Kia ora tatou:

Some more thoughts from last weekend’s workshop…

Alan

I enjoyed the weekend at Hanmer immensely, and as a bonus I learned a lot. Both technically, thank you Tony, and about myself. It was great to be with a bunch of similarly inclined people, all probably far more talented than me, wanting to take a step further into creating images of meaning.

Tony, in his usual way, encouraged & cajoled us to take that leap out of our comfort zone into the shark-infested water boots and all. Let go! Then he told us to make a self-portrait, so on the basis that he told us that all the pictures we make are about us, and say something about us, here is mine.

(more…)

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

Leonardo da Vinci

Kia ora tatou:

Last weekend I had the joy of working with a number of photographers here in Hanmer Springs, spending time on the creative process and new ways of making images.

We talked about the continuum which has photography at one end and digital art at the other end. We talked about  the fact that photography , whatever we do to it, has a documentary aesthetic and no matter how we tweak it, we are working within a convention, within a tradition which has established mores. In  this part of the continuum, the photograph is a document. At the other end we have the possibility to fabricate.

We talked about giving ourselves permission to fabricate our own narratives, rather than restate one before us. In the same way that a sculptor releases an image from a piece of stone or wood or whatever, so we can release whatever we need to; we can collect, assemble and regenerate from our mind’s eye.

And our greatest resource is ourselves.

As usual, I tallekd too much and allowed too little time for practice. But a few of the crew have out fingers to keyboard and allowed me to share their experience.

John wrote this:

(more…)

Kia ora tatou:

I guess a number of you early adopters will be wondering about paying the PhotoShop CS5 Tax… I know I am…

For those of you wondering whether to or not…some features from the new version… ( lifted from Rob Galbraith’s site)

What’s new for photographers in Photoshop CS5

Sunday, April 11, 2010 | by Rob Galbraith

Content-Aware Fill and Puppet Warp are the attention grabbers of Photoshop CS5 and, as the recent online sneak peeks have shown, these new features will enable users of Adobe’s flagship image editor to bend pixels in novel and creative ways. But if you’re a news photographer, or any other kind of shooter trying to keep it real in your photographs, then neither feature is going to see much use – or shouldn’t.

(more…)

Kia ora tatou:

1. Over January and February this year, I put together a series of articles on landscape photography, which have been published in the Australian magazine, Digital Photo and Design. Their April 2010 issue contains these articles. I have written on lighting, composition, tripods and the making of images. Included in this post is a sample article, which you are free to download and read. The magazine is out now at booksellers in Australia and certain New Zealand retailers.  Download it here. Sample Story
2. Winterlight is now full to bursting and I am really looking forward to it ( I  know I put my down jacket somewhere…). The good news is that Sony NZ have agreed to supply kit for it, including laptops, A900 and A850 cameras, along with a selection of lenses, including some very nice Zeiss glass and SAL Gold lenses. These will be available for participants to use in the field ( and play with in the privacy of their own cabins…).
3. Mary Jo Bedford and I are working on developing a combined workshop in Creativity which incorporates our own, to my mind, complementary approaches to making photographs. We are working towards a date later in the year, possibly September or October. If you think this interests you, please drop either of us a line, and we will keep you informed. This workshop will be for people who are already competent photographers, and who are looking to expand the range of what they do. (more…)

Kia ora tatou:

Last week I posted one of Jenny’s assignments as part of the mentoring programme.

This was another piece submitted as  one of the assignments. There are others, but they are hidden away in a section of my website accessible only to myself and the mentorees.

Some time ago, I wrote a post about seven pictures on a coffin lid, a topic I bring up at workshops. I have included this as one of the assignments, since I feel that thinking of our work  in this way offers us the opportunity to further consider our work in context.

Again, the scholarship is outstanding…

MENTORING A2:

7 PHOTOS FOR MY FUNERAL

March 2010

Choosing – a painful experience at the best of times, and when it comes to finding a selection of best work to tell about where I am as a photographer at the moment, many times more difficult.

(more…)

As many of you know, I have been involved with Perfectly Clear for some years now, following it through its development, as an alpha and beta tester. I have been given this role, I suspect, for my ability to…break… computers (well ,drive them to their limits and beyond).

Late last year, they sent me V1.0.3, and I threw it at one of my Sony A900 files. My computer promptly had a seizure and sulked for an hour or so. So I sent an event log in and waited for results. They came back quickly, having ascertained that it was an issue with how CS address the memory code.

