Want to know what an "un-manipulated photo is?"
Pfffft ha ha ha ha!
7.1.05
USB SD cards
SanDisk SD card with built-in USB: "SanDisk has today announced a unique SD card which has a hinged portion, flip this over and the card becomes a USB 2.0 Flash Drive. This neat piece of engineering means that you can flip the card out of your camera and straight into your computer without the need for any card readers or cables. Clever. SanDisk expect to be able to produce this new card in capacities of up to 1.0 GB, they will have more detail and initial samples at the upcoming PMA 2005 show."
6.1.05
Photography Links
Some photographic links
- Intriguing European Photography.
- Found photographs
- A photoblog of sorts
- PhotoLA 2005 This show and several others around the US don't seem to have their own sites? The Stephen Cohen Gallery site lists 3 major cities as having upcoming shows, or having had shows last year, L.A. New York and San Francisco.
- Surreal Landscape Photographs
- San Francisco's Photoalliance SOFMA's permanent modernist photography exhibit, part of their collection has one of my favourite photographer's work.
Sadly we missed the show in San Francisco by days, and look who was a guest speaker!
Damn Damn Damn!
Joel-Peter Witkin is the recipient of numerous NEA fellowships and was awarded the Commander of the Legion of Honor, Paris. His uniquely dark and evocative representations of the human figure have been exhibited worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art New York, Guggenheim, The Whitney Museum, and San Francisco museum of Modern Art.
And while we're at it, the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra is having several shows over summer that might be worth catching up on if you can get up there.
4.1.05
30 milion photos a day!
Flickr stats from the Flickr blog
Some interesting statistics:
• The number of images uploaded has tripled over the past two days, January 1 and 2
• Normally we serve about 15 million photos a day, now were serving about 30 million
• About 20 images are uploaded very second; when an image is uploaded, processing it takes a few seconds, because 5 images in different sizes are made, and because we keep live backups on site, each image is each saved onto two different servers"
(Via FlickrBlog.)
3.1.05
Last images of 2004
Some new images, all manipulated in photoshop, the blur though is in camera. Taken well before midnight on NYE. (Perhaps even a homage to Ralph Eugene Meatyard?)
Of course most of my image making efforts happen online now at Flickr.
Upcoming ICP show, in New York
I so wish I was back in New York now, the ICP is having a show of work by one of my Favourite photographers - sigh
“ …In his largest group of photographs—referred to here as the “Romances”--Meatyard sought to evoke a world not normally acknowledged by the human eye: the unexpressed relationships between people. These staged images are almost literary in their implied narratives, what writer Guy Davenport has called “charming short stories that have never been written.” Although they present strange juxtapositions and embrace accidents, these unsettling pictures are not so much surrealistic as transcendental. With a quiet spiritual force, they suggest the complex emotions associated with childhood intimacy, innocence, loss, and destruction.”
From the ICP site itself.
2.1.05
Digital camera sales continue strong growth
"A study by InfoTrends/CAP Ventures predicts that worldwide digital camera revenue will reach $24 billion by the end of 2004, and will exceed $30 billion by 2009. Europe, the United States and Japan top the table for digital camera sales this year while it is expected that Asia and Rest of World (ROW) regions, which currently has a combined share of 10%, will share 33% of the revenue by 2009."
( Via Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) ).
31.12.04
Why How & What?
I've had a couple of busy days lately. I caught up with an old friend of mine from Uni recently, we had a long chat about many many things, amongst them, the future of photoshop, supperanuation, the amount of fossil fuels left in the world and the way this will impact on people's lives, the explosive growth of digital cameras/photography, alternatives to Photoshop's crappy RAW plug-in, just to name a few.
As a consequence of this discussion, plus a recent visit to an exhibition at ACMI, along with my own frenetic involvement with Flickr, I've decide to jot down my thoughts about what it is that I ∗do∗
The best way to clarify issues for my own benefit I've found, is to use the Why, How and What mantra. Again, thanks to my old friend from Uni who showed me this several years ago.
So here goes, the Why, How and What of Stuart Murdoch and his “ART”
Why?
In the late eighties I found myself in a situation that was untenable as far as gainful employment was concerned. I for many years previous had had a fascination with Photography, I can still remember looking at everyday objects and scenes and recognising within myself a connection or familiarity with these objects and scenes. It seemed a natural progression for me to follow this instinct and pursue a career or at least a direction in photography. A recent overseas trip with a duty free camera purchase combined with disappointment at the resulting holiday snaps drove this realisation even deeper. I returned to school at 25, no mean feat in itself. I spent the next 5 years studying, getting my feet wet, getting my bearings and generally working out where I fitted into the grand photography scheme of things.
