Originally this page was about about my 0.1Mpx digital camera purchased at the Quinninup Villiage Fete in south west Western Australia for A$2.00 - a camera which proves all the bad things I have said about digital image quality. Now it has changed to a Snapshots page with the old News Page added
For my digital photography please visit IXUSblog
SNAPSHOTS
Updated July 2008
6th September 2008
Digital is dead, for me
Canon IXUSdigital 70 is returned from repair and reset for my own use
But it is boring - totally, utterly, completely, terminally boring. I fully acknowledge the use of digital image recording for news, wedding and commercial product photography. I also realise digital image recording is perfect for the family album and holiday records. This is especially true where images are stored on the hard drive only. When the hard drive dies so do all the family snaps - good riddance
The sheer elegance and ease of Leica, Rollei, Nikon F and Linhof coupled with my joy in the quality of the fine silver gelatine print is perfect. If I add to silver gelatine printing it will be back to etching or charcoal with charcoal
25th July 2008
The Most Difficult Area
The Most Difficult Area is a book of poetry by Kenneth White, pub Cape Golliard Press UK 1965
I was given a copy of this book in 1971. This book was one of the most important single influences on my early photography with poems like Sesshu Toyo
After years in China
Emptyness achieved
He painted with the fewest of strokes
The hardness of rocks
The twistedness of roots
This came right on top of my first seeing of photographs by Wynn Bullock, Minor White and Paul Caponegro
I lost this book in Adelaide in 1983 and I still have nightmares about its loss
A copy of Kenneth White - The Collected Poems 1960-2000 is coming in September
23rd June 2008
. . . long, long ago. . . far, far away
REALLY ABOUT A TRIPOD
This a pic of me using my favouritest ever tripod on Hayling Island in 1980. The pic was made by Paul Callas. The tripod is a super light weight MPP which did all my work with Rolleiflex cameras 'till about 1987ish at a guess. By that time is was phuqued but still pretty. I gave it to Robbie Jefferson who had it restored
Now I am borrowing it again and hoping to buy it back for the cost of it's restoration - this is truly a superb tripod to work with. I still have the Rollei, but 1/15sec is gone and bits keep falling off. . .
8th June 2008
LOGGING TO EXTINCTION
Logging to extinction of the south west karri forests of Western Australia continues. These two photographs were taken 3 minutes and 10 seconds apart, according to the camera's EXIF data
Both were taken in the main street of Pemberton, a dreary little south west town dominated by a timber mill
Pemberton, like the nearby towns of Manjimup and Northcliffe, does not have duelling banjos, but they should
PS In response to a question from England regarding this item
Clearfelling is continuing in Western Australian forests, despite the promises made
prior to the 2001 Western Australian election. The WA Labor Government's claim that
logging has ceased in old growth forest is based on the WA Department of
Environment and Conservation DEC reclassification of the
remaining ancient forest, or anything else that contained big trees, as "two tier", making
it available to the WA Forest Products Commission FPC for clearfelling
The new national parks largely consist of "non-production", poor quality, forest and clearfell areas. The non-production forest often contains greater biodiversity than tall canopy forest, but tall canopy forest is needed for a balanced conservation system. Re-generated forest is an even aged monoculture plantation. Regen has the visual excitement of Regency wallpaper
30 April 2008
DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY Prolegomena to a Critical Analysis
I am often pestered to go digital, with the result that, when finished,
this will be added to my Process and Equipment Page
The introduction of practical 35mm photography by Leitz and Zeiss in the 1920s and 30s and its development through the Leica M3 and Nikon F in the 1950s and 60s gave documentary and news photography a rush of freedom and a quality of engagement that had rarely existed before. The bulk of this strong photography was black and white and the addition of colour added little to the ability of images to tell their story
The practical realization of digital image "capture" in the 21st Century should have given a new impetus to image quality. This has not been the case and we are now presented with a plethora of images with seamless lack of engagement. Tourists now look at the places they visit on the tiny LCDs on the back of their cameras
Turning to digital reportage and news photography, it is clear that the smaller, lighter, faster technology has not been grasped by digiographers to enliven their image making. The great exception here is some work by video journalists - that seems a way out to new pastures
Like their cameras, digiographers hold their subjects at arms length
. . . So, the next time I am told to go digital I shall hold a Leica above my head and shout “You will have to wrest this from my cold dead hand” - thank you Charlton Heston
28 April 2008
WORLD PINHOLE DAY
Sunday 27th April 2008 was World Pinhole Day
Picture also at WPPD
Even former pinhole hater me did one, using the aluminium off a yohgurt container and out-of-date-in-1976 Kodak Commercial Ortho. I had planned to use my last box of also outdated Polaroid 5x4", but the chemical pods have dried out
My pinhole hole looks terrible. Using the point of a 1½" nail in a piece of aluminium yoghurt lid was probably getting too much into the spirit of the event, but it is my first in 30 years
First neg exposure was fine. It was intended to be my test neg, but I submitted it as my final one. I have been lazy and scanned the neg on a flat bed scanner then messed around with flip, invert and levels in GIMP
14th April 2008
Goodbye Philip Jones Griffiths, Burt Glinn and Dith Pran
These three photographers have recently died. Philip Jones Griffiths and Burt Glinn were members of Magnum.
