music. I've also been busy with my little digital camera, and have updated the gallery over on my site.

Reflections.

Back on PT as part of the final assault on the cashflow, before we jet off. Despite the fucking cold Melbourne weather I don't mind the journey in and out of town on the train. It gives you time, time to think, and time to look. Occasionally I pull out my little digital camera and try an make some images. Some of which work out OK. A couple things have happened over the last few months, one my wife bought a very small 4 maga-pixel camera, with pretty good image quality for a snap camera, two, my work purchased a 6 mega-pixel Canon 300d. Combined with the 50mm f1.8 lens makes an awesome camera for 35mm style shooting. So what this means is my old 2 mega-pixel camera, or is it a 4 mega-pixel I can not remember anymore, is now relegated to the job of web photos only. It's file size is more than adequate for this even on a medium level of compression. Now my 128mg flashcard holds 1499 images, this in turn means I can blast away from train windows and snap at anything that catches my eye. so hopefully today I'll upload these best of these for your viewing pleasure.