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Saturday, April 26, 2008 -
Contemporary Photography : Lydia Yee
On Wednesday evening I attended another of the Contemporary Photography talks. This time it was Lydia Yee, curator of the current Barbican exhibition Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art.
She showed imagery of exhibits, as well as of some of the signage that has been used, and explained how they'd organised the exhibition of contemporary art according to anthropological categorisation. So, the exhibition is broken down into sections such as "Kinship and Descent", "Magic and Belief", "Ritual" and "Communication". Amongst the exhibits is a copy of the calibrator that Damian Hirst created to go to Mars on Beagle 2 - it is present because it might well have been one of the first earth based objects that a Martian would come across.
Lydia was a very engaging speaker, and did an excellent job of explaining how the exhibition came together, as well as describing the taxonomy and organisation of it. There are another 2 of these events to go. Next week is Anne Hardy, and the final talk, on the 7th May is Julian Germain.
She showed imagery of exhibits, as well as of some of the signage that has been used, and explained how they'd organised the exhibition of contemporary art according to anthropological categorisation. So, the exhibition is broken down into sections such as "Kinship and Descent", "Magic and Belief", "Ritual" and "Communication". Amongst the exhibits is a copy of the calibrator that Damian Hirst created to go to Mars on Beagle 2 - it is present because it might well have been one of the first earth based objects that a Martian would come across.
Lydia was a very engaging speaker, and did an excellent job of explaining how the exhibition came together, as well as describing the taxonomy and organisation of it. There are another 2 of these events to go. Next week is Anne Hardy, and the final talk, on the 7th May is Julian Germain.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008 -
More on Photography laws
I was browsing through flickr and spotted another example of poor treatment of photographers. Amongst the comments, not only was there a link to the Petition to clarify the laws surrounding photography in public places but also there was a link to an Early Day Motion entitled Photography in Public Areas. As suggested by the commenter I have written to my MP via TheyWorkForYou to request his support in this matter (although having since looked at the Early Day Motions he has signed, he already has).
Labels: petition, Rights and laws
Monday, April 21, 2008 -
Petition the Prime Minister to clarify the laws surrounding photography in public places
Alex sent me the link to an article from the BBC news last week on Innocent photographer or terrorist? about the treatment of a photographer by the police. It is something I've often been concerned about myself, but fortunately have only ever had run-ins with the security guards in shopping centres.
So when I spotted a blog post over at London Photos mentioning a petition to clarify the laws surrounding photography in public places I thought I'd add my name to the list. Currently 3,483 other people have done so too, so if you're a UK citizen and interested in getting the laws clarified, then head on over and add yourself.
So when I spotted a blog post over at London Photos mentioning a petition to clarify the laws surrounding photography in public places I thought I'd add my name to the list. Currently 3,483 other people have done so too, so if you're a UK citizen and interested in getting the laws clarified, then head on over and add yourself.
Labels: article, petition, Rights and laws
The new Madgex website
The new Madgex website has launched, and has 5 of my photographs as the page headers. These photos have all been taken over the past year at various events (our hackday and table football tournament matches mostly) and are a fairly true representation of the company.
It is a really good feeling to be able to contribute to the company in this way, and hopefully I can continue to supply imagery from my ever increasing collection of Madgex photos
It is a really good feeling to be able to contribute to the company in this way, and hopefully I can continue to supply imagery from my ever increasing collection of Madgex photos
Wednesday, April 16, 2008 -
Contemporary Photography : John Stezaker
This evening I attended a talk as part of a series on Contemporary Photography being staged by Photoworks in conjunction with the MA Photography course of the University of Brighton.
John Stezaker isn't an artist I've come across before, but from this talk I felt I got a really good understanding of the evolution of his works, where he started from, and how his more recent work (the marriage and betrayal series) builds on his work of the past. As with the Joachim Schmid exhibition I saw last year at the Photographers Gallery there still seems something slightly sacrilegious to me about the deliberate destruction of photographs, even to then use these elements to produce something more. In fact, a member of the audience this evening asked John about this, and John accepted this, and said that he couldn't use photos of his family or loved ones in this manner, but was more than comfortable using film stock and postcards. He mentioned that he liked using damaged photographs, and has also used postcards and images from his own past - postcards from his parents when he was a little boy, a picture of Queen Victoria from a book that he scribbled all over as a child.
John recorded a video interview with Tate Britain for Tate Triennial 2006 which gives a flavour of the content of his talk.
There are three more talks in the series, all being held at the Friends Meeting House in Brighton over the next 3 Wednesday evenings. To reserve a place, all you need to do is drop an email to events@photoworksuk.org.