Dith Pran was the subject of the film "The Killing Fields" - for more on Dith Pran and Philip Jones Griffiths
go to Digital Journalist http://digitaljournalist.org/ or via links page. For more on Burt Glinn and Philip
Jones Griffiths visit www.magnumphotos.com/PhilipJonesGriffiths
16th March 2008
Australian Littoral and John Joseph Strutt-Bird pages have started and have been uploaded - more images
and updates on these pages to follow
13th November 2007
AUSTRALIA'S, THEREFORE THE WORLD'S, GREATEST ART TREASURE AT RISK
Article stolen and modified from FARA
More Pilbara rock engraving pics on Desert page
Together with other Pilbara sites like Woodstock/Abydos, The Burrup is the world's oldest and largest outdoor rock art gallery, and provides a unique record of continuous human presence stretching back perhaps 30,000 years.
As well as images of prehistoric fauna long extinct in the Pilbara region, such as the thylacine. It is also a site of major significance to local Aboriginal people
WHAT ARE THE THREATS TO THE BURRUP?
In spite of giving the Burrup National Heritage listing, on October 12 former Federal Environment Minister
Malcolm Turnbull gave permission for Woodside Energy to construct its Pluto LNG plant in the heart of
the world's oldest and largest rock art gallery. He also rejected an application by local Aboriginal
custodians, the Wong-Goo-Tt-Oo people, to shift the plant to other commercially viable sites nearby
which would not endanger the area's world heritage values
Woodside is currently clearing 200 rock art panels on its Pluto B lease despite strenuous opposition from local Aboriginal people, artists, scholars and many others. This action contravenes the Burra Charter regulating all aspects of cultural heritage management in Australia, as well as UNESCO's Declaration on the Intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage, a document signed and enthusiastically promoted by the Australian government after the Taliban blew up the Buddha statues of Bamiyan in 2003
The following companies are proposing further industrial expansion on the Burrup: Woodside, Burrup Fertilisers, the Dampier Port Authority, Dyno Nobel, Helmut Giesner, the WA ALP Government and its Department of Industry and Resources
What is also very likely is that many of the rock engraving sites in the Pilbara have already been destroyed by mining - but no one will ever know - Workers in the mining industry are as big a bunch of forelock tugging company sychopants as timber workers - JBA
Sunday 11th November 2007
Dinoflagelates and Devil Tumours
More fully, the Great Chesapeake Bay Dinoflagelate Disaster and Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumours
No, there is no link I am aware of, except that in both cases there were clear correlations between the problems and major anti-environmental industries - In Virgina the "Hog Farmers" and in Tasmania Gunns timber plantation aerial spraying of alpha-cypermethrin and other goodies
Virginian Hog Farmers protested that environmentalists were after their "jerbs" - but, having lots of pigs, they didn't need to form a South Park Man Pile
In Tasmania Gunns CEO John Gay litagates if you say you don't like the smell of his shit
What really scares me is the disappearance of truth about dinoflagelates in Chesapeake Bay (search Burkholder) and the correlation between aerial spraying and Devil facial tumours (search Scammell Report) - Total silence since the two industries started complaining to governments and presumably Google and Yahoo
In Oceania we get reports about how Google and Yahoo cao-tao to the Eastasian Government - but no one thinks about the way information is blocked in "free speach" Oceania - which, because it is blocked, we don't know about - and information on the blocking is blocked
Afternoon 25th October 2007
"I can refuse to walk there and lick my nose and make you jog your silly toy!"
24th October 2007
Tiny Digicam has just been upgraded with a stick-on Leica red dot to improve its image, if not its images
Dog Grub
