musings from the photographic memepool [the shallow end]

So a big heartfelt thanks to Andrew, for setting me up here with this new blog.

This entry is currently being written using the web interface of Movable Type, wil soon switch to Mars Edit for future editing and uploads.

Now just gotta fix this template up?

Second entry, can't get MarsEdit to work, it seems the server isn't repsonding?

So, in the nealry 2 years I've been involved with flickr I've seen several memes come and go, the current one HDR, sadly shows no sigh of abatting. The newest kid on the block on the other hand, is "Through the viewfinder". Some interesting results, and a nice idea that if elegantly applied could produce some great results. Even Kottke is waxing lyrical about it the idea of digitally capturing a scene though an old camera.

Some flickr clusters on the matter.

My account at Last.fm.com

Once again, a big thanks to Andrew for helping me fix a problem or two here on my blog.

Now I can post from my favourite blog editor MarsEdit, a piece of software developed by Newsgator

Another Meme has popped up on flickr, is it, however; a separate meme or part of the geo-tagging meme?

So here we are on a lazy drunken Sunday Arvo, and it seems that using my powerful little blog editor called MarsEdit, has some level of responsibilities. It seems that I need to by default turn on commenting in Mars Edit, which I have now done but, the last couple of entries have this disabled, and being the less than quick geek that I am I don't seem to be able to turn it on on older posts. So if you want to comment on the last couple, and I know both of you are just dying to do so, feel free to do it here.

Meanwhile I'm scanning and tweaking.

Thanks as always to Andrew for the heads up

So Schmaps an online travel directory service has used some of my images for their travel guide of Melbourne.

I have mixed feelings about this, but I put my images online with a licence that permitted it, so I guess I'll have to wear it?

For either of you who care, I've linked to the the images they used on their download-able guide below, I'm on a Mac as you both know and the download-able guide won't be ready for some time so I can't link to them in any way on the Schmap site, or even see how they look embedded in the publication.

Interior of the Hotel Lindrum, Williamstown overlooking the CBD, Museum of Victoria, Williamstown football oval, from the air, My front porch of all places!

Recently a fellow Melbourne Flickrnaut regaled a story about a person they had photographed on the street outside Flinders St station, it wasn't a pleasant situation, and she handled it well I feel. Now the incident has made the mainstream press, in article by Terry Lane which then got picked up by the SMH.

All up; a heap of buzz has been generated by it, so to quote Oscar Wilde,

"...there's only one thing worse than being talked about
and that's not being talked about"

Number 002.0945, Comes from Humphrey B. Flaubert, of T.I.S.M

"The answer that makes me sound good is that we desired to circumvent the cult of personality that is inherent in rock music by choosing to remain anonymous. Unlike every other band in rock we chose to be anonymous. The answer that makes me sound good would probably also incorporate some lengthy discussion about Brechtian alienation techniques, about our post modernist grasp of ever cooling universe, and a dehumanizing society encapsulated in the somewhat paramilitary aspect of our clothing. All of those things would make me sound good, but actually we’re really boring guys.

God I love those guys!

Whoever wrote the Wiki entry knows plenty about them too, actually the style of the entry suggests, it is written by one of the band members.

A big thanks to digiboy for the heads-up, good luck in your search for their music, I've stumbled on some rarities in my travels, which you are more than welcome to. It's nice to see someone interested in them and poking around on the net looking for them, I know of at least one mailing list that exists, but whew it was hard work and I have long since moved from mailing lists to news feeds as a source of info.

Flickr never ceases to amaze me in it's depth and surprising spontaneity of imagery.

Florencita, posted this image recently of what I can only assume is a fair ground in Paris, from her Paris series.

The simplicity of this image, as well as the poignancy of it has me searching for adjectives. To see this and make an image of something that seems relatively innocuous is a gift that is to be nurtured and cherished. The photograph reeks of poetry; life; death; and has several classical connotations as well as being firmly planted in it's own contemporary place and time.

Initially we see a white statue of what appears to be a male holding their face in some sort of remorseful pose, white clouds frame the sculpture, a blue sky helps emphasise the framing, in the lower half of the image, there is some buildings or functional architecture, the use and function of which is unclear, within this small building is a window, the window appears to open into another space within the environment itself a somewhat anonymous and empty one, but one that would it seems have some use for human activity. There appears to be kitchen like utensils in there, yet again no human presence other than the utensils exist.