After my 3 years of under-grad I realised the direction most suited to me was as an artist, the reason being, I was interested in strange and subtle visual connections, not making money, I was also interested in the craft of photography in particular the photographic print as an ‘object’. Upon graduation I was determined to get some sort of work that involved photography but not in a commercial sense. During my last summer of undergrad, I had been involved in my old TOP school in their photography department, by generally helping out, and the head offered me a job. At last a job doing what I loved, and access to ALL the equipment I needed to do it. For the next few years I simply photographed in my spare time, made prints for any or all exhibitions I could get my work into, in between teaching at night and being a part time photography technician during the day.
The images and prints I made were of the subject matter closest to my heart, made the way I like making them. After all, Frederick Sommer, Robert Adams, Ralph Eugene-Meatyard had all made beautiful images this way and were some of the many photographers whose work I respected and enjoyed. This alone seemed reason enough, besides, in a world that seemed to be getting progressively madder, finding solace and enjoyment in a pursuit such as photography seemed one of my more sane decisions of the past 12 years (since leaving home and graduating) and a relatively harmless one at that.
How?
I have continued to work the way I was taught in my 5 years of schooling, schooling that preceded any form of digital or computer manipulation at all. I used the best camera I could aford, I spent many hours labouring in a Black and white darkroom making the best possible prints I could. I even realised several years ago that it was possible to make heartfelt and interesting images using the most basic of technologies, cheap, plastic and toy cameras (I had been using a large format camera for most of my work from about 1992 to 2000). In the late nineties I procured a digital camera, now retired, it seemed not much better than a toy, as the file size and the quality of the CCD were nowhere near film. I made over 13000 images with it, which I'm still unsure as to what to do with, I did learn however, that it is often possible to produce surreal and intruiging images with it. Which when sequenced in the ‘right way’ could make for some interesting art. I also learned to use it it an intuitive way, to not be afraid to allow it to make some technical decisions. From this point on around 2002 I was actively carrying the camera everywhere, and using it in anyway I could to subvert what it was I saw beyond the photographic. Currently I am using a Nikon Coolpix 5400 to carry out this task.
What?
Beautiful silver Gelatin Prints is what I have been making for most of my time since graduating. This was in a time where digital and computer still generally were having minimal impact on my output. But in the last few years since about 2002 I have been very prolific with my digital output, I now have enough small digital files to publish 5 books a year with 200 images in each for the next 13 years! Self publishing seems an option, and of course since I started on this path the web has exploded and along with it an explosion in online self publishing.
Susan Sontag dies!
Author Susan Sontag, widely regarded as one of America's leading intellectuals, has died aged 71. The writer, who had suffered from leukaemia, died at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Calling herself an "obsessed moralist", Sontag was the author of 17 books and a lifelong human rights activist. She wrote best-selling historical novel The Volcano Lover and in 2000 won the National Book Award for another historical novel, In America.
Popular essayist
Her greatest literary impact was as an essayist, however, with her 1964 study of homosexual aesthetics Notes on Camp establishing her as a major new writer. The essay introduced the "so bad it's good" attitude toward popular culture, applying it to everything from Swan Lake to feather boas.
Some Key Works
- 1964: Notes on Camp
- 1977: On Photography
- 1978: Illness as Metaphor
- 1992: The Volcano Lover
- 2000: In America
- 2003: Regarding the Pain of Others
In Against Interpretation, Sontag worried that critical analysis interfered with the "incantatory, magical" power of art. "I know of no other intellectual who is so clear-minded with a capacity to link, to connect, to relate,"
Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes once said. "She is unique."
'Zealot of seriousness'
Sontag, who described herself as a "zealot of seriousness", was also a human rights activist and an outspoken opponent of US foreign policy.She prompted controversy when she wrote that the September 2001 attacks on the US were not a "cowardly attack" on civilisation, but "an act undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions".She also criticised US President George W Bush over the US-led war in Iraq.
In the 1990s Sontag travelled to the then Yugoslavia, calling for international action against the growing civil war. She visited the besieged Bosnian capital Sarajevo in 1993, where she staged a production of the play Waiting for Godot.
Sontag had been treated for breast cancer in the 1970s.
28.12.04
CMOS camera phones!
