Flat-Profile

A selection from the second film in my flat profile project.  I try to limit my shooting to about 18 pictures per flat, which I snap quickly on 35mm film.  We are never there for long, at most an hour for the main magazine-shoot and interview, and I would like the extra pictures to reflect that  - I'm an outsider, looking in.  I'm still in the research stage, I have a pile of printed and photocopied texts to read, which I will get around to after my exams in about three weeks.  I hope that by the end of the year I will know more about what I am doing.

Above - just before shooting the flat profile in the previous post.  The garage had been converted into a bachelor pad of sorts, tv/playstation/stereo in one corner, gym in another, bed at the back wall, sitting beside it was a costume rack.

Here is the interview, as told to Sebastian Boyle:

The best part about this flat is the love.

      There's a lot of love to share.  We're made up of Canterbury students and Lincoln students - it's charity work on the part of the Canterbury students.  We're doing a lot for inter-varsity unity.
      We moved in on February 12th.  We got the flat one day out from O-Week; we'd just run out of options. It was a bigtime lack of organisation on our part.  We've only just sorted out our flat roster tonight, and our internet still doesn't have a password.  We are quite possibly the laughing stock of Ilam.  I'm sure Facebook doesn't take ten gig in one night; I'm sure the neighbors downloading Iron Man 2 does.  We've got someone doing a computer skills paper at Lincoln so he can figure it out.
      Cooking hasn't been too bad.  There's always grass, you can always eat grass.  This is what the Lincoln students are trying to bring to the Canterbury society; there are more things to eat than just off the plate: grass, plants... times are tough.
      We had a big flat warming called "Livzapalooza".  The name has nothing to do with the flat, but we made it on the premise that the person who shouted the keg was called Liv, so it was good for both parties, really.  We had a DJ on the roof, which was just a complete OSH hazard waiting to happen.  The whole roof was moving there were so many people on it.  It could indeed be said that our flat has a roof fetish, yet the only thing in our tenancy agreement about parties was just "Don't run on the roof, the tiles won't hold you".  We've now found two spots where it leaks.
      We did a trip down to Lake Wanaka in late March, and succeeded in stealing the logo from Shooters Wanaka.  That was our proudest moment as a flat.  What were we doing in Shooters?  Let's not go there.
      We're in the middle of our first red card at the moment.  It comes with a free day off work; free day off uni.  Police hopefully won't be involved.  In the morning, there'll probably be a bucket half full of spew, nobody waking up in their beds...
      By the end of the year, hopefully we'll get a reality TV show out of it: Ilam Shore.  It'd be great if we got a celebrity appearance for that; a celebrity visit to the flat.  Preferably Nicole from Home and Away.  Or Leigh Hart.  Jason Gunn.  The door's always open, because it's never locked!  And if the door's locked, then try a fucking window.

Flat-Profile

Impromptu Pictures

I liked the set of pictures I took at University the other week so I went back and took some more.  In the first picture you can see a light leak on the bottom of the right side. Delightful.  I'd love to take many more pictures like this but the cost of film and processing is something I need to take into account, and my digital camera never quite cuts it.

Canta's Cover

Last week Canta need a cover and I volunteered my likeness.

Impromptu Pictures

Today I thought about doing some study but went to take some pictures instead.  The light seemed quite neat and I wanted to make use of it, so I walked around my university campus and took 10 pictures (5 are below).

Last month I was looking at the work of German photographer Thomas Struth.  I will borrow some words from Guy Tosatto - Thomas Struth has, for more than twenty years now, dedicated himself to recording the urban landscapes of the New World, which were born with photography, and those of the Old World, haunted by the ghosts of history. ... in this austere and dispassionate mediation on towns, we find an inquiry into time, a time that only photography seems capable of revealing.  I find the camera's ability to investigate very fascinating.  To portray a subject without some sort of predisposed view can be hard (like when positioning the camera), and I find the objective style of German photographers to be quite curious.

I'll talk more about Struth later.  For now, some pictures, the blurred people are a reference to Struth's Museum Photographs.

The Sinnerman

I have finished a photo for Musoc's poster.  I ended up blending two photos together, as each had aspects that I liked, but neither was truly special.  This is a very good reason to use a tripod when you're taking photos, and not move it, you can recompose later on the computer!

I was a little worried about how the film would turn out.  After a certain dark-slide incident, I often worry now, but it makes me pay closer attention to the camera's settings.  The negatives were a little underexposed, as expected, but I was otherwise happy.

Musoc Poster

Musoc, the students' Musical Society at my university, is putting on a show in the next couple of months.  They had a person lined up to take a picture for their poster, but this person changed their plans.  My name was passed along and they asked if I would be able to take some photos for them.

Here's a sneak peek:  Using my DSLR to take a picture through the viewfinder of my RZ67.  I wanted to see that the foreground flash was working OK, it was.  This was one of the darkest places I have ever tried to take a good photo... I settled on 1/15sec at f4, Fuji 400 neg film, I wasn't too worried about the slow shutter speed as the people in the background are out of focus anyway, and the foreground flash (the only flash light in the frame) freezed the subject at the front.  110mm 2.8 lens.  Note that the RZ67's viewfinder presents a left-to-right image, I prefer it this way, I might actually experiment with flipping the 'good' photo.  It would be nice to have some 'proper' strobes, if funds would ever permit!