The symbolism of this image and the underlying apparent tensions are what make this image for me, the huge white sculpture turning away from a harsh lonely and empty world, even if it is turning into the light, somehow suggest to me a poignant reflection of the current human condition.

I have a LONG association with Kodak. I have been using Kodak Films for nearly 20 years, in particular their black and white emulsions. This morning I was chasing some information about exposure. What a surprise I got when I hit the site, kodak.com, no immediately apparent link for professional photographers, what the hell is going on?

So here's the link for the pro-photographers buried under a menu at the top of the screen.

Compare this to the Australian site below.

Does this mean that Kodak U.S. no longer has an interest in Professional photographers, or have they simply lowered their level of marketing at them? I have to confess I haven't hit the U.S. Website for some time, so maybe this is not a new thing? Given that most pro's would perhaps semi-regularly check the site maybe it's something they are more than aware of already. But as far as I'm concerned, the Australian site still seems to be intent on making pro-photographers more welcome or at least give them an easy entry point to the site in general.

I have a del.icio.us account; who doesn't? But I only use it to store personal bookmarks, occasionally I actually visit my account page.Today I did and I noticed that the 'social networking aspect of the interface has expanded, allowing reciprocal account linking

...again over on the urban-nature blog

Barb from flickr invited me over to jpgmag.com, a site about getting published and making money. Well as far as I can tell form the brief time spent there this morning. Sadly though I have no images to upload as they ask for high rez versions, so maybe in a day or two I'll upload a couple. The site doesn't seem to encourage social interaction, so I'm asking if either of my readers are in there? Given that the Web 2.0 is all about the user/s?

Chris, another, friend from flickr, who has the somewhat unusual distinction of knowing me before flickr, before the world wide web in fact, sends me this uri for hard to get Polaroid films.

Use if for shots like this:-

I am officially on holidays, we have just returned from Apollo Bay for 4 days, we had both been looking forward to this for some time as it's "feels" like it's been 'one of those terms'—for me anyways. Our stay was at Beacon Point, in the Mariners Cottage. Beacon Point is set on a hill overlooking the Southern Ocean with views of Apollo Bay, nestled in native bush-land.

I wondered if there would be any web access, thus proving that I am once and for all truly addicted to flickr - oh dear!

There was none.

Day One 20.09.06

Spent the morning cleaning the house and packing ready to go, I tried to squeeze in some last minute flickr action, all I managed to do was upload a handful of images, recent images. The drive up was pleasant, we did however need to stop and buy a set of leads with a 3 ^1/2 inch jack on one end, so we could run the iPod through the DVD player whilst at the house, glad we did, but mad I managed to forget.

Upon arrival the accommodation is as exactly I had expected, and I was very pleased by that. When we were researching our options on the internet it is easy to get sucked in by the eye candy used to sell these resorts. Even with both our experienced photographer's eyes in looking at images in any medium there is always a niggling doubt in my mind as to what we are seeing. All unfounded as it turned out that the unit on the inside is as spectacular as it looks on the web, and the views are to die for.

With the unit inspected and the tunes drifting out of the stereo attached to the DVD player we relaxed and flipped though our magazines, I also found what I think will be a suitable location for a series of images to be taken over the 4 days and set up a tripod ready to shoot. Over the next two days every two hours or so I jump up and make an image. Day turned to night and we watched Bleak House on DVD, a recent gift for Nik, before an early night.

Day Two 21.09.06

Breakfast is included in our deal, haven't had croissants since our 2004 trip to Paris. So breakfast was a no-brainer. Some tough decisions though were needed to be made today. Do we stay put and relax read and eat, or do we head out and wander along a local beach or have a coffee in Apollo Bay proper?

Staying put won out, the weather isn't quite warm enough to sit outside, but it is by no means terrible either and with the awesome views out the huge double sliding glass doors it feels like we are outside anyways.

An uneventful day really, reading napping, a bbq lunch, and a short stroll around the resort, all mount up to more relaxing. One or two mobile phones calls were the highlights of the morning, [hi Mitch] after which both phones were both promptly turned off.

