Scenes from Christchurch

Nature gave Christchurch another photo op.

Snapshots

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.

Canta's Cover

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

Competition

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.

   

     

Impromptu Pictures

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.

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!

Inception

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!