Pictures and Life

Impromptu Pictures

2011-10-07T08:40:00.001+13:00

Last Sunday morning, before I went to work at the camera shop, I took a stroll along one edge of the city cordon. The centre of town is still closed off because of earthquake damage.

I took a bunch of polaroid photos in my medium format camera.

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Flat-Profile

2011-06-05T18:52:00.002+12:00

I had no desire to step outside into today's poor weather and spent the afternoon inside sorting through photographs and scanning films.

Here are some photographs taken during Flat-Profile interviews over the last 5 months or so:

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Impromptu Pictures

2011-04-27T09:49:00.002+12:00

Remember these streets?

I took photos through fences on the afternoon of Easter Sunday.

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Scenes from Christchurch

2011-03-10T12:43:00.000+13:00

Nature gave Christchurch another photo op.

Impromptu Pictures

2010-12-31T23:13:00.001+13:00

Earlier this month I took some photos for a musical theatre poster, I finally had a look through them today and there are some pretty cool pictures there. It was a little raunchy. I might share pictures next year.

I visited Oamaru with my parents and we made these photos:

And last weekend, I decided to run a film through my Holga, which hasn't happened in a while. Parts of town were closed due to some earthquake damage, and they're still pulling down the building that was deemed unsafe after the bigger one in September.

Impromptu Pictures

2010-12-20T15:48:00.002+13:00

After I finished working with Canta for the year, I had my exams, and since then I haven't made much of an effort toward photos. I'll be back at university part time in the first week of January, but there's time before then, and during, and I'll do something.

At some point I plan to head south and take some photos in the historic area of Oamaru. I should also visit the Ron Mueck exhibition too, while it's in town.

Here is a photo I took on an outing last month:

Canta and Flat-Profile

2010-10-21T11:20:00.000+13:00

Canta's last cover for the year (front and back):

I also penned a few words for this issue:

And the usual flat profile (I think this flat encompassed flatness very nicely):

Flat-Profile & Gig

2010-10-18T22:37:00.001+13:00

It's been a short while since the last update, and cool things have happened since. My work in Canta magazine won Best Original Photography at the 2010 Fairfax Aotearoa Student Press Association (ASPA) Awards. Canta's last issue for this year has been sent to the printers, I'll miss the flat profiles as they were fun. I'll post some stuff from this issue on Wednesday when it appears around campus.

In a little over two weeks I will have finished my first year of university, it's a scary thought, seeing the huge amount of revision I need to do before exams. Photography missions over the summer break will be inevitable.

Here are some flat profile pictures:

Also, here are some photos from a gig at university, on Friday. The Naked and Famous are playing.

From the Archives

2010-09-10T12:15:00.000+12:00

My life has slowed in its tracks, following the 7.1 earthquake we had last weekend and the hundreds of aftershocks since. The university break has been extended for two weeks, and I've been spending more time twiddling my thumbs than usual.

Unlike other photographers who have been out with their cameras, I've been quite content to stay at home. Without any new photos, I'll share some self portraits from last year:

(Victoria Park, atop the Port Hills overlooking Christchurch)

Impromptu Pictures

2010-08-30T12:04:00.000+12:00

A couple of new photos from Granddad's flat:

Impromptu Pictures

2010-08-26T21:14:00.001+12:00

I'm in the mid-semester break from university, and for a short while I am going to ignore the applicable matters at hand (assignments, studying for tests and catching up on lectures I have missed while hurriedly doing other assignments). On Tuesday I slept in for quite a while, and had a series of interesting dreams, and while these alternative realities were nice places to be, when I was thinking my experience a short while later in the shower I realised I'm actually quite content with my life. I was relieved.

This week I snuck into my Granddad's flat and took some pictures. He hasn't lived here for that long, so the place is by no means "this is Granddad", I just thought it would make some interesting photos. I got a bit bold with the exposure and overcooked the film, so I'm going to go back another time and be more careful.