I brought a pile of books and magazines to read, so far the magazines were the only ones to see the light of day. We had a splurge at Magnation before we left, I spent $65.00 on magazines! This got me four in total, although one did have an extra magazine inside it.

A literary reviewer I am not, but I will say I am enjoying my copy Frankie, issue #13, the best article I felt was the one that dealt with Australian Television. Is the mainstream realising that today's 20 somethings [and many others] are bored with the one-way diatribe that is TV? Websites like Youtube and Google video are far more engaging and once you work out how to find the content great fun. It also has a small photo essay, “ Saturdays Around The World” that is not bad but, I reckon they could do better especially if they used flickr as a resource for finding images. The idea itself worked, it's just that the images seemed a little insipid.

The next magazine to be devoured was iCreate, a very expensive magazine from the UK. It describes itself as the creative magazine for Mac users. It has news tutorials and a bonus CD attached. As with all these kinds of magazines, the tutorials can be a little hit and miss, but the mag is well laid out and and the tips were enough to get me thinking about some ideas I'd been tinkering with in Indesign, they actually had a tutorial on pages, the drag and drop template driven equivalent page layout tool by Apple, which I might add is quite powerful. The magazine also openly promotes it's forums, something I will investigate myself no doubt—soon.

'T' The Journal of T-Shirt Culture Issue #1 is magazine number 3 I perused, so far looking like thinly veiled advertising but the eye candy is great and I'm always on the lookout for good T-Shirts. The last Magazine remains unopened by today. But when I get around to it I'm sure Pol-Oxygen won't be a let down, this had a bonus little magazine, O₂+, describes itself as 208 Pages of Inspiring Designs, which I read as blatant advertising—in hindsight.

The day ended with a quaint Disney movie, on Austar, an hour or two of solitaire and finally a session of more Bleak House

Day Three 22.09.06

Nothing beats a home cooked hot breakfast, eggs on toast, hash-browns, sausages, bacon tomato and baby spinach, fruit-juice, tea or coffee.

Again time for that tough decision, oh wait is that rain…?

Most days we had some nice visitors too. A family of Magpies, some Parrots or Lorikeets, and some large difficult to identify black birds, ornithologist I ain't either.

After the rain stopped, we decided to head into town itself, for lunch, fish and chips of course. Not much loitering there though as neither of us are into chintzy tacky souvenirs, and while the beach itself is nice I find the rockier parts of the coast more interesting to wander along. On the return home being the sticky beaks we are we made a neat discovery of a partially demolished house site. This meant that I actually pulled out the Hasselblad, and shot 2 and a half rolls of film on the one spot.

The constantly changing light otherwise only served to slow me down, till eventually the clouds came over. The remainder of the day was spent in front of the box watching the rest of Bleak House and some other bits 'n bobs on Austar.

The unfolding spectacular weather pattern ocurring outside, was almost better than TV itself.

Day Four 23.09.06

Checkout day.

Slept-in had a lazy breakfast and packed up and headed home. I also re-jigged the playlist for the drive home.

I have had an image used over on abbotsfordblog.com, one buried deep in my stream and like so many in 2005 hardly viewed or posted to many groups, thanks to trapped in a suit it gets to see the light of day.

As I approach my second anniversary of flickr addiction I am now in a position to revisit my flickr archives and post some images here. Surprisingly image making around these parts has ground to a halt, not counting the 4 rolls of unprocessed film sitting here on my desk, and several other projects tucked away on my hard drive [that I feel have question able merit]. I also still have 2 other online projects on the back burner and a 3rd slowly bubbling away, and I haven't organised my solo show for 2007 yet.

This image made on a photo stroll with ziz and AhlzMeh, was one of my such experiences, which ended up with us drinking free beer at an opening we stumbled upon down at the VCA. This image alone has had the power to evoke so many more thoughts and memories than I'm prepared to share, but it is for me a powerful reminder why photography is such an evocative and suggestive tool.

This is one of the projects I want to contribute to.

Discarded Object Poster Project

Have you ever seen a single shoe in the gutter, a beanie on the road,or a glove on the tram, and thought about whom the object may have belonged to, and how it got lost?

Embedded within the creases and stains of these objects is a human history that speaks of usage and ownership.

