New Tom Waits Album, due October 5

Just found out today that my all time favourite musical artist is going to release a new album in the next couple of weeks. Man oh man can't wait for that. Tom Waits is the artist in question, and the track I heard this morning on was classic Waits, rough crackling guitar, with those vocals that defy description!

I have been hanging out a bit for a new album as sadly I felt his last 2 album releases didn't quite cut the mustard even the art work was a poor copy of the previous ripper album Mule Variations.

My 3 favourite albums of his would be

1. Swordfishtrombones
2. Bone Machine
3. Mule Variations
4. Hear Attack and Vine

Ok OK that's four but when it comes down to it I would have lots of trouble picking between about 6 of the albums of his I own, ( I own 15 in total, not counting the handful of bootlegs of his I have acquired)

Some links to other Tom Waits sites

• Official Page?
• The music and prose of the artist Tom Waits
• A blogger blog for Tom Waits, hey hey!
• His Internet Movie Database entry

So stay posted for news on the new release of this upcoming album!

Moving Photos

Started to shoot out the window of the car, which I admit can be risky but is also very hit and miss in terms of resulting image.

This one is, in my opinion, worth it, perhaps a new Nikon Gallery will come out of all this?

Joys of Digital photography

Wow! The magic of digital cameras recently scored a quick dirty job of putting together a CD cover. Thanks to my little digital camera I quickly shot a series of images around the appropriate location and off home I went to post process and start mocking up ideas.

An hour and half later I had scrapped my first idea and moved along to the next, which with some modification became the third. No film no waiting for processing, no re-shoots because of exposure errors.

Ah the joys of digital.

Flash and Blur Techniques

One of my favourite techniques is "flash and blur". It is where the ambient light is low, and produces camera shake say about 1/4 of a second, and is combined with flash to give interesting ghostlike effects, see image above. My new Nikon Coolpix 5400 produces this effect effortlessly and easily in automatic mode as well as manual, so this is indeed an improvement on my old Kodak DC 260.

Gary Winogrand Quote!

Whilst on our recent trip, and sorry to harp on about it, I purchased a book of Images made by Gary Winogrand, 'Winogrand 1964'. On the front page of the book is a snippet from his Guggenheim grant application, and I quote,(without permission)

I look at the pictures I have done up to now, and they make me feel that who we are and how we feel and what is to become of us just doesn't matter. Our aspirations and successes have been cheap and petty. I read the newspapers, the columinsts, some books, I look at some magazines (our press). They all deal in illusions and fantasies. I can only conclude that we have lost ourselves, and that the bomb may finish the job permanently, and it just doesn't matter, we have not loved life. I cannot accept my conclusions, and so must continue this photographic investigation further and deeper. This is my project.

Wow! Gary Winogrand died in 1984, what would have thought of the current state of the world, and digital? What would have he thought about digital cameras and their their impact on his style and approach, I know when I work with my Nikon Coolpix 5400, digital camera I probably shoot more as an experiment to 'see what the world looks like photographed' than to actually make good images, what then to do with these images is the eternal question? This is where the web steps in, I can now exhibit 24/7/365, for a very modest fee, (for my server space, traffic is low enough to not worry about excess downloads).

Another Nikon Gallery

Just added another gallery to my website with images made with my Nikon Coolpix 5400.

Spring has sprung

Indeed spring is here!

These images made this afternoon in the late afternoon light in my backyard.

Sadly the trip to Mildura on the weekend didn't yield as many images as I would have liked. A couple were interesting, but by no means my best work.

Spent some time in Kyneton what a pretty little town, worth a revisit in a different frame of mind, I suspect.

End of another week

It's Friday, we're off for a birthday party this weekend so I expect I'll have tons more photos soon to add to my new Nikon Gallery, like this one, perhaps. One of the things that annoys me about having a great new toy like this Nikon 5400 is that at the moment because winter is still with us and I often work late there isn't enough light to shoot. Played around with the closeup feature on this camera and again am suitably impressed, might add some images to my gallery next week. Got the iPod geared up for the big 6 hour drive this weekend, over 3 thousand songs on it now, apparently over 8 days worth of music. Have pretty much picked the eyes out of our CD collection and will now just add any new CDs we buy from here on in. Some interesting news this week, one of my peers, Nigel Clements, who runs,Photography short courses, has won an award in a local photography competition, onya Nige, well done. Been hanging around the dpreview.com forums lately,be interesting to see what transpires over there?

How to take good photos?

A new article on about.com by Peter Marshall talks about good pictures. I like his ideas and approach and may "borrow" some of the ideas for a future in article on my own faq

New image made with new digital camera

Just wanted to share with you all, a recent image made whilst out on location with the second year students. It's amazing what you see when you look. Which also drives home the saying the fortune favours the prepared. And one of my favourite aspects of image making with a camera is it's ability to usurp the truth, or is that reality. A well handled camera can distort what is presented in front in a way that defies description and this seems to me where my image making wants head. Just like Gary Winnogrand, I like to photograph things to see how they look photographed. Also the light at the moment is now turning into that awesome spring light that I love so much in Melbourne, combine this with great sunsets and lengthening dusk all makes for great image making. All I need now is more time to actually do it! On another note the images now sit on the page the way I want them to. Took a bit of stylesheet tinkering but I got it in the end.

Winter Light?

Spent the last two arvos working on location with the students, with a subject called Industrial Photography. Took them to a place that I have been visiting on and off for around 15 years or so. This time i used a digital camera and found the whole experience quite inspiring, partly because the light was just awesome as it often is this time of year, and partly because its nearly the end of the week I guess? Also walked home from the local Auto electrician as my car needs work done. Decided to listen to my iPod and make some images on the way. Again given the light a great move and I got a couple of good shots. This makes over 500 already! The experience got me wondering about a couple of things. 1. How does one organise one's self in terms of the earphone cables and neckstrap of the camera inn this situation? The two seem destined to get tangled up. Wearing a coat and hat didn't help either? 2. As I ran out of disk space on the way I had to switch to my second much smaller card. Which in a way influenced my image making decisions. I may now need to consider carry the iPod media reader as well as all the other digital gear I am already carrying! 3. Why does my Nikon Coolpix 5400's battery only manage to last for about 60-70 photos? 4. I shot more horizontal than I have for a long time?

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.