Snapshots

2010-08-15T17:57:00.003+12:00

Scenes from Christchurch:

I saw someone meditating in the afternoon sun at university.

Food caravans at the Arts Centre (which happens to be the old university campus in the city). It's all foreign cuisine, and smells delicious. I'm vegan, which excludes everything here from my diet, but if I wasn't then it would be very hard to pick something to eat.

I was out with my mother and we decided to rest our legs at a cafe. Again, nothing vegan, but it looked good.

Soy milk to the rescue. If I have a camera with me I always photograph food and drink before they're touched.

Flat-Profile

2010-08-05T10:10:00.000+12:00

What's going on here?

"Eileen is the flat grandmother. Every flat has to have one. She does her fair share of the cooking and cleaning, the sober driving. She's the biggest party animal of all of us; goes for the longest. We get drunk and sing "Come on, Eileen".

Impromptu Pictures

2010-08-04T11:13:00.000+12:00

Last Friday I drove away from the city to take some self portraits. I started doing these 9 months ago, I'm not sure why, and I don't know what it's all about either, but I enjoy it and the series seems interesting.

I went back to the same place I used for last month's competition, and took some pictures with strobe since I was no longer shooting under the competition's constraints. It's nice to have some sharp pictures to play with!

Flat-Profile

2010-07-30T15:06:00.001+12:00

More photographs from the homes of strangers.

Canta's Cover

2010-07-28T12:16:00.000+12:00

This week is Te Wiki o Te Reo Mãori, Mãori Laguage Week.

Competition

2010-07-22T23:01:00.001+12:00

Remember a couple of posts ago, when I was talking about my entry into a competition and I said "Unless it is the rare case that an artist will select the winning pictures"?

Surprisingly, that turned out to be the case. And I won the camera!

When asked to judge this competition, I agreed with caution. I'm aware how opinionated the staff at Photo and Video can be and know an undertaking like this is always going to be dangerous. Everyone has an opinion, an aesthetic bias or even some kind of technical criteria on which to evaluate photographs.
Having said all this, it is with great enthusiasm I judge Andy Tan's entry, "Me and the Milkyway," winner of P&V's grand prize. For me, Andy's photograph is a perfect example of what I love about still photography. It is personal and intimate in vision, hints at a broad range of human emotions, and makes me think about the infinite possibilities of the world (and universe?) we live in. In short, the photo affects me. It makes me feel very human.
Congratulations Andy!

It can be hard to organise the ideas that I put into a finished picture. Often I'm not sure what they are. I had a look at the other post below, I mostly talked about the physical process that I used to make the photo, mainly because they're far easier to talk about, and I stayed away from the mental processes. The first night I was out taking photos I had a voice recorder with me, using it to keep myself company, and at one point when I turned my attention to the sky I ran out of intelligible words to describe what I saw. There are many experiences which can make a person feel very small, and I had such an experience. Trying to cram this feeling into an image seemed like an impossible task, so I did what I often do - I approached the subject with a little light-hearted humour.

Here stands a traveller, on Earth, though whether he is an Earthling himself or from another place remains ambiguous. The photo, in my head, sits in an album of travel photographs, and they're all captioned. There's a pride in this collection of interesting places, and each addition brings some satisfaction. This character is a curious fellow. Of course, I can stare at this photo and ponder many different possible meanings, for instance yesterday I was thinking about how we are nothing but visitors even in the places we call home, for we live for such a short time compared to 'our' planet. Would that make every photo a travel photo, then? Perhaps a snapshot from this life to carry into his next.

Anyway, the prize - An Olympus E-P1!

I have been walking around university this week with it and it's fantastic. The last time I used an Olympus digital camera was in 2004, when I would often borrow one from my school, I took that one everywhere (even on holiday). For some reason other digital cameras never seemed as entertaining to use. This new camera has a familiar feeling. I'm starting to wonder if using an Olympus digital camera is an emotional experience.