Discarded Object Poster Project involves photographing lost objects and making the images into posters that will be posted around the CBD. The shift in context of the object, especially in contrast to the expected advertising image, will reflect it as a trace of a person the remnant of an action or routine.

A map outlining the posters locations will be produced and launched at Bus Passenger Studio Space in early November. The map will help access the work and create a permanent record of the posters.

Discarded Object Poster Project invites you to submit an image of a discarded object, which will then be made into a poster. Next time you see a shoe/glove/sock (anything!) simply photograph it and send it to discardedobject at hotmail dot com (as a jpeg image, 300dpi or higher if possible) including the location of where it was found.

Thankyou for considering being part of this project!

This project is supported by CLUBSproject and Bus Gallery.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australian Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

Here is the first image I submitted.

An online collaborative magazine has asked me to submit images for it's first publication, Metroblossom is:-

a collaborative space for exploring the interaction between humans and the nonhuman world. In particular, those presenting their work through this project are interested in the informal and undocumented life with which we are in constant interaction. Through these explorations, metroblossom argues that all life is meaningful, important, and more than worthy of our recognition.

They have chosen 4 images from my utterly urbane series.

The images have yet to be published and I had to submit an artists statement as well, which in itself was a good process to go through, as I re-discovered some old bits and bobs of ideas quotes text that had been piling up in various places that I put to good use.

...today.

Technorati need to release the spiders. Do it NOW! Technorati Profile

... a blog, by Google, aimed at Mac users

Yahoo are asking for contributions to a time capsule they are putting together.

They are asking for submissions in several themes themes, Love, Anger, Fun, Sorrow, Faith, Beauty, Past, Now, Hope, You. They are also asking for media in a variety of formats, text audio video and of course photography which according to the flickr blog entry where I found this, is leading the pack in terms of numbers.

I had two goes at uploading something, didn't work so at least I can say I gave it a try.

This is the image I tried to up load.

I chose Faith as the category that I wanted to contribute to. [I originally wanted to choose hope but the artist's idea or maybe Yahoo's idea of what that meant isn't quite how I define hope, perhaps more on that later.]

Let me ask both of my readers this question then –
How do you define the word hope?

On the Digital Photography School Blog in fact, in an article about using light to add impact to your photography.

Just when you think you've seen it all on flickr up pops another great image maker.

This set by akiruna, reminds me of the power to transform the world into something that simply re-affirms our existence, dare I say it it fills me with—hope?

My good friend Bart, a fellow flickrnaut and top notch graphic designer, pointed me to this this morning.

The interwebs being the interwebs I dutifully went for a look. Downloaded and installed it. What's the big deal here, I thought? I can't see any immediate changes to my browser, Safari, and there is only an option to turn it off in the Menu-bar, but once I found the sweet spot I was sorely impressed!

Burtynsky Photographer

And now for something completely different, Edward Burtynsky's web-site is as beautiful as it is thought provoking, photographer or not you will be moved by the images and text here.

Thanks to barb for the heads up.

New phone with increased resolution, the ability to blog to blogger from the phone, more features yet to be explored I'm sure. One thing though and I'm not sure if it's me or not, but the interface on this phone seems marginally more elegant than my k700i, wish I could make the text smaller though.

So I guess there's going to be a flurry of cheesy mobile phone shots in these parts over the coming days, unless the novelty wears off quicker than that?

There is talk afoot of a Darkroom session amongst some of the Melbourne Flickrnauts, in the Melbourne Silver Mine Pool. Interesting idea, might be fun?

Simon Roberts a European Photojournalist, has some powerful imagery on his site I particularly like the Polar Nights series. Sadly It's a flash driven site so you will have to go poke around in there yourself to find the series I'm talking about, yet another reason not to use flash [imho].

The weather patterns here in Melbourne at the moment are perfect for photography, a brief shower followed by, sunshine provides glorious colour as all the dust is washed off things and the moisture glows beautifully in the sunshine.

