Canta and Flat-Profile

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

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.

Flat-Profile

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".

Canta's Cover

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

Flat-Profile

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.

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

Canta's Cover

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

Canta's Cover

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

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.