Pillow Fight Club

Pillow fight anyone?

120 x 5

So here's the results of a busy weekend of shooting. Processing will happen over the next few days, and who knows maybe in a months time I'll have scanned a couple and uploaded them. Thus allowing an emotional distance from them when they were taken, which in turn allows me to judge their real merits.

Please excuse the horrible colour cast, my little digi-cam has only so much control.

One place, two shots

Flickr is one of those places where you are constantly surprised by who you encounter. I have recently re-connected with Kent Johnson. A wonderful photographer and lively personality to boot. His website is an interesting read. He rather succinctly talks about the process involved in his creative process which was in part the inspiration to these shots, a mere two kilometres or so from my house. Of course if you look hard enough you will see some Robert Adams, some Frank Gohlke and maybe even some Lewis Baltz.

Thanks Kent for the shot in the arm looking forward to our first real life encounter.

As for my creative process, it seems I am more intuitive and time based, I have a vague idea what and where I want to shoot, go look for it, and maybe even revisit several times, process it put it away and come back to it over a period of time and re-analyse it, perhaps take the idea and images further or even go off on another tangent all together. Or maybe just scrap that idea and go somewhere else.

Haiku of yellow?

Been hitting the books of late, so not much image making going on.

Pre-Exhibiton Research

"the best landscape images, whatever their medium and whatever other emotions they evoke … propose the possibility of an intimate connection with a world to which we have access only through our eyes, a promise containing it's own denial"
Frank Gohkle
pg 696/698 1000 Photo Icons George Eastman House, pub Taschen

The start....

of the end?

I am changing the course of my image making practise. This change has come about after a series of small but none-the less revealing incidents involving the web, materials [sliver gelatin] and processes, my own.

The final catalyst occurred a day or so ago I went to my local photo supply store, to stock up on paper. I am in the process of printing some work prints for a planned show in 2007, and had run out of my favourite paper, Forté."No worries" I thought, Vanbars will have some, so down to north Melbourne I go, wandering in I say hi to Richard and head down the back to buy said paper. While Vanbars had plenty of paper in stock generally, they had nowhere near the variety that they used to have when I last had an exhibition.

This catalyst, is the last in a chain of incidents that have been bubbling away now for several months, a discussion on flickr about the appearance of digital photographs, was one such incident. This discussion made me realise that it was probably a futile cause to try to get people who don't want to see what they don't want to see. Namely that there are differences in the look and feel of Digital Photographs over Analogue photographs. Another incident I have already talked about here.

So this slowly snowballing effect, got me thinking, how can I make something that is truly unique? The process of putting together an exhibition, has my creative juices really flowing at the moment and I'm quite enjoying the act of returning to my darkroom. This reminded me of my final days at University where I started mucking around with a film developer agent called Pyrogallol. A mythical developing agent that was as renowned for its long tonal scale as it was for it's difficulty to control, not to mention the O H & S issues! I then poked around in my note books from around 1991 and dug up 3 or four technical book that either talked about it in length or mentioned it. I now have several recipes and, am ready to begin the long process that will be mastering this developer and it's intricacies.

Perhaps this blog will track that progress, sadly the only way to really appreciate the prints will be to see them in the flesh, something that the internet is incapable of; unless you live in Melbourne?

Image & Text

A project I've always wanted to contribute to. PostSecret

Nan Goldin's having a show in New York, after a 3 year hiatus

Most viewed shopping trolley shot

This shot from my Shopping Trolley series, using a mobile has had 514 views so far. Kinda weird really

"Dry Brightness"

Seems there's some folks questioning the "art" of Digital Photography. I agree with the arguments presented and for anyone to understand those arguments and use the ideas to their advantage using digital tools will be then able to call themselves an artist to my mind.

Monitor Calibration

Over on flickr I recently uploaded a 21 step grey scale test swatch. My intention was to use it as a guide for my own current upload project. It has gathered considerably more views. Than I expected with several comments to boot, what a strange place flickr is.

Connections?

Prose, Photography and Passion.

Lonely Radio has it all.

What is TV?

They say TV is the bits between the ads, this very funny commercial proves it!

Here's the google.video link for it too

30 Boxes

Is 30 boxes the latest meme or will it fizzle so much other stuff has over the last decade or so of internet life?

Personally I've never been one to live by any kind of calender/organiser, but iCal changed all that and maybe this next Web 2.0 technology will change that even further?

News and Flickr

Flickr in the news.

Images of emptiness

Here's one of the reasons I like flickr so much

Originally uploaded by John Brownlow.

Snippets

Been getting back into NetNewsWire recently.

Nice idea behind this site helps those who are interested in honing their Design skills.

Want to succeed on flickr? Thomas Hawk has some tips?

Robber Barons

John Allsopp's got the dope on the the current attempt to "stifle the internet", I just love that title, Robber Barons, speaks volumes!

Found Thought

Sometimes I write down the strangest things?

Take this for example?

What happens when Surrealism meets High Modernism in the digital era?

Sink or Swim?

Some local politics.

Our local council have been dragging their heels for several years over the state of the local swimming pool. A local action group is trying to drum up support for the reconstruction of the the pool. Even though I'm not much of a swimmer, I certainly think any large suburb should have a decent pool that is easily accessible for anyone who chooses to use it.

There is a rally and picnic this weekend.

THREE FEET DEEP IS NOT ENOUGH
Date: Sunday 26th February 2006
Time: 11.30am
Location: Service Street, Sunshine (Outside the Pool)

Quicksilver, Exhibitions & Excuses

I'm using Quicksilver these days, and I'm just starting to really appreciate it's strengths and I want to explore it further. What is quicksilver I hear you ask? Well merlinmann a guy over at flickr has very succinctly described it's use in relation to the f11 shortcut that reveals the desktop, and I quote,

F11 a) only _exposes_ the Desktop, b) requires additional clicks to actually find and open anything, and c) ONLY works for the Desktop. This trigger gives you one click access to the contents of any folder no matter how deep in your Mac's or Network's hierarchy. Then you just start typing and you're done.
Remember: almost everything in Quicksilver can be done without even looking at the screen; it's pure muscle memory, and that's a pretty effective memory.

He also provides a link to more info over at 43folders.

I'm sure both my readers will have noticed the lack of images here of late, well, I went nuts over the summer holidays as usual, and now that I'm back at work and working full-time have hardly pulled my camera out. I have a locked-in group, exhibition coming up in May/June this year and after "discovering" a body of work in my archives am planning another in 2007. So what I'm saying is some images should be forthcoming soon, it's just that they will most likely be from the archives.