Flat-Profile

2010-07-14T12:05:00.004+12:00

Semester two of university has started and I am busy again. I'm enjoying it, so far. My grades from last semester were quite good and that has made me wonder how well I'll be able to do if I try a little harder, so that's what I'm going to do. I'll actually read the textbooks this time.

It is coming up to a year since I had my graduating exhibition at the Design & Arts College. At the end of this month I'm in a group exhibition at the South Christchurch Library, I've entered two pictures which I have already featured here. Hopefully it will go well and somebody will buy the prints, which have been priced very moderately.

I have had another film from my flat-profile series processed, it's been a while since I last went shooting. Here are the results:

In other news, I've seen some of my photos popping up around the university campus, which has been nice. The Sinnerman poster is getting heaps of distribution and attention. For the first time, I have a photo on both the front and back of Canta Magazine.

Competition

2010-07-08T15:18:00.003+12:00

I've been outside experimenting.

There's a night-themed competition at my local photo lab and they're giving away a neat wee camera, and I'd like to win it, but I'm not sure if I agree with the opinions of New Zealand photographers/judges (especially the photojournalists), because I suspect they might be drawn to the brighter, tackier and perhaps shallower photographs. So I doubt that I am going to get anything for my efforts. Unless it is the rare case that an artist will select the winning pictures. I did have the opportunity to show off a little though! One of the constraints was that competitors are not allowed to use flash or strobe light. Things like torches or car headlights were perfectly fine, though.

In these two photographs I had my Mum helping, she would light-paint me with a torch while I posed, and then I would step out of the frame and leave the camera to photograph the sky for a while. In the first photo below a car drove back and forth (we were in a very remote place too), and lit up the scene a little, which was nice, but I was still standing there and couldn't keep still enough as it drove past. Those two lights in the background are small flame-torches that I added for a little ambience.

Here I was flashed with car headlights, and then I took off my blazer, and was flashed again.

This is the photo that I entered in the competition. There's room for improvement, and I'd like to have another try one day. I am not as sharp as I would like to be, one of the drawbacks when you're using a flashlight to light a scene, if I went back I'd use a strobe instead. I'd also like to try pushing the film, because the lens I used it not quite as fast as would be useful (I was shooting Portra 800).

It feels to be like a bit of a travel photo, and it kind of was, because I was some distance out of town. I played with this a little bit, and added a caption, written on a clear film with black ink, which I put between the negative and the scanner glass.

I have a flat-profile lined up to shoot tomorrow, which is the last day of the semester break before I go back to university on Monday. At the moment I'm trying to get myself organised while I still can!

Snapshots

2010-06-27T14:18:00.005+12:00

It's nice to have a smaller camera that you can trust to take a good picture, because lugging around a big SLR can be a pain, and if you drop one they can be expensive to fix! My small camera of choice is the Olympus Stylus Epic, which has a reputation for its simplicity and a great 35mm f2.8 lens, not to mention that it's also weatherproof and quite inconspicuous (mine is the champagne colour which is harder to take seriously than a black camera). These cameras are also easy to find, and cheap. As great as this camera is, I'm sure I'd be using a Leica Minilux instead, if I could afford one!

I usually keep a roll of cheap expired film in my Epic, so it's ready for action in the event of an unplanned outing. I'm try to be selective with my pictures though, as film = money.

Here are pictures from a film that I just had processed, it had been in my Epic for two months:

Impromptu Pictures

2010-06-22T13:10:00.001+12:00

It's exam/assignment season for university students, and lately I haven't given much thought to the camera.

On the weekend I took some new pictures. I've been playing with this three light studio setup that I bought used off the internet, it's pretty much on its last legs but one of the lights is perfectly fine with gentle use.

I'm studying this week but I might be taking some new flat-profile photos next week.

Flat-Profile

2010-05-29T14:13:00.002+12:00

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

2010-05-27T15:42:00.004+12:00

Impromptu Pictures

2010-05-13T20:55:00.001+12:00

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

2010-05-08T00:06:00.001+12:00

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

Impromptu Pictures

2010-05-07T22:44:00.007+12:00

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

2010-05-06T12:25:00.001+12:00

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

2010-05-03T16:31:00.005+12:00

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!

