Edge Of Your Seat Reading

Translation: At the library, we looked at a good book.

I'm not sure why, but the two people that represent my entire class seem to be synchronously chanting the word "Go".


Last day in town. Bags are (mostly) packed. Fingers crossed that I don't get the screaming baby and/or morbidly obese neighbour. Thanks for the good times, America.

Traffic In The Sky

In light of my recent photography binge, and in anticipation of a miserable 22 hour flight home, I thought I'd post an old project from my foundation semester -- nothing less than my first in-depth experience with 35mm film.

Our brief, if I remember correctly, was to document an environment in the manner of a character study. I chose the Kingsford-Smith airport and ended up shooting with a roll of drugstore 400ISO Kodak film -- both decisions mandated by the imminence of the deadline rather than actual preference. Fortunately, everything turned out nicely.


A lot of people have a preconception of the airport as a transitory stop rather than a location in and of itself, but I wanted to depict it as a place of permanence. Wandering around the terminals, I became fixated on all the people that didn't have a destination to rush off to -- the throwers and runway operators standing around having a smoke and a chat; the security officers and desk staff; basically anyone who wasn't a passenger. Capturing that hidden population became my goal.


This was really the first time that I shot anything with a sense of purpose or direction. I remember flipping through a big book of Pulitzer Prize-winning photo essays as a kid and becoming enamored with that kind of journalistic storytelling and I think that definitely influenced the way I approached this assignment. At the very least, it explains my aversion to posed subjects and staged photography.


Looking back on this project, it's clear to me that it has had a long lasting impact on my overall approach to photography. Not only in regards to the environmental fixation that's still evident in my recent work, but also in terms of how I tend to read people as descriptive extensions of their surroundings rather than characters in their own right. I'm not sure why, but in a strange antithesis of my painting practice, I tend to shy away from focusing on any recurring individuals within my photos.

(Couple of outtakes)

I suppose the reason that I like using a camera is because it offers such a refreshing change of pace from painting -- not just on a technical level, but also in terms of conceptual approach. For me, photography is much more about telling a story than conveying an abstract idea. Maybe I'll have an idea of what I want to achieve, but conceptual doctrine doesn't play nearly as big a part in the process. And aside from time of day/year and actual physical location, personal context is an irrelevant factor. Because the mechanics of clicking a shutter button are nowhere near as open-ended as the concept of moving a brush, all I have to do is walk around until I find something interesting. It's therapeutic.

The Happiness Factory

Pretty tacky place but it was still fascinating to wander around the giant warehouse at "Mardi Gras World" where all the parade floats are assembled. Just in terms of how mundane it all is behind the fun; how boring it is to sit in this room full of effigies.



I missed the festivities by a few short weeks but that's okay. One trip down Bourbon St. was plenty and I wouldn't want to be there if the Colts take the Superbowl.

You Can Run But You Can't Glide

Chasing a gaggle of ducks just outside Boston College, in Brookline.


Reminds me of when I was a kid and we'd go down to the lake to feed our stale bread to the ducks -- the bloody things would always bite my fingers.

Trucker's Lunch

Stein's Jewish Deli on Magazine Street in New Orleans. At the time I was just trying to burn through the last shots in a roll but I ended up pleasantly surprised with the results.






If I could ever set it up I'd love to do a week-long shoot in a restaurant kitchen. Get all the manic rushes and dead lulls on film. Maybe I've been watching too much "Hell's Kitchen" but I reckon you could fashion a nice little series out of the idea.

Double Vision Quest

An inadvertent overlap of two down-on-their luck Boston natives. I didn't notice at the time, but I failed to wind the film all the way to the next shot. A fortunate mishap.

Just For The Record

It's time to choose a side. And really, how can you not back the guy that introduced us all to the Masturbating Bear?


Los Angeles-based artist Mike Mitchell painted this up without a commission or any other sort of solicitation -- an amazing feat in this day and age. It's now become as important to the pro-Conan movement as Shepard Fairey's was to the Obama campaign, and really, I'm sure we can all agree that this is much more important to the freedom of the western world.

Uptown Girl

A lady walks her dog through the ritzy Beacon Hill area of Boston. Not quite sure what the deal is with the police tape but I'm quite happy with how this turned out.

Flesh Painter

I feel like a lot of photorealistic artists straddle the line between achieving something in their work that's technically amazing and conceptually interesting -- rarely, however, is it both. Alyssa Monk is an exception to this rule. Her work is so consistently mind-blowing and uniquely ambient that I find myself sifting through her dozens of paintings and loving each and every one of them.




I do kind of wonder about the photo reference for that baby though ...

Watching, Waiting

Stalking some strangers in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. I can tell you from experience that the echo of a shutter click in an otherwise silent room produces a very awkward fallout.




On a side note, these photos mark a transition from the 400ISO Ilford XP2 film that I was originally using to a Kodak CW400 stock. I definitely prefer the former (it produces a richer black/white contrast) but couldn't seem to find it anywhere in Boston. Oh well.

