Thursday, June 16, 2011
Friday, June 3, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
iPhonography & Hipstamatic
I love using my iPhone to shoot, I reckon having a point and shoot in your pocket at all time is great but when you pair that with the seemingly endless photo editing apps the results can be amazing. One app has stood out from the pack and that's Hipstamatic. I've always found it curious what the appeal of seemingly analogue photography is to the masses, this essay I've linked to has a good stab at explaining it. I've chosen a couple of my own examples, almost at random, below.
The Faux-Vintage Photo: Full Essay (Parts I, II and III)
Film Photography
I love to shoot film as well as digital, there's something about the unpredictability of pairing a new camera and an untested film stock that when coupled with the delay in processing and scanning provides a much greater sense of excitement when I finally get my image. As i get around to scanning I'll post a couple of pics. The photos above was taken about a week ago with one of my favourite camera, the Olympus Stylus Epic, an awesome little point and shoot that I rarely leave the house without. On the evening I was using some cheap expired Lucky SHD 100 that I picked up in a lab in Burwood for a couple of dollars a roll. The shot above was taken on Belmore Road in Randwick at night.
The second photo is of CarriageWorks an artistic space and market not far from where I live in Sydney. This batch were scanned using my Epson Perfection V500, imported to Photoshop Elements 6 where minimal adjustment was used. Just cropping and some contrast adjustments. I'm no purist but I am lazy. As you can see from the night shot I tend to handle my negatives a little roughly, there you have it.
Monday, May 30, 2011
At Roane Head by Robin Robertson
I heard this poem the other morning on Radio 4's Poetry Please, as striking a piece of poetry that i've ever heard,
... from the collection The Wrecking Light by Robin Robertson
At Roane Head
for John Burnside
You'd know her house by the drawn blinds –
by the cormorants pitched on the boundary wall,
the black crosses of their wings hung out to dry.
You'd tell it by the quicken and the pine that hid it
from the sea and from the brief light of the sun,
and by Aonghas the collie, lying at the door
where he died: a rack of bones like a sprung trap.
A fork of barnacle geese came over, with that slow
squeak of rusty saws. The bitter sea's complaining pull
and roll; a whicker of pigeons, lifting in the wood.
She'd had four sons, I knew that well enough,
and each one wrong. All born blind, they say,
slack-jawed and simple, web-footed,
rickety as sticks. Beautiful faces, I'm told,
though blank as air.
Someone saw them once, outside, hirpling
down to the shore, chittering like rats,
and said they were fine swimmers,
but I would have guessed at that.
Her husband left her: said
they couldn't be his, they were more
fish than human,
said they were beglamoured,
and searched their skin for the showing marks.
For years she tended each difficult flame:
their tight, flickering bodies.
Each night she closed
the scales of their eyes to smoor the fire.
Until he came again,
that last time,
thick with drink, saying
he'd had enough of this,
all this witchery,
and made them stand
in a row by their beds,
twitching. Their hands
flapped; herring-eyes
rolled in their heads.
He went along the line
relaxing them
one after another
with a small knife.
It's said she goes out every night to lay
blankets on the graves to keep them warm.
It would put the heart across you, all that grief.
There was an otter worrying in the leaves, a heron
loping slow over the water when I came
at scraich of day, back to her door.
She'd hung four stones in a necklace, wore
four rings on the hand that led me past the room
with four small candles burning
which she called 'the room of rain'.
Milky smoke poured up from the grate
like a waterfall in reverse
and she said my name
and it was the only thing
and the last thing that she said.
She gave me a skylark's egg in a bed of frost;
gave me twists of my four sons' hair; gave me
her husband's head in a wooden box.
Then she gave me the sealskin, and I put it on.
... from the collection The Wrecking Light by Robin Robertson
At Roane Head
for John Burnside
You'd know her house by the drawn blinds –
by the cormorants pitched on the boundary wall,
the black crosses of their wings hung out to dry.
You'd tell it by the quicken and the pine that hid it
from the sea and from the brief light of the sun,
and by Aonghas the collie, lying at the door
where he died: a rack of bones like a sprung trap.
A fork of barnacle geese came over, with that slow
squeak of rusty saws. The bitter sea's complaining pull
and roll; a whicker of pigeons, lifting in the wood.
She'd had four sons, I knew that well enough,
and each one wrong. All born blind, they say,
slack-jawed and simple, web-footed,
rickety as sticks. Beautiful faces, I'm told,
though blank as air.
Someone saw them once, outside, hirpling
down to the shore, chittering like rats,
and said they were fine swimmers,
but I would have guessed at that.
Her husband left her: said
they couldn't be his, they were more
fish than human,
said they were beglamoured,
and searched their skin for the showing marks.
For years she tended each difficult flame:
their tight, flickering bodies.
Each night she closed
the scales of their eyes to smoor the fire.
Until he came again,
that last time,
thick with drink, saying
he'd had enough of this,
all this witchery,
and made them stand
in a row by their beds,
twitching. Their hands
flapped; herring-eyes
rolled in their heads.
He went along the line
relaxing them
one after another
with a small knife.
It's said she goes out every night to lay
blankets on the graves to keep them warm.
It would put the heart across you, all that grief.
There was an otter worrying in the leaves, a heron
loping slow over the water when I came
at scraich of day, back to her door.
She'd hung four stones in a necklace, wore
four rings on the hand that led me past the room
with four small candles burning
which she called 'the room of rain'.
Milky smoke poured up from the grate
like a waterfall in reverse
and she said my name
and it was the only thing
and the last thing that she said.
She gave me a skylark's egg in a bed of frost;
gave me twists of my four sons' hair; gave me
her husband's head in a wooden box.
Then she gave me the sealskin, and I put it on.
Kronos Quartet - Lux Aeterna
I'd heard of Kronos Quartet but never really paid them much heed until I'd seen Requiem For A Dream. The recurring theme Lux Aeterna is ultra familiar now but when I first heard it my mind was blown. I remember looking at the OST in HMV, it cost about 20 pound sterling and I didn't buy it until a flatmate mentioned he might get it, I sprung the cash and it was mine. Even after multiple adverts and trailers this piece remains very evocative. I've since become a huge fan of Kronos and the composer Clint Mansell.
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