Time runs out!

Intriguing blog, indeed?

Been a few hectic days around here of late. A return trip to Mildura, pulling a furniture van full of furniture, and a funeral whilst there, thankfully the van stayed behind.

Driving these kinds of distances often allow plenty of thought, from the frivolous to the meaningful. The problem is, you can't jot down your thoughts whilst driving, even accessing gadgets that could help in this process are not easy to engage. So I'll just have to hope that some of them come back to me.

We stayed at a relatives house while in Mildura. It's a house we visit at least one every 18 months or so. I always enjoy spending time in other folks houses as it allows you the luxury of just observing light and how it plays around a space.

With 3 days to go I got nothing achieved that I wanted to this term break. Didn't even shoot as much as I'd hoped. Even flickr seems to be quiet these days?

Art and Activism, is this an oxymoron?

This online game allows you to examine your tags at a site called del.icio.us. [It's a site to store and sort your bookmarks, Location free, browser free and OS free.] It may or may not offer an interesting insight into one's surfing habits and interests. Mine makes me look completely 2 dimensional, ah well.

Changes...

Compared to, here and here.

Flickr's down again today!

Programmer - Photographer

A young programmer who has written a neat app to copy files from your iPod back to another hard drive or device, also has an interest in photography. Some pretty good stuff in there. His general site is very nicely designed too. So if you're in the market for some way to get your music from your iPod back to another iPod or some other storage medium, this is a great option.

Light revisited

White...

Flickr is down : (

Orange Triangles

Twists & Turns!

I've been running Tiger X.4.2 for a while now, I initially really enjoyed the widgets of the dashboard Back, didn't mind the power of spotlight, but had been struggling wildly with my browsers, speed and instability. My ram usage was being heavily affected by the widgets. After spending a couple of days at homesick, I managed to catch up on some of my news feeds [what else do you when flickr is quiet and no-one is online and able to chat]. The news-feeds gave me the answer, someone has written an app that allows you to switch off the widgets completely. So I'm no longer using the widgets but things seem to run faster and smoother, unless I'm on flickr, then things just simply slow to a crawl and eventually I'll switch to Firefox which seems to handle the whole site better.

So now I'm back at work and doing a bit more news-feed reading where I discover this gem about the move forward for the web. This then lead to a wikipedia article on the technology being discussed, which lead to a neat little potted history of the web, from a designer/coders perspective.

“ What's this got to do with the photography?” I hear you ask. Well very little, but the web is where I publish most of my work these days, and recently I have hooked up with 26 like minded individuals from flickr and we are planning an exhibition together sometime in 2006, so stay tuned, excitement plus ahead!

On a slightly un-related note I found an article on the world's longest running war, where no shots were fired

My Chilean Gallery

I'm everywhere!

Family, friends, stereotypes and chocolate?

Sunday saw us both at the movies. We decided to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

If you're after a fun light hearted look at childhood stereotypes with lots of singing oompaloompas, don't bother. In true Tim Burton fashion this is a dark tale of Willy's demons, with Charlie being the catalyst that turns Willy into the prodigal son.

The opening sequence is an amazing piece of CG, and when you see the credits at the end you realise that there was enormous amounts of energy spent on this aspect of the movie alone. However it doesn't detract from the story in any way shape or form. The story, which I have never read by the way, is at one level about the tour of the factory, and the children who are punished for their misdeeds throughout. It is also about the importance of family. Handled in a relatively non-sacchrine way.

This version however focuses primarily on the character of Willy. Willy's success it seems is because he is driven character, with a demon. Dealing with this demon seems to be the only way for Willy to regain his chocolate/lolly empire. Which in true Hollywood fashion he manages to do. Charlie on the other hand finds success from other areas and only goes back to the factory after Wily has decided to allow his family to come along as well.

The cast are all stellar in my opinion and if anything, the support actors kind of steal the show, which is never a bad thing in my mind. The story line has only minor variations on the 1971 film with Gene Wilder, but a slightly different ending.

Overall I enjoyed the movie, but I have issues with several areas, the stereotyping of the children,for one, I felt could have been made more contemporary, i.e. TV Mike could have been sucked into computer game rather than into a TV, although his character was obsesssed with video games. Several parts were direct quotes from the 1971 movie, and having never read the book I'm unclear as to the importance of these quotes to the story. So I'll need to find a copy of the book and find out for myself I guess.

One of my favourite aspects of the movie is that it operates at several levels, have fun looking out for other movie references, I suspect there may even be some TV references in there as well, may need to go back and have another look.

My final verdict at this stage is, if you like Tim Burton's style, you'll like this movie, if you want a bright colourful simple song and dance romp don't bother, this movie is dark, and operates on several levels, some of which I don't think kids should see.

Green Curves White Light

I love my job!

Where else could you be able to stop and marvel at the quality of the light in any given situation, and be encouraged no expected to make an image of what you saw?

Well here is that light. The graceful curves and the shadows all compliment each other, the delicate hue of the green is really calming as well. It took half a dozen goes with composition and exposure to get what I wanted, but I'm pretty happy with this one.

Lurgy?

Currently suffering the annual or sometimes bi-annual Pseudoephedrine frenzy, things could be quiet around here for a few days?

Walking Melbourne?

I often like to wander the streets of Melbourne, [with my camera of course], walking allows a much deeper insight to the culture and feel of places like the CBD, here's a web-site that will help you focus my future walks around Melbourne, hope you both can find some use for it.

Sometimes I only need walk in my backyard.

Spring.

Symbolism?