Small update here as I sip my first coffee for the day in readiness to head out and snap of off the odd shot or two, this little people project is intriguing and insightful, thanks to felix42 over at delicious

Jeff over at, Buzzmachine argues eloquently about the demise of TV, the head honcho of the BBC even attempts to refute Jeff's claims. I've long been a fan of the idea grass roots TV that is driven by viewers choice not some programmer's idea of what we want to see, with a sponsor leaning over their shoulder telling them what they are prepared to sponsor. Is this the beginning of the end of lowest common denominator Media?

We can only hope.

A couple of days ago, I commented on the fad that is HDR sweeping flickr, I have found another article on the matter

Rant warning here!

Been looking at a couple of sites that Joerg Colberg over on Conscientious has been pointing out, recently.

Flash player seems mandatory, why?

Apart from the usual usability issues, about flash, what do these photographers do when they want to make a small change to their sites, what of the people in the world not running high speed internet connections and high powered computers?

What if I want to dwell on an image for longer than the flash programmer has deemed suitable, what if I want to choose my own path through the images in their portfolio rather than one deemed a by the photographer, an advantage I guess

I gave up on the 3 sites that I clicked on from the Conscientious blog, and I'm on ADSL here at the moment, even though Spencer Murphy's seemed promising.

…elsewhere on the web, barb and myself have contributed to an online project called discarded object project

As part of my submission to the discarded object poster project, I went trawling through my archives for about a dozen or so images that it had been suggested would work.

A task, that ordinarily would have sunken to the bottom of the pool if it weren't for flickr and iView Media Pro.

After setting up a special set of the suggested images using tags, I then tracked down the dates that I had shot them, by year. Then I loaded up that year's catalogue in iView Media Pro, and based on the dates taken from my flickr stream, I quickly, easily and accurately found each image. Then after locating the physical disk, I archive my work to CD roms, it was a simple matter or control clicking and transferring the file to the appropriate location on my hard drive.iView Media Pro is even polite enough to ask me, how I want to handle this process.

All up a 45 minute job to track down about 13 images spanning 3 years of photography, not sure I can even do it that quick with proof sheets, as it is often a case of relying solely on memory of when an image was taken to find an image, my proofs are filed chronologically.

Currently my workflow involves, creating a catalogue of images every-time I download from the camera, then assigning keywords and any other meta-data that I see fit. Once that folder contains roughly 500 to 700 meg of data, I burn it to a CD, after creating a catalogue of the contents of the entire folder. Then each time a new catalogue is created I import the entire catalogue into an existing catalogue file organised by year. The advantage of importing catalogue files is that all keywords and meta-data is imported as well, so so long as I add the meta-data at the initial download that follows through to the final catalogue each year. Date of course are handled automatically and I assume are based on Camera meta-data and exif files.

All in all an elegant piece of software, which I am still learning the intricacies of, that is making my life and workflow much easier

Things have begun to go into warp drive around here soon, keep an eye on my old blog to see what may pan out.

Things are being made worse by a lack of interwebs at work, thanks to technical problems from our ISP, what did we do before computers and the internet became so pervasive?

I really appreciate and am conscious of the sense of community provided by sites like flickr, and jpgmag, but in a noise to signal ratio world [where the signal is low] it's often difficult to get noticed, and noticed for the right reasons.

Sites like jpgmag, seem to have come from that need of recognition that so many folks hanker for. I wish I could say that I don't really suffer this, but hey I'm human and being ignored is something many humans don't shine to very well. So in the spirit of the online community that has developed over the last couple of years around photography, I ask both my readers to vote for my images on jpg mag.

While we're at it, please vote for barb, charlie, donina, gil hamish, mike.

Thanks to Alec Soth and Joerg Colberg, I've spent some quality time with some interesting links today, A.D. Coleman a photography writer who I respect, has an old school site that is homely yet a bit out of touch with contemporary web design and content delivery. It could be a blog, but I'm not sure it is? Worth revisiting though.

Another gem, by Bill Jay, is a site that allows you to download his writings as .pdf files, again kinda quaint and worthy of further exploration.

Well I missed this Letterman Show, never watch it actually, I personally know of nobody who normally watches it, otherwise I would asked them to have taped it.

Also a YouTube Video of the interview between Tom Waits and David Letterman.

