Crumpled

I’ve made a new gallery of recent pictures [link removed].

Teaching

Summer School teaching 5 days in a row… just like a real job. Took this at lunchtime, like someone with a real job might do.

Lartigue

The Lartigue show at the Hayward is great. I really admire his playfulness and experimental spirit. The upstairs show, ‘About Face: Photography and the Death of the Portrait’, not only has a naff sub-title but also seems to get itself in a knot about the use of technology in photography, which they say is “challenging our perceptions of beauty and truth”.

At one point, the curators say we can no longer accept the idea of portraits being windows on the soul (who ever did?) and then alongside a series of red-eyed (from flash) teenagers, they claim the red eyes made them look like predators (or words to that effect). As if non-predatory people won’t have red eyes. They go on to say that the red-eye effect is a “technical glitch normally removed in printing”. Hilarious.

There are some interesting things in it but I recommend ignoring the interpretation boards. This is another of my “diCorcia without flashlight” pictures.

It Must Have Been the Sun

Sorry about all the flowers, seascapes and nudity - normal madness is resumed with a return to the city.

DTP

Sensible types wouldn’t use an unfamiliar new camera for work so I was nearly caught out by a file corruption problem when writing raw+jpg. Fortunately, the job was in Cornwall so I had time to read the manual on the train and the corruption only affected the raw files. Also, I had enough coverage to work around it. This was taken a couple of days later by which time I’d decided I didn’t need both raw and jpg.

Other news: busy with DTP / InDesign work.

Photography and Death

I didn’t take that picture!! Have I got your attention? Wondering why I’ve posted that terrible flower picture in my blog? Well, I’m thinking about starting up an online photography magazine. You may think that’s the last thing the world needs but I’m fed up of looking at the dross but more than that, I’m fed up of looking at pictures of flowers* in photo blogs. Bad excuse? Well, to tell the truth, I bought a new camera and this was the easiest thing to try it out on (now you understand why there’s so much of it in the blogging world).

However, If I get enough good suggestions for the photo-mag I might actually do something about it.

*OK, I know it’s possible to make good pictures of flowers, it’s just that I never see them.

Film Showing

Mechanisms, a short film I directed is showing as part of the “Tinkering!” festival at the Exploratorium in San Francisco on Saturday 24th July at 2pm. The calendar listing doesn’t mention it but I’m told it’s definitely on. I also did some work on the Fax Machine episode of The Secret Life of Machines that they are showing in the same set (I shot some video in Paris which got badly transferred to film). There are lots of other good movies in the festival so it’s worth clicking through their calendar if you’re in that part of the world.

Crisps

Watching the New Shock of the New on Saturday, I was surprised and disappointed that Mr Hughes highlighted a spelling mistake in a Tracey Emin piece. Finishing on an extra ‘L’ in beautiful seemed more stupid than the spelling mistake to me and undercut his argument somewhat. Still, I’m looking forward to the re-run of the original series, which I haven’t seen since it was first shown.

In trying to work out the date of the first transmission, I came across this tragic tale. I’d assumed the stick was just old age.

This woman is eating Walker’s Crisps. Which reminds me to recommend this unusual book on London Walking.

Wait Light / Excuses to Wander

Due to the fact that Planet Drum is moving, I won’t have a regular excuse to wander around Borough anymore. Trips to Croydon have stopped as well. Excuses needed.

Iron

Memory Tool via creativepro.

Another Day

My one day per week teaching term has finished at Wimbledon School of Art so next week is the start of my summer and that extra day should make a difference to something. However, I am down to do a week long Photoshop course and five days in a row might cancel out the gain.

Flat Street Photos

I’ve just returned from two days in Hunkin Land helping out on some animation for one of Tim’s new simulator rides. This one will be walking the dog in Southwold and become part of his Pier Arcade.