Kia ora tatou:

MaryJo sent me an email detailing this vital piece of photographer’s kit . I checked my diary to see whether the months had slipped by and it was April 1. Then I followed the link. I am still not sure about the date….

So I include her letter in toto..

Like shooting fish in a barrel. With a camera. Underwater.

It’s not often that I need to take pictures underwater, but it pays to be prepared for all potential eventualities-that’s why I continue to carry my trusty bat shark repellent with me at all times. Were a need for submerged photography to arise, Liquid Image’s Digital Camera Mask would unquestionably depth charge the competition. I mean, come on: it’s built into a diving mask; how awesome is that? Now you can see underwater and take pictures. That’s two things I wasn’t able to do before.

Available in 3.1 or 5.0 megapixel models, the mask takes SD memory cards (it comes with a 16MB card that you’ll fill up pretty quickly) and can even shoot VGA video at 18-25 frames per second. It’s waterproof at depths up to 15 feet, making it ideal for your next snorkeling expedition (I hear you’re quite the snorkeler)(-yes, but not in the same league as the newly-engaged-to-Tim Ann Worthy. Ooops. I let that one out…). And the whole shebang takes just two AAA batteries and has a standard USB port, so it’s compatible with both Windows and Mac users who like to spend time beneath the deep blue sea (Hopefully the PC users will leave them on the shore- MAC users will probably believe they can take theirs underwater, unless they are waiting for their 4th motherboard replacement)

Plus, have we mentioned its truly slicktastic styling? I mean, it’s so useful having your camera mounted on your head-so convenient, in fact, that I’m considering wearing this thing all the time, just so potential photo ops don’t escape me. See a celebrity on your lunch hour? Click. Something funny happens at the office? Click. Monkeys start rollerblading down the street? Fire up that video. See? This won’t annoy your friends and loved ones in the slightest.

 Kia ora tatou

I have been in training.

After a lifetime of being owned by cats, I am free now. I do not have to come at their beck and call. For all their larger-than-life personalities and unique character traits (Beastly was just that, a cunning tormenter of the local dogs, especially smaller ones ,and Lucky The Bionic Cat-he carried a lot of steel in his hind-quarters after going mano a mano with a car and losing- still kept his no-retreat, no-surrender attitude), cats have their own thoughts and clutch their secret lives close to their chests.

Dogs are different. (more…)

Kia ora tatou:

Not the usual stuff I publish here, but I thought you might find it interesting. I subscribe to a blog called How to Save the World, published by a Canadian scientist, Dave Pollard. It’s often depressing, but never boring. This is a recent post( I hope you have a thing for maths!)

An article in yesterday’s NYT says we’re producing digital information in volumes that will soon exceed our capacity to store it. Something about these huge numbers didn’t ring right. “Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”, TS Eliot once wrote. Do we have the capacity to actually use all this digital exhaust? Is it all worth producing, and is the ease of producing and storing it just making it harder to find the stuff that’s actually useful? And for all the zeroes after these numbers, is this really a lot of information for nearly seven billion humans to be producing? I decided to do some math to find out.

Since we’re speaking in large round numbers, there are about 5 x 10³⁰ bacteria on Earth. Even if these remarkably complex creatures only produced one byte of information each in their lifetimes, their total information production would be 30 billion times the aggregate human output of a mere 161 exabytes. So by comparison with bacteria, we humans are still junior league information producers.

Our bodies are also pretty good information processors compared to computers. A recent study claimed that our bodies process 2MB of information per second (most of it unconscious or subconscious) or 5 x 10¹⁵ bytes of information in a lifetime. So all human bodies currently on the planet process 5 x 10²³ bytes of non-digital information each year, or about 2500 times as much as the digital information which we are collectively producing and which all our machines are collectively processing, storing and distributing. But then our machines are pretty dumb and slow compared to the marvel of the human body.

Even more remarkable, the conscious human mind is only able to absorb an average of 3 bytes of information per second over a lifetime, or 7GB of information in an entire lifetime. That means the 6.7 billion humans brains on the planet are only able to absorb 6 x 10¹⁷ bytes of information in a year, of which at least 95% is sensory or interpersonal (i.e. non-digital), so collectively we are absorbing only 3 x 10¹⁶ bytes of digital information in a year, increasing by our population growth rate of about 2%/year. Meanwhile the amount of digital information we are producing (presumably in the hope others will somehow use it) is currently (according to the NYT article) 161 exabytes or 2 x 10²⁰ bytes of information per year, growing at over 50% per year. So we are already producing 6000 times as much digital information as we’re consuming (1500 times as much if you exclude duplicates/copies of information), and by 2010 we’ll be producing 30,000 times as much digital information as we consume (7000 times as much if you exclude duplicates/copies).