Recently I wandered off to post a letter, [kind of ironic I know] when I noticed this bag caught in tree. The tree was full of blossom, as were the nearby trees. The wind had been pretty strong for a couple of days, and this bag had lodged there as a consequence no doubt.

I glanced up more interested in the blossom and all it's promise and the gorgeous light that was happening, it was late in the afternoon. When I noticed the bag, stuck in the tree. I was mesmerised for a moment. Then quietly pleased as I had made a point of carrying my camera with me, as always. So I made several exposures, and compositions, resulting in this final choice.

What first struck me though, was, the bag's tenacity in what seems an otherwise futile struggle. A struggle to not get blown away to who knows where. Then there was the tree's will in keeping the bag there, in some kind of deadly embrace, which seemed poetic, or maybe it was more metaphoric? The dark symbolism of the deadly consumer item, trapped and held against it's will by the most powerful symbol of spring itself. Two symbols engaging, or was it a struggle, maybe something more gentle like a tussle?

All of this occurring as the sun was getting low in the sky, after what had been several lovely spring days windy but lovely.

Ah yes indeed, spring IS just around the corner.

Where was THAT shot taken?

On a more positive note, check this article out? Maybe one day someone will investigate where and when I made an image?

Also here's a couple of shots taken on Friday, both are posted on FLickr, but I wanted to tweak them a little more, using as always Photoshop and Lobster. Taken in specific place for a specific reason, based on a small discussion that murmured away for a few days over in the Melbourne pool of flickr.

Am currently experimenting with the higher film sensitivity settings on my camera, pretty pleased with the results so far.

Using this setting is no mean feat for me, I have been using fine grain film and film developer combinations for many years, and have callouses on my hands from lugging around my tripod. So it is kind of refreshing to not get too hung up on the idea of super smooth grain images and just follow my intuition. I've even created a set for it over at flickr.

Who is watching who?

Recently my best friend, returned from London. He was there when the bombings occurred a few weeks back.

As any tourist would do, he carried a backpack with him.

He has dark skin, he tans easily as he lives in the warmer part of our country, and dark curly hair.

What state of mind would I be in if the London authorities adopted a racial profiling approach to security while he was there?

It was bad enough when I heard that bombs had gone off?

My friend DRP over on flick has a thought provoking piece on the whole issue, go read it I made a comment down the bottom.

Four?

I'm a gemini you know?

Photographic Musings

Had the usual tough day at the regular Tuesday gig. Got home at a reasonable hour and started musing, about photography, digital and the internet,[ have one group show in the very very early stages of planning, that has come about because of the internet]. So I'm having to collect my own thoughts about what I'm doing and why I do it. This what I've gotten together so far.

An interest in the changing nature of Photography, and how Photography changes nature, or at least our perceptions of it, has been a major motivating factor in my creative output for almost twenty years now.

It was Frederick Sommer who said,
“...some speak of a return to nature, I wonder where they could have been?”
Indeed where have they been, and what have they got to show for the experience? Images are produced with an ease and grace never before imagined. Who will see these and share them?

What about collective memories and experiences of the places we live inhabit and occupy, how can an individual or a collective of people get together and represent this in a cohesive and creative way, is it even at all possible, is it even worth worrying about? Has digital made it the process of image collection, even more democratic, [not just in the political sense] ?

Is digital an adjunct in the process of image collection as a collective experience, and is it also able to re-awaken a sense of wonder about one’s environment?

Does seeing groups of images, made by separate people occupying the same city, exhibited in the most public of all places the internet change a collective or individual’s understanding of that city?

Part of the process of musing has had me drag out an almost 15 year old exhibition statement from my undergraduate show in 1991. It blows me away now when I read it, that I could have the insight to think of these things then. Here it is, slightly edited for grammar and perception.

“ The Lost City.
Who hasn’t been compelled to peer down dark alleyways,what do they expect to find, why isn’t the cacophony of the city enough to keep people on the main street?
Perhaps it is a search driven by desire or fear, how much then; of a struggle it must be for some, not to take that first tentative step into that arduous journey, destination unknown.”

Spring has sprung.

You know that the weather is on the up and up when the trees start to show some blossom.

And you have to marvel at the tenacity of nature itself.

These shots also serve as a reminder that images are to be made anywhere and everywhere, all it takes often, is the right light, and the right frame of mind, the rest will present itself.

Currently part of a group of Melbourne based serious amateur photographers who have met through flickr and are keen to get some recognition of their work either via an in-the-flesh exhibition, or some sort of organised cyber-show. I must confess that my involvement with flickr along with the purchase of my Nikon Coolpix 5400 camera has re-invigorated my passion for image making. While time is still a major constraint in regards to making the actual images themselves, processing them and presenting them can be done in the comfort of my own home, at my leisure, or whilst watching Television. Flickr allows me to organise them, and create collections of ideas and series that can be continually in flux if I so chose. Many many people look at them and some even leave comments. So creatively I feel as though I'm moving along quite nicely, and am starting to think about how to present images on a screen rather than on a wall.

Poor Interface Design

Gripe!

Poking around the intranet of one of my major employer's today, and found this gem of an interface! The old underline the word coz it's important trick, never mind that on a website this means something else these days! And no it doesn't work as link, don't get me started on the non-existent links that I stumbled on and the continually opening windows everywhere! Sigh maybe in 10 years time this will have disappeared completely?

Spring Begins?

Spring is around the corner. Got inspired this arvo by the rapidly flourishing Melbourne pool over at flickr. Produced these two shots. Sadly my batteries ran out!

s2art & Technorati?

Some weird stuff is going on out in cyber space with my "handle" s2art Technorati lists several entries by Scoottie and one by Swissmiss. Hmmm?