Canta's Cover

2010-04-29T11:39:00.004+12:00

The students at my university are back to lectures this week. We had a three week break, and it demolished what little rhythm I had accumulated in my studies. Having said that, I am a mere first-year student and I have not yet been introduced to the concept of hard work, and I imagine some other students would have welcomed the respite. Time off did give me the opportunity to begin researching artists who take group portraits. To start with, I have been looking at the work of Thomas Struth. I enjoy the objective style of some of the current German photographers, they can be impersonal at times, but this can be compelling, and gives viewers the opportunity to view the subjects without too much of a prior discernment by the photographer. In later posts I will discuss some ideas that I have learned about in my research.

This week, I allowed Canta magazine two options for their cover picture, for their 80th birthday issue. They used the first photo, I'm glad, I preferred it.

From a flat last week:

Flat-Profiles - It's Official

2010-04-23T09:55:00.010+12:00

This year, Canta magazine (from the students association at my university) started to conduct short interviews with student flats, and I'd take a photo to go with the text (the photo being the highlight, with a double page spread). We're there for an hour at the most, and I'd take between 5 and 10 pictures.

I'm officially starting to take a more serious and consistent approach to these flat profiles, because the opportunity is quite neat, and I could have some really cool pictures in a couple of years time. I'm starting to take extra photos of things around the flats that catch my interest, during these fleeting visits. People are distracted by the interviewer so the feeling is quite natural.

From the Archives

2010-04-18T16:32:00.011+12:00

This is part of a small body of work I produced last year at art school. I exhibited 10 captioned photographs on kodak metallic paper (captions on watercolour paper put through photocopier). This was complemented by a presentation of 80 mounted slides, which was programmed to show every 15 minutes (which was often left running overnight when I forgot to turn off the slide projector and computer controlling it).

I asked the people posing for these photographs to complete a short quiz that would identify their personality type. This idea came from the flurry of quizzes and tests that appeared on Facebook, which were dubious in quality. The results were surprisingly accurate, though I rewrote them to be a little more fitting, and to balance the positive and less positive aspects of the sitter's personalities.

I was quite proud of the lighting, these were taken in a studio with white walls. It took hours.

INTERROGATION

Andy J. Tan

Intrigued by the way a person's appearance in a

photograph can reflect their character, the artist has

asked his subjects to complete 20-question quizzes to

determine their personality type. By doing this, the

artist hopes viewers will draw their own conclusions

regarding the results of the interrogation, deciding

whether the subjects' character is reflected in their

outward appearance.

Idealist

Idealists put time and energy into developing

personal values that they use as a guide through life.

They may seek fulfillment by helping others to

improve themselves and often want to make the

world a better place. Idealists only share their inner

values with people they respect.

They are typically easy-going and flexible, but if

their values are challenged they may refuse to compromise.

Self-Portrait

2010-04-18T15:04:00.004+12:00

For lack of someone else to photograph, I started to take pictures of myself, last year:

From the Archives

2010-04-16T18:06:00.012+12:00

Architecture is one of those subjects that I enjoy, but don't understand. I often take photos of the inside and outside of buildings, and I like them, but it's difficult for me to figure out why I like the pictures. Buildings have lines and shapes that make them interesting, with symmetrical and asymmetrical aspects that change with our differing perspective, depending on where we're standing. Buildings can be appreciated in reality and in pictures, but often in pictures we isolate certain elements of interest, and we can eliminate the context that is the surrounding area.

HSBC Building (under construction), Christchurch

2008

From the Archives

2010-04-16T17:56:00.009+12:00

From a short project at art school

Erskine & Commerce buildings, University of Canterbury

2009

Inception

2010-04-16T15:04:00.009+12:00

More than a decade ago, blogging was the way of the future - it still is. I've had a few blogs that flamed out as soon as they were ignited, but this one is going to stay.

So here's my blog.

Wish me luck!