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.