A couple of weeks ago, I built a new machine for pure image editing, one which does not have to share this function with all the other software on my existing machine ( Office ‘07, Dragon Naturally,Lightroom, Skype ( a system hog if ever there was one while running), iTunes etc, etc). Lately I have been moving into creating files which often exceed 2Gb, and my trusty PC was having a fit..or at least sending me out for a leisurely coffee..

(more…)

Alan and I, Willis Street

I never liked photography. Not for the sake of photography. I like the object. I like the photographs when you hold them in your hand.

-Robert Mapplethorpe

I think a photography class should be a requirement in all educational programs because it makes you see the world rather than just look at it.

~Author Unknown

Kia ora tatou:

About  15 years ago, after being a B&W photographer for a …long time…, I realised I knew nothing about colour, although my photographs were often coloured. It was time to establish a dialogue with it, so I began to study whatever I could lay my hand upon; books on colour theory, books on colour psychology, and anything I could find that would allow me to use colour in a more informed way. Colour, I realised, adds such a complex layer of meaning to any image in which it is present and the relationships between colours present is a lifetime’s study in itself. to photograph in colour you need to be present to the colours in an image.

Yesterday, while searching for a response to a question emailed to me, I came across this article which outlines some of the emotional properties of colour, which is of course, a form of energy, and therefore impacts upon us..I include it verbatim…

(more…)

Kia ora tatou:

As part of my mentoring programme, students are asked to carry out three assignments in which they look at their place in the pantheon of the medium. Jenny has submitted this essay , and an amazing piece of scholarship it is…

Pour a glass of whatever you fancy, sit back, and read….

MENTORING: FINDING ONESELF 101                     March 2010

“Chart your own journey through photography… see which marker peg you are standing next to”

• Connections
• Expression
• Recording
• Technical knowledge
• Camera Club
• The gospel according to Camera Club judging
• Breaking Free
• Expression
• Connections

It could be seen as a circle, but someone wiser than myself refers to it as a spiral, this journey that drives me.  And drive me it does, whether one believes in predestiny or other philosophical concepts, there is a growing sense that my journey is not a dusty, rock strewn path, but a river winding and looping around and over itself, sometimes rushing headlong into narrow ravines deep and swift, others tumbling headfirst at breakneck speed over bold rapids, others sluggishly drifting seawards, wide and slow with the odd eddy to provide some light relief, and then there’s the boundary with the ocean, the mixing and dispersion into another vast body.  Again and again I come across a familiar landscape although at each point the wind is from a different quarter and the light is illuminating scenes that had passed unnoticed before.

“Lets start at the very beginning; it’s a very good place to start…”

(more…)

Envy Me

Kia ora tatou:

From time to time people send me images to comment upon (my apologies if i do take some time to respond; it will improve when they introduce DLT aka Daylight Lengthening Time), and I love it when it happens. Sometimes i must be polite, but most of the time I am stunned by what comes my way. Of late there has been rather a flood of these. Woohoo!  Many thanks.

It would be easy to bundle them up into a single post , but I am going to sprinkle them into the blog over the next few weeks and honour them individually, as they deserve to be.

First up is Charlene Koh, who contacted me a wee while ago to help her boost her skills before she leaves on the Big OE. Right from the start was amazed by her eye and her sense of colour and design. She has a self-confidence and an openeness to ideas and approaches which is truly wonderful.

She saw this image of a reflection on a car bonnet  ( it was a Stingray) and made it with her D5000 ( she only has one lens). She has strong  PhotoShop skills ( she has been teaching herself in isolation) and an innate ability to integrate them seamlessly into her idea-and workflow. and she is not afraid of the computer…

Charlene, this would make a fantastic framed wallprint. If you can do this now, where will you be in a few years?

Check out her work  here.

Ka kite

Purgatory/antechamber/waiting room

It really began with a chance comment, with an unexpected conversation.

What are we doing this afternoon? Would you like to go out to Riverton? I hadn’t been there in nearly 15 years, so the opportunity to wander around a town which often attracts derision because of its out-of-the-way location, because of a perception that it is, in some way, Deliverance country, New Zealand-style. Of course towns like this never are. Once we get out of our own way, take our preconceptions and prejudices and put them away in the cupboard, there is always much to be seen, much to be learned. It was going to mean a change of gears, moving from the natural landscape to a human-manufactured one. It was going to mean switching from thinking like a landscape photographer to moving into a more documentary mode. I was fine with that, comfortable with making the switch, and excited about what I might find.

(more…)