That means at least 1499/1500 (99.93%) of the digital information being produced by us and our machines will never be read or consumed or otherwise used by any human. We are producing and capturing it “just in case”. And an increasing amount of the digital information we produce is designed to be read and used only by other machines.

Just as well I guess. My head’s already full.

( So is mine!)

Kia ora tatou:

After the drudgery of workaday tidal waves and reading my heavy-duty posts, may I present:
What the Duck, a series of comic strips for photographers.

Artist Aaron Johnson describes WTD as coming about as a blog filler, and says it has since continued at the demand of tens of people.

Whatever.
Check it out. Some wryly accurate observations on the trials and tribulations of being a photographer. Kind of like Larsen for photographers.

Ka kite ano

Kia ora tatou:

The portrait is one of the oldest genres in photography. You may be interested to know that, while recording the landscape was the reason photography came into being as a technology, the portrait was the economic engine that drove its development. When people realised that they no longer had to find a (very expensive) professional painter to have their portrait done, that it was now affordable, they flocked in their droves to the nearest professional photographer, to have their likeness recorded. For the first time in human history, it was possible to have an accurate record of themselves and their lives. Needless to say, average portrait painters went out of business overnight.

The portrait is somewhat of a fraught area. It carries a lot of baggage, both social and historical. In addition, there is the issue of photographing another human being. An insensitive and are un-aware approach can do a lot of damage. When we make portraits, we have immense power; the power to make our subjects feel good about themselves, or the power to destroy. Portrait photography is not an area for the psychologically jackbooted.

No wonder so few of us like having our “photo taken”…

Which brings me to the point of this post.

I had the singular honour of mentoring Virginia, as she produced a body of work for an exhibition and later for her associateship. Virginia is one of those wonderful people who is interested in everything, but especially the human condition. Her life has been a road containing more than its fair share of potholes, but she remains deeply interested in people and the lives of those around her. She is one of those wonderful human beings who are able to see beyond her own difficulties, take life by the throat and give it a really good shake. She has a real concern for others and an intuitive understanding of what makes people tick, not to mention a ferocious intellect and a razor-sharp wit. In other words, all of the things needed to make a fine portrait photographer.

In our initial discussions, she expressed interest in making photographs of the women in a dragon boat team with which she was involved. The thing that makes this group of women so special is that they have all survived breast cancer, and the psychological trauma of the disfigurement that so often goes with it. She wanted to photograph the women and show their courage and nobility, and perhaps give them a new way of looking at what had happened.

Virginia is one of those wonderful photographers who are idea-driven, so I taught her the basics of studio photography and loaned her a Mamiya C330 6×6. We felt that the formality of using a twin-lens reflex would give her photographs the right feel. We both agreed it had to be black-and-white. We also talked about shooting angle and the importance of correct camera positioning. Because she wanted to show her respect for his subjects, she chose a fractionally lower camera angle to demonstrate this.

Then she went to work.

From time to time, she would get in touch, and we would look through what she had done. I would suggest ways in which she might refine her technique or make slight adjustments to the lighting. From the start, there was no way I could or would comment on the content of the pictures she was showing me. They were and are so extraordinarily powerful, that I was moved every time I saw them. I still am.

Needless to stay, she completed the project, and has produced a series of images which bear testament both to her own talent and commitment, but as importantly, to the extraordinary courage and fortitude of the women she has photographed.

Something special has happened here.

Ka kite ano

Kia ora tatou:

As a few of you may know, I had cataract surgery on my right eye yesterday. The procedure was utterly painless and quite fascinating. It is all done under local and I was one of about 6 being done. A bit of a production line actually. I admit to a degree of dread at what the resiult might be. What if the difference was only minimal?

I spent last night with a patch over the eye, and I went down today to have it removed. I admit to considerable excitement ( and a little trepidation) at what I would see when I had it removed. I was not disappointed. The revelation was quite extraordinary. I have been told how wonderful the difference is. They were right. It is utterly astonishing.

