The Dinner

Crazy crazy life.

I'm knackered. Had a crew around today, making a mess of my lovely house.

We were pretending my place was a student flat. I cooked breakfast for everyone. At 11.30am. Probably a bit early for students really.

Anyway, I saw these pics and thought they fitted today's theme rather well.

The inaugural dinner at our London flat, about ten years ago.

It was Indian from around the road. We didn't go back again. Ever.

And this was the lounge. With flatmates. And flatmate's sister. And flatmate's girlfriend. And awesome furniture. It was quite a nice flat actually.

Then we moved out and Girlfriend and I did this, amongst other things, while other flatmate and his girlfriend moved to a different part of London altogther, and had to put up with Girlfriend and me constantly crashing at their place/lovenest.

The Amsterdammer

I'm having a bit of a clean up. I've got a crew coming around on Wednesday to do a shoot and I kinda feel like I need to get the place looking less single guy like.

In my clean up I came across this.

Oddly enough there's a story that goes with it.

Many many years ago I went to Amsterdam. I went there with my then girlfriend. New Zealand had just started a working holiday scheme with The Netherlands. We intended to take full advantage of it.

Unfortunately because the scheme was so new it wasn't working properly. We had to go through the exact same procedure as if we were wanting to emigrate to The Netherlands. It was complex, lengthy, costly, and a pain in the arse. It required us to have jobs before getting residency. And potential employers required us to have residency before offering us a job. It was not a working holiday scheme.

So we had three weeks in Amsterdam then went back to London. My work visa for the UK had expired, but somehow I managed to get through immigration after a tense ten minute discussion during which I fully expected to be sent packing. Having been allowed in we proceeded to find work and stayed for another few months before heading back to lil' ol' NZ.

Anyway the above photo was taken in Amsterdam. At Nieuwendijk 196 C, Amsterdam apparently. By Combi Chic apparently. Also apparently it is an Audio Foto. Go figure.

Hard to believe that was nine years ago.

Hard to believe that was once my life.

The Worthless

As much as I've been known to diss digital phtography even I admit it has it's good points.

The other day I was out doing some location scouting and on my way home I pulled out the camera and had a play.

I could easily have had the same play with a film camera. But it would have cost me money. And I would have had to wait to see the results. And try to remember how I made each image.

With digital some of this is negated. Though not the need to remember how I made each image.

Not that these images have any value to me beyond the fact that I took them walking home the other day and decided to post them here.

In a way it is just all too easy. Too easy to get worthless and pointless shots. At least when you're paying for film you're likely to take a more considered approach to wasting a hunk of film you've had to pay for.

And a nice not-so-much-of-a-play shot to end with. Cos I like the park. There's something quintessentially antipodean about it what with the eucalypts and the rugby posts.

And I had my digi on me that day.

The Score

It's been a good yeah so far. I'm at nought for three and I'm setting myself up for a few more over the next few months.

And who said the life of an artist was an easy one?

Oh yeah, that's right, none of yous fellas, cos yous fellas have put up with my whining and complaining for ages.

For the record I've missed out on this, and this, and now this. Awesome.

The ARC thing was interesting. There was only one spot going, but the panel couldn't decide on who should get it so they made two spots. I came third. Awesome.

The only people I didn't get something verging on decent feedback from was CNZ. Heaven forbid they offer some assistance to applicants. Though of course I was never going to win that one, so maybe I should be happy they didn't just laugh at me.

My Toi Poneke proposal turned out to be a bit too controversial for Council. But that's what you get when you mix Art and Politics I guess.

Oh well, here's a tower which has nothing to do with anything.

Unless you want to see it as a metaphor for my artistic career - on an awkward lean and set for refurbishment.

The County

A view and some reviews.

A post and some pictures.

The Carpark

The Other

These were taken on the same day, though not necessarily in the same place as this.

The Companionpiece

Slightly more considered shots on a theme.

The McCahon

... and the Hipkins.

The Fortieth

Yesterday afternoon, about 4pm, after sitting around working on various things and fighting off the desire to go to sleep in my reading chair in the sun, I decided to head out and take some photos.

I grabbed the SX-70, jumped in the car and headed to the South Coast. It was only as I was driving towards Wahine Park that I remembered it was the 40th anniversary of those sad events. "How apt," I thought, "if I'm going to take ten photos today what better place could there be?".

So here are those ten photos.

Naturally I left the necessary ND filter at home.

So I had to dial the exposure down.

It kinda worked.

It's odd to stand on the shore and realise that just a few hundred metres away there's a ship rusting on the bottom of the channel. It's odder still to realise that on these shores, and the ones across the channel that numerous bodies washed ashore - some alive, some dead.

Mother Nature hides human history so well.

The Singularity

Those of you who are avid readers of mine, constantly checking on new comments and that kind of stuff may be interested in this picture. Maybe.

The person in that image has cropped up on this blog at various times and is about to again.

And again.

And again.

Oh, and again.

Oooohhh. And one last time. For now.

This shot may well have been taken the day I picked up my EOS10D piece of crap. If not that very day then certainly within the first week.

Isn't that just so exciting?!

The Icon

Though I can't say why, I used to think that most locations a photographer found and photographed was a hard-to-find off-the-beaten-track kinda place. Especially if the subject was iconic.

I soon learnt. Photographers are lazy.

After spending much of the afternoon trying to find a copy of this photo I finally found it online - thanks books for not making it easy, and thanks Peter for blogging it.

I was surprised to discover just how easy this location was to find. I wasn't even looking for it. But as soon as I saw it I knew this was where Peter Peryer once stood and made the above image.

As I've stated on numerous occasions - here and there, on- and off-line - I'm quite comfortable with overtly referencing another photographer/artist, so long as it has something of my own spin on the work.

What I don't like is work that very obviously references another photographer to the degree that it may as well be a copy. It's that whole subject matter vs style issue (more of which in a couple of weeks possibly).

Naturally knowing that I was where Peter Peryer once stood and made the above image, I had to take my own version.

Also naturally, I didn't have a copy of Peryer's original so I had to go on memory - and was obviously limited to the camera gear and film I had.

So nasty cross-processed rubbish - though scanned nicely to obscure that fact.

And using a longer lens to get a closer approximation of the Peryer.

Change the camera, but keep with the cross-processed muck - honestly why didn't people tell me what a waste of good film it was?! Nice wildlife all the same. Back to a standard lens so that was about as close as I could get.

Then a couple of years later, and in summer rather than winter.

And lastly at the beginning of this year. Interesting changes. Getting the second image was a feat of determination - holding the Hasselblad above me such that I could still see the focus screen, while simultaneously ensuring that neither I nor the camera ended up in the water we were perilously close to.


I'm not sure that I can say that I really stamped my mark on any of these shots. For me they're all a bit obvious and uninspired. Still it was quite cool to discover the spot and continue to photograph it. No doubt I'll continue to do so.

And no, I'm not going to tell you where it is. Do your own detective work lazybones.

The Napierian

The unfamous, the unknown, the unrenowned.



And the famous, the known, the renowned.


All of them Napierian.

The Help

On Tuesday night I went to a play - a real good play, a different play.

I went cos I don't go to plays often enough - been averaging about once a year lately. But also cos a couple of months back I assisted Sharyn do some photography for the play people.

This was the full extent of my assistance. Unless you count eating olives and drinking wine.

I feel I haven't done my job if I haven't somehow managed to make my presence felt digitally.

The Fainéant