Born in 1969, Isabelle Hayeur lives and works in Montreal. She completed a BFA in 1996 and a MFA in 2002 at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Since the late 1990s, she has been known for her large-format digital montages and her site-specific installations while she also produced public art works, videos and net art projects

Also, here is a bad interview by some one who doesn't REALLY appreciate Tom Wait's music. Either that or they just edited it poorly. I have to confess, I've talked about music and art in the past, if I WAS to align myself with a musician Tom Waits would probably come in first, followed by TISM.

Not sure if listing TISM is a good thing though?

Speaking of contemporary edgy punch in the face imagery.

An interesting approach to story telling, and narrative is used on this Website of Tim Hetherington 's work

Just returned from a day or two away, in the hills, with no web access.

I'm thinking of taking a brief hiatus from blogging.

To quote, John Cato, one of the men attributed with setting up photographic studies at a Tertiary level in Melbourne.

“ I use a camera”

Thanks to the interwebs and word of mouth by one of my students, I have some work showing in Melbourne.

The Discarded Object Poster Project, which both myself and barb have submitted work to, will be opening Tuesday 12th, at Bus Gallery Passenger Studio Space, 117 Lt Lonsdale St, 6 - 8 pm.The show runs, until Sunday 17th December. Tours to view the posters around the city will take place on Wednesday 13th and Sat 16th at 12pm, leaving from Bus Gallery.

I never would have thought that word of mouth and the internet would have played a part in my creative output

Barb has had her image of the sunset over the beach published online by the age

A Grass roots campaign, has begun to attempt to re-instate the Citi-bank Portrait Photography prize and exhibition at the AGNSW*.

There is a flickr group that allows you to showcase your best portrait in an effort to show the folks at AGNSW* what they are missing out on, as well.

The Australian Bush-fires have had an impact on flickr.

That speaks volumes in my opinion!

Will this bring an onslaught of "Art" images revolving around the devastation as has been mentioned in other blogs out there? Personally I am interested in the scarification of the landscape, and will venture out there, camera or two in hand, when it all dies down, might even pull out the 5 x 4?

...and popular isn't always the best, I'm told that this photo-blog is popular, I can see why it's popular but that doesn't make it good work. It is all obviously processed in a post production tool like photoshop. Over processed at that!

I may not be in a position to post over the next 4 days or so. I promise to return with a vengeance AFTER Christmas.

Been Using Flock a fair bit of late, hats off to Lord Of The Flies over on flickr for prompting me to give it another go.

This browser is very much geared towards to Web 2.0 and the social aspect of the internet.

Flickr forms a major part in it's design and use, along with delicious, blogging and of course news feeds. Clicking on a small icon that appears in the bottom right corner of any photo on flickr allows you to launch that person's stream at the top of the browser window and then very quickly scroll across it to see what's new in thumbnail form. If something grabs you you can click on it to view the larger picture and entire page below.

It has a built in photo-uploader, that allows quick and easy uploading directly from it's interface. Tagging is real easy and adding to your own sets is an easy next step after adding a title description and tags.

Another great feature is the snippets bar at the bottom of the screen, here you can store text and images for later use.

Bookmarking has deli.cio.us built right in, this took me a little while to realise but was most likely due to my own ignorance more than poor design on flock's part. You can choose to share or not to share your bookmark/s as you work.

All in all this browser is shaping up to be a good all-rounder. I wish however that the curser when clicked around on the screen didn't keep disappearing, and I have yet to test flock for colour fidelity.

Well a simple test seems to indicate that Flock like Firefox doesn't use colorsync like Safari, ah well.

Many people like to personalise their computers in many ways, using different icon sets to the ones that come with the computer is one of them. I am no exception, of course though I like to try and find photography related ones. Rarely is there much out there. As a consequence,I make my own using my small collection of cameras, I photograph them and make icons using the neat little free-ware app called cocothumbX.If you have a mac and would like some let me know I'd be happy to share them.

Snap.com is a new browser on the market with a unique approach to searching, very visual and reasonably fast, so-so results on my chosen search terms so far, might report back in a week or two with some user tested results.

I get the impression that their 'bot' is still indexing and if this is the case maybe they'll need to hurry on up and get a move on.

On a side note you can add a neat little bit of javascript to any site that allows snap.com to search images from that page. I took a screen-grab from my website as my mobile phone blog is yet to produce any results.