When will it end? This article hinting at CMOS chips in camera phones! from The Asia Times
"The company said it also plans to invest some 50 billion yen to build a new facility and introduce new machinery at the Kumamoto Technology Center for production of CMOS image sensors for camera phones"
As Sony appears to be upping the ante with camera phones by adding CMOS chips, the 'digital camera revolution' just keeps escalating. I personally don't want to see the complete removal of the crappy quality these cameras are capable of, but by the same token I can appreciate the way they the camera phones, impact on people's lives. Galleries of images made from this kind of phone have sprung up on the web and places like Flicker and I of course have one myself, will this sort of device contribute to the greater good in understanding who we are, or just add to the visual pollution we are bombarded with daily? FWIW I am not seeing a rise in enquires about my photoshop classes, our short course in photography at PIC, or our two year diploma course at the Photographic Imaging College.
Some links?
- Camera Phone workflow is this an oxymoron?
- But is it art?
27.12.04
26.12.04
Boxing Day 2004
Christmas day went really well in this household yeseterday. I managed to snap off over 40 photographs. I particularly was trying to show a sequence of the table being set up and decorated, I'm still debating as to whether or not I am going to put them online? Feeling a little sunburnt though, otherwise I feel suprisingly well considering the amount of alchohol consumed. Seafood all round it was, yummo.
24.12.04
X-mas Eve 2004
It's X-mas Eve and the weathers cooled just nicely, if it stays this way it'll be nice tommorrow. Last night we foolishly ventured out to the shops, Oh my Fucking God! Highpoint a local complex was open 24 hours and by crickey folks were taking advantage of it! I took my camera along as usual. Damn battery ran out got a couple of good shots though, too lazy to post 'em here, so i'll just link to 'em over at flicker.
- Our steps under mixed lighting handeld so well by digital
- Hangin' out the car window, minimal indeed.
- Blur galore dunno where from though?
Yes indeed the light was awesome, and when I get around to it I will add them to their own Nikon Gallery over in my site.
But back to the crowds! I don't ever remember shooping this close to X-mas being that bad! It was six deep in both directions and sometimes the same in some of the shops, maybe this arvo I'll pop out to the local shops (on foot) and see wazzup?
As we now currently have broadband at home I'm listening to SomaFM and boy do they play some irreverant stuff, it's actually their special holiday mix. I just wish they'd up their rotation a little I have been listening nonstop during waking hours since Monday, and I've had to switch off once coz it got to repetitive.
Preparations for tomorrow begin in earnest now, I'm boiling the spuds for the potato salad, making the sangria mix and generally tidying up.
23.12.04
Hot weather & flickr
Today is our first 100 degree day in the old money so to speak, 38 degrees Celcius, was the forecast and I suspect it's hotter than that right now. Gets a bit hot in the small room out the back I call home this time of year, but as we are in a weatherboard house and there are lots of doors and windows that face all 4 points of the compass we are lucky when the change finally does come through.
So here we are 3 days into it and what have I spent 60% of my time doing? hangin' out at flickr. Have joined several groups. The squared circle (two entries already, A day in the life of, missed the lastet deadline, so we'll see how I go with the next one. Machinery - 4 entries two from my exisiting account and 2 from a shoot in the shed using a portable flash. Trippy Pix and Minimalism. getting real busy in there now, what the hell am I too do when I start back at work? Stil want to add some updates to my own site, particularly the Nikon Gallery. Ah time! When is there ever enough?
On a slightly different note, I got my first 4 books back from the binders on Monday, and to say I'm stoked is putting it mildly. Four A5 sized 16 page boooks with 12 images and text a delight o hold and to handle, can't wait to give 'em out one Christmas Eve. Itchin' now to start and make some more!
22.12.04
Pre-Christmas Musings?
As Christmas draws nearer someone over on the Creepy Christmas group at Flickr found an article about the increased likelihood of death around the "silly season" Well I'm gunna trump that with a table that *almost* proves the increased chance of an assault around Christmas. It's taken from a report I downloaded written for a Sydney Hospital. it's entitled -
'Investigation of the Incidence and Analysis of Cases of Alleged Violence Reporting to St Vincent's Hospital', by Marjorie Cuthbert, Frances Lovejoy, Gordian Fulde. See table below, from page 5 of the document.
| 25 December - January | 176 | (55) | |
| February | 113 | (33) | |
| March | 169 | (35) | |
| April | 147 | (36) | |
| May | 118 | (30) | |
| June | 131 | (44) | |
| Total | 1038 | (199) | |
| Surveyed | 512 | (60%) | Completed forms |
Don't get me wrong. I love a good feast with family on X-mas day. However my definition of what constitutes a family has changed over the years. Let's assume that a family by definition is a good family, a good family implies that it functions as a unit. Well I argue that there are no functional families at all, only degrees of dysfunctional families. As was driven home to me YET AGAIN at a recent birthday party for my wife's niece, I recently posted a comment on it allbeit a short one, and of course now I can't find it.
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