A Second Shooter

More proof that having a pocket-sized camera with an inaudible shutter noise is a dangerous combination.

With Onlookers, No Less

Heading up to Toronto after spending the last five days in New Orleans. It's strange to think but in two weeks I'll be back in Australia, ending my six month run of waiting for airplanes and sleeping on couches. Huh.


As for this gem of a journal entry, I'd like to provide a translation but I have no idea how that sentence is supposed to read. Somewhere in there I'm apparently measuring a table but I also appear to be lusting after a boy named Tim.

The Fascination of Sacrifice

Another good read: David Shenk's "The Immortal Game". Recommended to me about three years back, but I only sunk my teeth into it a week or two ago. As Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kierseritsky's titular duel unfolds in a brilliant example of tactical duplicity, Shenk overlaps a lyrical exposition of the game's history and the many myths and legends that surrounds its origins.


One such story revolves around two sixth century Indian kings. The first ordered his sage to invent a game that reflected his belief in the power of fate and this produced the rolling of dice. The second, however, ordered his sage to invent one that represented his conviction in the power of knowledge and free will, and this ultimately led to chess.

Parts Greater Than Their Whole

I'm in New Orleans right now but here are some Boston leftovers. Really liked that town. I stayed there longer than anywhere else on this trip apart from NYC, where I wasn't nearly as photographically active, and as a result, I feel like this is the most well-rounded collection of photos I've shot so far, covering not only the preppy college life in the city but also the more dour and blue collar outskirts.











I've noticed that a lot of my photographs (or at least the ones that I like) tend to have this very front-on linear perspective and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I mean, I love the aesthetic it brings and think it comes across really well in these kind of photo-essays. But I'm also worried about the threat of becoming compositionally complacent. What do you reckon? I'd love to get some feedback on this.

Still Life

An image that I love in lomographic photography but would absolutely hate to paint.


As much as 100ISO has been hit-or-miss for me, I do love the richness of colour you get when it actually turns out.

Now Comes Days Of Begging, Days Of Theft

My current read. I know it's in vogue to jump on the McCarthy bandwagon but "Blood Meridian" has been on my to-do list for a long while. I thought "The Road" was depressing but this is probably the bleakest thing that's ever seared itself onto my brain -- in the most fascinating way possible, of course.


McCarthy's always a tough read and he makes the matter infinitely more complicated in this instance with untranslated pasages of Spanish and a complete lack of quotation marks. But I love the sparseness of his writing style and the way all that unspoken description bleeds into your head.

"He works in a sawmill, he works in a diptheria pesthouse. He takes as pay from a farmer an aged mule and aback the animal in the spring of the year eighteen and forty-nine he rides up through the latterday republic of Fredonia into the town of Nacogdoches."

May All Your Dreams Come True But One

This is Eddie: gun-owning Republican, Vietnam veteran, and born-and-bred Bostonian. I met him whilst sitting on a bench in Copley Square, trying to covertly snap some photos, until he sat down next to me and blocked my view.


One of those great non-stop talkers. I had the pleasure of hearing everything from his childhood memories of the early efforts to integrate Roxbury and Dorchester; to his musings on the inherent racism of the city of Boston; to his philosophical waxings on the stupidity of identifying any ethnic group in the country as anything other than plain old 'American'.


He also told me that a few years back he almost died, prompting him to list the ten places he wanted to visit before his time was up. Already knocked six down, too, although Australia's still left, as is his number one destination, Alaska -- not a bad effort. Right now Eddie's studying at culinary school, having abandoned the job he held for the past thirty-odd years at the U.S. Post and being eligible under the umbrella of his V.A. benefits. What a true Renaissance man.

Technicolor

The veterans' protest outside the Massachusettes State House, this time in lomographic colour.



I'm not sure which one is more powerful. I really like the black and white. But there's something arresting about the red, white, and blue of those flags.

Doppelganger

An early experiment in lomography.


There's definitely been more hits than misses but I am excited about the potential of this sequential photography.

War. War Never Changes.

A protest of veteran affairs on the steps of the Massachusettes State House comprised of three generations of servicemen. Every time a car passed it would beep its horn, eliciting a great roar of approval.





Not pictured: the political huskers weaving their way through the crowds and handing out coffee and donuts on behalf of Senator So-And-So. It wouldn't be so bad if they actually had a tangible affiliation with the cause, but I'm pretty sure they were just trying to capitalise on a demographic opportunity.

There's A New Girl In My Life

Took the plunge and bought my first lomo camera the other day, a Mini Diana. It shoots in either a 24x24 square or splits a single frame in two 24x17 rectangles, all in good old fashioned 35mm to boot.


Definitely feels a lot different than my Nikon F3. And there has been a bit of a learning curve. But that's all part of the fun, isn't it? This blog needed more colour anyways.