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.

Canon 300d Gallery online

Uploaded the Canon 300d gallery today.

Creativity v Technology

One of the things I have noticed using the new Canon 300D is that as I (can) have *complete* control over how the camera works I'm less inclined to use it as a tool that I have subverted to make random/accidental images with. Hmm it's kinda hard to put into words here, but what I have done in the past is used semi-automatic or automatic cameras and exploited their shortcomings to produce what *I* think are interesting images. Now this camera has the ability to allow me complete control over the final image, ie aperture AND shutter speeds, with a fairly straightforward TTL approach and now I feel less inclined to use the camera in the other ways that I have used digital/auto cameras. It's like digital *film* is still NOT a serious enough medium, to warrant an approach that is more than shooting from the hip to see what I get? Gary Winnogrand made this his life's work, he left a legacy of hundreds and thousands of rolls of film unprocessed and unproofed, he is often quoted saying that he took photographs to see how things looked photographed and digital is more than a perfect medium for this yet I still can't attach a level of seriousness to the "act of" deliberately pointing a digital camera at a scene and making an image with it. I have made a couple of quick prints from the Canon 300D and while they are more than acceptable the resolution doesn't quite make it to A3 sadly, still they are big enough to hang on a wall and have some presence of their own. And while we are at it, it is countdown time to the trip away, two weeks and counting. I predict a tight one this week on BB with it being between Terri, and Krystal, I soooooooo want Krystal to go it's going to be a tight one though, this fan site site has a pretty good track record and this is why I have changed my mind from Paul to the 2 girls, besides Paul didn't cop such a bad week of editing as I thought he would?

Preoccupations

Still snapping away with the Canon and am suitably impressed yet to make a print though, this will be the icing on the cake if it all works out, the raw files seem even better than the compressed and adjusted files from the camera. There is a storm brewing in the BB compound Merlin had a big fight with Paul. This incident has polarised the Behind BB forums, and will produce yet another predictable eviction on sunday night... Paul copulater, old fella! Maybe he's doing a Fat Bobby and wants out, who knows, perhaps his carefully planned strategy has slipped and he can't take it any more, only time will tell!

More news on the Canon

Have shot a ton of shots with the new camera, and am sorely impressed with the whole camera. One strange thing though? The battery which I thought I had completely charged on on Friday, seems to be only partially charged. On Friday I stopped on the way home, took quite a few shots, and ran out of battery, by the time I got home about 40 minutes later, it was able to take photos despite the battery indicator showing less than half, and has continued to work all weekend? So the battery indicator is no real indication of what is going on. The zoom lens defintely is not as sharp as the 50mm, ouch, cause I really love the wide angle end of it, the 18mm. Of course the card that came with it way too small luckily I had a 128mg card from my other camera that helped out.

New Canon EOS 300 D

My work just purchased a Digital Camera, a Canon EOS 300D, or if your in some other place other than Australia, the Canon Rebel. It came with a 18mm to 55mm zoom and a 50mm 1.8 lens. The 50mm lens is awesome, still working with the zoom, and even though I'm not good at hand holding cameras I am doubting the sharpness of this lens. This camera has some very nice features, it is really fast to work with, for a digital camera. The menus on the camera are intuitive, and easy to navigate. It's a bit light for my liking though, and does not have a flash nipple. All round this camera is a beauty and worth the price we paid for it. I've got it for the weekend and hope to blast a shitload of images off with it, maybe even add a little gallery on my own site? Thinking of buying a digital camera? The site dpreview.com has some great reviews on cameras, we did all our research before buying our little Minolta DiMAGE G400 on there a few months ago. Which as a small, and I mean small, pocket camera, is truly magnificent, long as you are happy with 6 x 4 snaps only.

All talked out

Well it's Thursday, already I'm all talked out, I still have Friday to go, then 3 more weeks after that, before the big trip. What can I say? Bring it on I guess. In the meantime check out this photography studio in inner North Melbourne Australia - Whitehouse, cool site nice imagery, needs flash though?

Preparations

Well the big trip is 4 weeks away. Things are slowly starting to take shape. We have a house sitter. The small issues like finances are being looked after. I recently discovered that my folding 6x9 camera is actually working again. Now I will have a serious camera for the trip after all, phew. We are driving past the Salton Sea and I didn't want to miss making images of that one. (The Salton sea is a man made lake that has flooded several times in it life leaving many homeless as it's water levels encroached on the trailer parks and other areas occupied by people around the lake, Richard Misrach has used a large format camera to capture the surreal beauty of this environment, he, by the way, is one of my favourite photographers) BB is starting to hot up sadly I'll miss the mid to end game coz I'll be OS

Winter light

Well yesterday I wrote about the light in the afternoon and what a Sunset! Fucking awesome! The position that the school is in exaggerates the view, we are on the edge of an old quarry cliff, with great views of the city. East of the city of course so looking in towards the CBD allows us to see these awesome sunsets. Today we are getting more of the same, so what to do head out, see a movie? Take a camera or two and snap a couple of shots? Oh what a dilemma? Coffee out on the streets after browsing a bookshop or two, would be nice to?

Light

Sitting here at work in the colour print room working with students and staring south out the window, I can see the light that Melbourne produces at this time of year...so effortlessly. Rich textured, warm - despite the air temp. This is often the time of year that I do a lot of image making with some sort of camera, recently it's been a digital camera, a humble little 2 meg Kodak dc 260. I also like using my Nokia Mobile phone camera, and a 126 camera. Might start experimenting with an old box brownie soon too, they can take modern 120 film if you still have the original metal spool in the camera