I'm beta testing this application Skitch, very nice indeed, simple intuitive, easy to work out, certainly not a high end graphics application, but more than suitable for most folks. Thanks to Atariboy for the invitation to test.

Useful for quick screen grabs or sketches that you need to e-mail, or use online somewhere. I guess given that I'm back at work as of tomorrow, this will come in handy in classes for sure and for working with peers.

It has the expected suite of tools for painting and drawing, a text tool and eraser tool, a small colour palette and the ability to capture a screen or a series of screens. They can then be either posted online, e-mailed or dragged and dropped in a variety of file formats. Archiving is a neat feature as well, I'm going to explore that further over the coming weeks, to see how I can better use this. Simple and useful tool for sure, especially when tied in with iView Media Pro and VoodooPad Pro.

On the exhibition front,things are all on track, just saving up for the huge hole about to be made in the credit cards when I get the images printed.

The second batch of A3 proofs looks pretty good. The profile I used was ok, out of the box, I haven't tested it exclusively yet, I'll maybe do some more testing over the coming weeks. I also think I need to consider different paper stocks, I used 5 year old paper made by Epson, and I know that the, variety and choices of paper stocks out there is mind boggling. Someone once told me that digital would see the re-introduction of choices only heard of in photography before WWII, when trade secrets started locking away all sorts of formulas and ideas. One can only hope, because I have to admit, the idea of making these prints though a service bureau is not filling me with joy, if I was to print them myself, either as analogue or digital prints I would feel far more comfortable about where they are heading, in terms of cost and final appearance.

Finally blogger is playing up this morning, so I have yet to upload my mobile phone shot for the day, one more go later, if no good this will make the 2nd day I've missed.

... can it make everything beautiful.

Trying a new photo site, aimed at selling mainly, so not that much use to me, we'll see, already a few flickrnauts moving in.

Anyone able to help me tweak my movable type template? I lost the whole front page for a few hours last night, all's well now except I really want to add some features such as links to other sites and my flickr stream.

I have not been using snap a great deal, and here's a picture that tries to explain why. How much of this sluggish performance is my computer and how much it is the site and how much is it the interwebs itself?

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch

File, has some great stuff and a couple of big names too. Checkit

While researching some idea for titles for my solo show in March, I noticed that my own set for the show, ranks number 10 in the google listings, yesterday anyways.

What a pleasant surprise. Hope it helps with the publicity?

Thanks to Andrew for pointing me to this browser for my mobile phone, far easier to use than the built in browser on my mobile phone

Technorati Tags: geek, mophone, phonecam, web 2.0

Submit a piece to this gallery and have your work exhibited in Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, in the show entitled, "The rapid mutation of amateur photography in the digital age"

They are asking some pertinent and burning questions, among them:-

Does the digital shift constitute a revolution, or merely an evolution?
Does the shift represent a real democratization of photography?
Is citizen photojournalism worthy of its name?
Does the shift threaten the livelihood of professional photographers in fundamental ways?
Does the shift represent a shift towards more authenticity or truthfulness — or less?

Looks like others are thinking along the same lines, which is good I enjoy a good quest.

Technorati Tags: art, interwebs, photography

So I decided to try and publicise my upcoming Solo Show on the flickr blog. In the past, if you had an upcoming event, adding it to upcoming dot org and notifying the flickr team via e-mail was all that was required to get it added to the front page of the blog. Sometimes you even got sent schwag. Well now it ain't so simple. Inevitable really I guess, flickr has turned into a monster and now that Yahoo owns it, the inevitable corporate language will creep in, along with lengthy delays in getting help. And it's that subtle language that is sending me the signal that things are not what they seemed, well I guess another year and then who knows. It has been a fun 2 ^1/2 years so far.

Technorati Tags: art, flickr, interwebs, photography

Just an interesting link today, thanks to 1000 words of flickr fame.

I am dropping the files off at the printers tomorrow, fingers crossed! Tomorrow week I start hanging the work.

Technorati Tags: inkjet, photography, prints, trocadero, VCA

Checking my stats for this blog the other day, and I was flabbergasted to see these 2 browsers even register on the radar!

Technorati Tags: browsers, interwebs, geek

One of things that I've felt has been so exciting about the internet, is the ability to generate content, by it's users.

