eBay...

I just sold one of my cameras on eBay.

Woo Hoo, but you may think that this isn't really news of note!

However, the camera I sold was listed just over an hour ago! I had two people send me messages regarding it and before I could respond to both of them it had sold...

What else can I sell? I now have a couple more cameras, a printer, a scanner, a fridge, a washing machine, 3 x port barrels (believe it or not)... Hmmm, methinks I may be a little busy over the next few days and it sure beats a garage sale...

Now, where did I put the boxes for all of this stuff?

HTML Guru required... Apply within,,,

I'm not sure how this blog template works? I was going along nicely with a large image for a banner and then all of a sudden on the computer at work I could only see a regular banner, at home the banner hadn't changed.

Then I logged in and found that I can only see a small banner!?! I've tried to change it (also tried to work out how I got a large image in the first place) with no luck... The only option I can see is for the width of the banner not for the height...

If there is anyone lurking who can give me a simple explanation please do so...

Cheers, Mal...

PS: If you can also tell me how to generate a space between paragraphs, sometimes I get one sometimes I don't???

Spinning Lights

Just a couple of crops from the ferris wheel series I took on the same night as my header photo.

I took out a medium format camera today. An old Mamiya C3 twin lens reflex camera, one of the ones with two lenses, one above the other... Very cool, a bit of fun, very heavy and I might just do it all again one day soon. I need to get the film developed and if any have come out nicely I might try and scan them... Stay tuned.

Dreams

If our brains are so creative how come we can't remember dreams? And, this being true most of the time, how come when we do remember parts of dreams we can't work out what they mean?

Being able to fly by flapping my arms always seemed like a cool dream, why couldn't I fly higher than the powerlines? Why were there powerlines in my dream?

How many words do we need, really? A challenge...

I know that there are some wordsmiths out there... I have a challenge for you...

I visited the National Gallery of Victoria today to look at the photographic portraiture exhibit. There were a varied range of images taken over the last 150 years or so and they showed the development of photographic portraiture with a leaning towards roleplaying. Effectively these were set up portraits rather than candids.

I then went around a corner and found myself looking at some wonderful 16 and 17th century portraiture (when only the rich could afford it - or cared enough to commission it)... The descriptions were wordy and informative.

One of my photographic assignments is to take an image that can only mean one thing, this got me to thinking...

If a picture paints 1000 words how can it mean just one thing? No ambiguity - everyone who looks at it gets the same message? So how many words do we really need...?

The challenge: (This has been done before in a short story course somewhere)

Write a short story that includes the subjects of mystery, sex and religion. The short story must be written with as few words (in number) as possible...

I will post the best one in a few days, but I warn you... You won't beat mine for brevity!

It took much longer than a few days but the answer is here...

Spray Tans & Photographers

Let me get up on my soapbox for just one moment... Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls...

The only people to whom spray tans look good are Oompah Loompahs. The particular shade of orange that results from a spray tan will never render a human being as looking healthy. Please from this moment forward cease and desist from applying this CR*P to your skin before special events (such as weddings).

If, having read this, you decide to have a spray tan applied. Please, please, please have a shower and be fully dry before adding white clothing. One poor unfortunate I met recently sweat orange stuff through his shirt and asked the photographer (me) what could be done... I am forever grateful that I found the sense not to say what I thought (he copped enough of that from his friends... The poor thing). I just mentioned something about photoshop being pretty good these days!!!

I am stepping off my soapbox now... Over and out!

Vertical learning curves and brain fade...

It's 10:30pm, someone in a unit nearby has the music up, maybe we can hear it because the doors are open, it's warm...

My brain is in a weird tired overdrive...

Have you ever had so much information coming at you that by midday you are getting frustrated with yourself because you can't remember how to do what you quite clearly were capable of yesterday?

From the start at work today I was trying to catch up. The comment I heard towards the end of the day was "why am I having to tell you things twice?"

I know the answer... I don't yet know how to do what you are telling me to do and telling me once isn't enough!

I am most definitely getting faster though and today I finished everything on the job sheet; which was a first... Yay me... Except for the CD that wouldn't burn properly and then the second one that did the same thing??? May have done something wrong there...

As much as my employer is pushing me and as frustrated as I get with myself things are improving. I have to remind myself that I have only worked in that environment for a total of six or seven days... Plus a few weddings now...

Then home is fairly intense at the moment read about it at Cinta's blog. Things will be better there from next week as Cinta completes the fun run and gets into the course; as I have no doubt she will... (Interviews and exams where you aren't sure what the questions will be about and what will be required are always stressful)...

Summer Break Assignment

Here's the brief; I have to present a single image for each of 10 subjects. They must be creative and I can take as many images as I like but I can only present the 10 best images.

1. Something cool...
2. Something you can't touch...
3. Something small...
4. Something of my town that would attract overseas tourists...
5. Something that sells renewable energy...
6. Something that shows an Australian summer through recreation...
7. An image that can only mean one thing...
8. A landscape at dusk or moonlit...
9. An image where music is the theme...
10. A publicity image of myself...

At last the fun stuff begins. This is the first "creative" assignment for the course, the previous assignments are to show that you know how to work your camera... I already have some ideas (I can't touch my toes, for example! LOL Seriously; if I can find a rainbow with the moon behind it I may be on to a winner - this will lead nicely into the moonlit landscape). If you come up with any ideas let me know.

These images must be taken on 35mm slide film rated at 100 ISO so the technical side of getting an image to work without any manipulation or post processing comes in to the mix as well.

Now the real fun begins!!!

Photoshop

Wow, I knew you could do some stuff in photoshop... Serious stuff! I thought I had some of it learned and felt that I could get things done. (I really knew that I wasn't up to commercial stuff)...

How silly you can be? Imaging thinking that your amateur fumblings would cut it in the commercial world. I have heaps to learn and have already learned quite a bit (mostly that I can get things done but I take too long!). So the next few days will be dedicated to photoshop, a wedding shoot, a trip to Sydney to have a look at and hopefully purchase a car (subject for another entry). That's if I can fit it around the cleaning, washing, eating, excercising, sleeping that are requirements...

I can now, slowly, process a series of images and:

• Match exposures
• Match colours
• Add fill light
• Bring back highlights
• reduce shadows under eyes and around the face
• generally fix minor problems (the wardrobe error that I tried to fix yesterday would have been so much easier to fix before the photo was taken - the clients had already approved the photo for a poster without noticing it.)
• Move and resize images into pre-designed album pages

With about 600 images per wedding (+/-) just the first four on that list takes about an hour if the photographer is consistent with their settings.

And we got our first "creative" assignments from school this week. The first couple were "make sure you know how to use a camera" assignments. This means that over the next couple of months I will be out with my camera. The brief is quite simple and yet stimulatingly complex... EG: present a single image - a photograph of "cold". I'm looking forward to making things frosty! Stay tuned...

Last Day... New Beginning...

The very last day of pre-hospital emergency care for me... For 30 years now this is what I have done. Ever since I saw an ambulance at a hospital careers day in my first year of high school. With time in the army as a medic, work as a nurse in a small (tiny) country hospital and a large city hospital, 12 years of ambulance work and for the last 9 years first aid training. It has finally come to an end.

It was all I ever wanted to do.

To expect things to stay the same is silly, life progresses and needs change.

Throughout my life I have had an interest in photography and, if you have been reading my blog, that's what I am pursuing now. Time to let the creativity out and now it's official.

Today is a day of running around and getting stuff sorted out and finished off. Tomorrow I am off to work as a photographer/assistant.

And so a new chapter begins. Deep breath... Plunge in!