John Stezaker isn't an artist I've come across before, but from this talk I felt I got a really good understanding of the evolution of his works, where he started from, and how his more recent work (the marriage and betrayal series) builds on his work of the past. As with the Joachim Schmid exhibition I saw last year at the Photographers Gallery there still seems something slightly sacrilegious to me about the deliberate destruction of photographs, even to then use these elements to produce something more. In fact, a member of the audience this evening asked John about this, and John accepted this, and said that he couldn't use photos of his family or loved ones in this manner, but was more than comfortable using film stock and postcards. He mentioned that he liked using damaged photographs, and has also used postcards and images from his own past - postcards from his parents when he was a little boy, a picture of Queen Victoria from a book that he scribbled all over as a child.
John recorded a video interview with Tate Britain for Tate Triennial 2006 which gives a flavour of the content of his talk.
There are three more talks in the series, all being held at the Friends Meeting House in Brighton over the next 3 Wednesday evenings. To reserve a place, all you need to do is drop an email to events@photoworksuk.org.
Sunday, April 13, 2008 -
TWIP - Histogram
I've been catching up on a few photography podcasts this morning, and came across the excellent TWIP episode about Histograms. It is a video about 7 minutes long and does a really clear job of explaining what the histogram represents, and how to use it both whilst taking the photos, and afterwards when processing images.
The eipsode can be downloaded via Pixelcorps.tv. Great job guys!
The eipsode can be downloaded via Pixelcorps.tv. Great job guys!
Thursday, April 10, 2008 -
D80 showing CHA error on LCD screen
I had a moment of panic earlier when I put one of the full SD cards from my friend's wedding at the weekend into the D80 to allow me to import them into Lightroom and it flashed "CHA" on the LCD screen. Then I remembered that I'd switched the used SD cards to the Lock position to prevent any accidental overwriting. A quick google later (the camera was still tethered to my laptop), and I find out that I'm not the only one to have spotted this
Tuesday, April 1, 2008 -
Kit Bag: Nikon S500
After a couple of days on our recent trip I realized that my Olympus Fe-130 was just causing me frustration - it took 6 attempts one day to get it to start up :-(
Time for a replacement then. Annoyingly prior to our trip I had toyed with the idea but dismissed it as unnecessary - I didn't need a replacement secondary camera, the fe-130 would do just fine - and so didn't do much research. Consequently I headed into The Shutterbug in Woodburn Company Stores without a really clear idea of what I wanted. My criteria were:
1) cheap - up to $200
2) small and light - fit into my snowboarding trousers pocket
3) take either xd or SD cards - I have both with me
I explained what I was after and the first camera I was shown was an Olympus tough which is water resistant and shock proof, takes xd cards and small - over budget at $300 though but this wasn't the real killer, after my experience with the Fe-130 I wasn't sure if I was ready to trust another Olympus yet.
We then moved on to the Nikon Coolpix S500 which fitted all the criteria, has easy to use controls and has menus similar enough to the D80 to not send me scrabbling for the manual every other minute. Over the course of the trip, this proved to be reliable, have a good battery life and take a fairly decent snow based picture.
And yes I do remember that one of my tips for photography was to never buy a camera and use it for the first time on an important occasion, like a holiday, but the unreliability of the Fe-130 - at least in cold temperatures - gave me little option.
If you're interested in seeing some of the resulting photos, take a look here
Time for a replacement then. Annoyingly prior to our trip I had toyed with the idea but dismissed it as unnecessary - I didn't need a replacement secondary camera, the fe-130 would do just fine - and so didn't do much research. Consequently I headed into The Shutterbug in Woodburn Company Stores without a really clear idea of what I wanted. My criteria were:
1) cheap - up to $200
2) small and light - fit into my snowboarding trousers pocket
3) take either xd or SD cards - I have both with me
I explained what I was after and the first camera I was shown was an Olympus tough which is water resistant and shock proof, takes xd cards and small - over budget at $300 though but this wasn't the real killer, after my experience with the Fe-130 I wasn't sure if I was ready to trust another Olympus yet.
We then moved on to the Nikon Coolpix S500 which fitted all the criteria, has easy to use controls and has menus similar enough to the D80 to not send me scrabbling for the manual every other minute. Over the course of the trip, this proved to be reliable, have a good battery life and take a fairly decent snow based picture.
And yes I do remember that one of my tips for photography was to never buy a camera and use it for the first time on an important occasion, like a holiday, but the unreliability of the Fe-130 - at least in cold temperatures - gave me little option.
If you're interested in seeing some of the resulting photos, take a look here