This is made all the more easier with sites like flickr, &and del.icio.us, as they partially exist for this reason. This ability then adds a level of power to the process of content creation unseen or heard of; ever. Of course with power comes some responsibility. This is where using the save to delicious link at the bottom of every flickr page comes in.

Assuming you have a delicious account. When you find an image you like, clicking on this link will launch a small window or open a page. This page will then enable you to add this image yo your delicious account, to share with others who use delicious, AND if you add the tag, "photoblog-posts" it can also be found by a site called, blog.photoblogs.org, who may then choose to feature this image on their own blog.

It's all about sharing you see.

If you didn't have a delicious account before reading this, I'm going to assume yo now do, here's my delicious account, I have a small network of fellow web users, and they have very kindly shared their links with me.

Technorati Tags: delicious, flickr, geek, photo-blogs, sharing, content, links, user-created, web 2.0, interwebs

I didn't spend hours and hours on a computer or online.

Life has been a little pre-web around here. What with the discovery of my new location,and spending as much time as I can either out on location or in the darkroom processing and printing, or checking out some of the excellent shows on in galleries around town at the moment. I meant to post this a couple of days ago. Ne'er mind.

Thanks to lifehacker.com>via webware, this little gem will keep those who like to scrap book happy; me I'd like to think of it as a way to build and share collaborative work such as magazines. I have after all had a long [amateur] interest in page-layout, typography & graphic design.

At a professional level, my students could possibly use this site as well.

Technorati Tags: content, geek, user-created, web 2.0

I want one!

[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: lofi, low-rez, mophone, phonecam, photography

In my inbox this morning

I'm writing to ask for your help.

Two years ago, iCommons established the yearly iSummit conference as a way to bring together the thinkers, innovators, and pioneers of the "Open" movement.

This year's iSummit (taking place in Dubrovnik, Croatia from June 15th through 17th) will bring together more than 250 key players for two days of intense discussion and debate about our digital freedoms and the future of the Internet. It is critical to assure that a truly global legal perspective is represented at this important conference.

Creative Commons International affiliates are crucial to the success of the iSummit and of Creative Commons globally. The iSummit is the one opportunity each year for these dedicated volunteers drawn from universities and cultural institutes to learn from each other face to face and plan for the challenges and opportunities facing the movement in the next year. Enabling these volunteers to participate in the iSummit is truly the most leveraged way to support Creative Commons at this time.

In order for Creative Commons to provide affiliates with scholarships to attend this critical conference, we need your help in raising $50,000 within the next two weeks. This is a daunting task, but we strongly believe that you, our community, will help us reach this goal.

Please visit http://creativecommons.org/support to give to the fund. All of our usual cool premiums are available.

To help, Digital Garage, a major sponsor of iSummit 2006, is matching the first $20,000 that is contributed.

This campaign will end when we have raised $50,000, or in two weeks, whichever comes first. We will be posting updates from our international affiliates each day of the campaign.

If your company is interested in contributing matching funds or if you have questions about the campaign, please contact our Development Coordinator, Melissa Reeder, at melissa@creativecommons.org.

Technorati Tags: www, geek, user-created, web 2.0, interwebs, computers

So, as if flickr wasn't enough of a time waster, now twitter!

Here's my list of social/sharing sites that I'm involved in

• flickr, and many of it's groups
• del.icio.us
• twitter
• facebook
• myspace, [yes I know sad innnit]

So, as far as I can see, twitter is really for folks who as a flickrnaut recently said, "people who are chained to their computers". My question is then, are any of these sites of any real use in our lives, particularly if your job description does not include working all day everyday on a computer?

Technorati Tags: sharing, software, web 2.0, weird, geek, www

Thanks to Jayjuice, I was reminded of my lastfm account and little did I know I also had a claimId account.

When will it end?

Technorati Tags: geek, interwebs, tools, user-created, web 2.0, www

I've signed up to this new pool on flickr called 24 hours of flickr.

On the mail front IMAP is a little new to me, but I'm told it's a little more spam resistant. I'm the tech person in this house, so I "just make it work". Nik [seen here on the left] doesn't share my interest or patience with technology.

[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: 24 hours of flickr, computers, flickr, geek, photography