The Penguin

Amongst other things Te Ara are currently working on the West Coast regional entry. So naturally, I decided to show my West Coast pics so they could buy some off me.

Flicking through them with my boss the other day, I saw this and went "Oh. Wow.".

Yet another unintentional reference to yet another Peter Peryer.

Here's his version. Poorly scanned from this book.

The Budding

I took these a few weeks ago.

At the same time as I took these.

And these.

And there's a new, unrelated review up.

The Multi-

Tasked?! Talented?! Personalitied?!

As with the other day, again I hadn't shot the whole roll while on location. Though I think there may have been a fairly deliberate decision made on this occasion.

I kind of enjoyed that last experience - tripoding the camera, setting focus, using cable release, not really knowing what was in frame or in focus.

This time however I triple-exposed the same piece of film. It meant having to walk to the camera, remove the filmback, wind on (cock the shutter really), put the filmback back on, walk back and take the next exposure. So I was never going to be in the same place for all the shots.

It's kinda weird. I have done very little intentional multi-exposure. This time I over-exposed the first shot by a stop, then exposed the others at normal. It kinda worked.

I bumped into an old friend the other day. He said that I have a perpetually bemused look on my face. And I think I do when walking around. Due to my brain occupying itself with all sorts of rubbish. But interestingly when I photograph myself I often seem to have a perpetually concerned look.

I'm complex man.

The Boring

Yeah well tell me something I don't know!!

When I heard these were going to be up for six months I was annoyed. And frustrated. Because it's the Council. And there was nothing I could do about it. I wanted three months. Council didn't want to fund that.

Ooh, there's something I didn't know. There's only eight pictures on display. And there we were spending 18 months sorting out 16 images to display. Crikey, we could've saved ourselves 9 months. If only we'd known.

Thanks to Shaz and Gab for pointing me towards the article.

The Crazy

So there's two shots left on the roll, eh. Oooohhh, I know.

There you are, you've come home from spending a couple of hours sharing a windswept landscape with a strong northerly, a bike and a camera. What to do? Get yourself some dinner. Sit down. Do a bit of marking (but not much). Then remember "oh yeah!". So you get up, grab a tripod, sort out the camera and waste those last couple of shots on yourself. Self-absorbed?! ME?!!

There is precedence. Of course.

I like that there's a bit (a very small bit) of the Johnny Rotten coming out of me. And that my hair is a miss - no checking in the mirror first to make sure I was suitably presentable. Nice. And the shadow's kinda cool too.

The Fern

I just posted this on my other blog. It's a slide taken by my Grandfather, George Palmer. That's him at the back of my profile photo.

I love it.

I'm not sure where the blue came from - he certainly wasn't using tungsten film, and none of the other slides have such a heavy colour shift. And I don't think it was my scanning. (I hope it wasn't my scanning!!)

Regardless it reminds me of John Herschel's cyanotypes. Strange that. And more recently the beautiful work of Alexander Hamilton. And, of course, Wayne Barrar's ongoing work - text but no images, one image.

Nice one George.

The Naughty

It’s kinda good doing a paid job.

Cos it means you get your digi camera back from the friend who has been borrowing it for most of the last few months – fair trade cos I’ve had a couple of his Blad lenses for most of the year.

It also means more money in the bank briefly before it’s spent on bills or the car or something equally mundane.

And it means you get to shot some of the graffiti that has been appearing in the neighbourhood over the last couple of months.

Nice.

Some good stuff.

But they need to stop now before it gets boring.

The Cheese

The Pretender

I did something wild and crazy the other weekend.

Something wilder and crazier than I’ve done in a good long while.

I set up a wee lab in the kitchen. And made myself some P. Then went to Newtown to sell it. But nobody bought it cos they thought I was a nark.

Oh hold on. That was my alterego in some cool alternate reality.

I set up a wee lab in the kitchen. And developed myself some film.

Two rolls of 35mm FP4+ which have been sitting on the kitchen table since June waiting for me, and a roll of 120 Tri-X which had been having a tour of the house for the previous 24 hours.

It was kinda wild, kinda crazy, kinda boring, kinda smelly. It has been quite some time since I’ve processed film, and while it doesn’t take much time to get back into the swing of it, it is kinda tedious. Especially when you don’t have a readymade film processing darkroom room where everything is set up and waiting for you.

The 120 stuff I shot on Saturday while pretending to finish my review of Peter Peryer’s latest. I got kinda bored (happens a lot with me) so decided to try and make my own Peryer’s.

I failed miserably. But it was a fun half hour.

Here’s a photo or two.


Here's someone else's thoughts about the Peryer.

As I was writing mine, it occurred to me that in my reviews I never really discuss the merit (or lack thereof) of the art. My logic is that people's tastes are different and a quick flick through the book will tell you whether the art interests you. I just hope I steer some people towards books/artists they may not have previously bothered with.

That, and I wouldn't want to offend anybody by writing something that could be taken to be offensive/patronising/pretentious/opinionated/etc because I would so hate to be accused of being offensive/patronising/pretentious/opinionated/etc.

The Plane

Sometimes you take photos and you're not really too sure why.

Then, after processing and scanning/printing you remember.


That fuzzy, speckly, grainy stuff is grain! Real film grain!!

Not that cheap nasty digital grain that people use to make their digital photos look better.

Nice eh?!