• Everything has got about 2 stops brighter
• Colours are richer, especially yellows and reds
• My perception of contrast has improved 1000-fold. Suddenly everyone has incredibly-textured skins, and wrinkles are highly evident, as is the microcontrast in fabrics and tar seal. I walked around in a daze for a half-hour, studying the roadway, leaves in gutters, and thinking how old some people looked. (Don’t worry-I still love you all!)
  

How to show you all this…

I have made 2 images, a before- and after-shot. That might explain it.

The one above is before as my left eye, next in line for surgery, sees the world: the one below afterwards, as my right eye now sees.

My friend Mark showed me a webpage talking about Monet’s reaction and perceptions before and after having his eyes fixed.

You can read about it here.

Ka kite ano

Kia ora tatou:
I would like you to have a close look at the picture at right. You will notice the long Canon lens poking out of the cloth. You will notice the idiot with the white cloth over his head, a bit like like having to survive one of those Vicks Vaporub inhalation kits some of us were subjected to as children…you may even notice the cloth itself.
For those of us who have used a 4×5 view camera (and some still do), the cloth is an essential piece of kit. You put it over your head to be able to see the ground glass screen clearly. It is known as a dark cloth. Freely available from any supplier of this sort of camera equipment.
Using a digital camera is a pain when you want to chimp your shot. The screens are never bright enough.
I happened to be out with a group and one of the party had brought his monorail along.
Trying to review a shot, I had ,a brainwave, and asked if I could borrow the cloth. It worked brilliantly.
Every hi-tech digital photographer should have one, if for no other reason than to start a conversation….
Many thanks to Kevin Russell for the loan. Speaking of which, if you are looking for a mint Linhof kit…..
ka kite ano

Kia ora tatou:
I want to share a story.
A few years ago I did a workshop in portraiture. Among the students was this guy called Garry. He got right into it and made some good images.
Over the next year or two he worked through my classes, getting better all the time. I remember one night when he confessed that he always had trouble sleeping after class because he couldn’t stop thinking about how to make his pictures. I told this was good thing.
I think it was Matisse who said” Art is not something you do, it’s something you have to do.
Anyway, he beavered on, getting better all the time until one day over a beer, he asked me what the next step was, where he should go with hiss photography. Why not have your own show? I suggested. He looked shocked and stunned and then a glimmer of joy crept over his face as he started to think.
Garry has been working away for the last year-and-a-half, photographing shopkeepers around Christchurch, where he lives. And the images have gone from very good to fantastic.
His show opens at Our City Otautahi on May 29 and continues to June 24
It’s a wonderful thing when the student overtakes the teacher.

Kia ora tatou:
Enough of the gear stuff. I want to share an image with you.
A good friend, Lindsay McLeod (or is that MacLeod), used to tell his students that” the camera looks both ways”. What he meant was that when we make a photograph, it says as much about us as it does about the subject and our feelings towards it.
Often when we photograph, something has moved us to do so. Ostensibly (I’ve been at that thesaurus again), it may have been the weather, the light or even a half-hidden memory from childhood. Or it may be something deeper. And reflecting on our own inner selves may lead to new directions in our photography.
I would like to suggest that one of the best ways to improve our picture-making is to keep this in mind.
Take time to look at the image. Minor White, one of photography’s great teachers, would make his students study an image for at least 3 minutes before he asked them what they thought. The point is, it takes time to understand what you have done and more importantly, why you did it.
When you have looked, ask yourself what attracted you to make that photograph. Was it light, the subject, your feelings, a memory from childhood. Note your thoughts. Better still, write them down.
Then ask yourself what the image tells you about yourself. This is the hard bit.
Money where my mouth is time.
I made this picture late one afternoon last November. I was walking back to the car after finishing a wedding in New Plymouth. I decided to make a few images for myself. As I was walking along the boardwalk I saw a group of unicyclists practicing on the seawall. I asked if I could photograph them. They carried on and I probably made about 20 photographs. This one took place near the end.
It was one of those moments when time, space and intention (the core artistic concerns of my work) all come together. I knew I had captured something significant.
It was only later, and in the months afterwards, that I have come to realize that I had made a photograph of my life as it has been for some time.
The unicyclist balancing on the knife edge of the universe is me.
A moment later he fell off.
Ka kite ano.