Tyroga – A Human Equivalent

This coming Saturday I’ll be shooting as part of a team for Fashion + Aid, a charity event to be held at Crown Palladium.

I’m a little bit excited. Can’t wait to share some of the photos I get on the night.

Not exactly the end, maybe a pointy peak in the middle. On Wednesday in class we were apparently told next week we’ll be presenting our concept proposals for our end of term portfolios. This means not only do we have to have our written proposal complete, we apparently also have to create a presentation to outline our concept. I say apparently a lot because I wasn’t in class last week.

According to my classmates we need to provide a minimum of five images by other people supporting our theme. We also need to shoot a minimum of five of our own images to support our theme. They don’t need to be quality they just need to support our portfolio. They may be shots of locations we intend to use, sample shots of concept work. They can also be supported by work in our visual diaries, drawings of shot set-ups.

In the past these have been presented as powerpoint, keynote, PDF etc. Sometimes with props sometimes, as reported by members of my class, as small low-budget motion pictures. I find it nuts that we only hear about this one week out but we get two weeks to work on single shots like a self portrait or a mood lighting shot.

So today I hope to take a little road trip, I’m looking for a wood/forest to support one of my concepts, I have two and haven’t yet ruled either out. My tutor, on hearing my two concepts suggested I could perhaps combine the two. Not sure they would work together.

Our portfolio is also supposed to be “about” something and well to be honest I don’t think either of mine are. They are just fun concepts. Perhaps in working up my documentation I’ll come up with a rational for them.

So I have a busy few days ahead. Wish me luck.

My Casting Calls

When Life Was All About Fun

Hey All,

I’m a student photographer looking to create my portfolio for the end of second semester and I’m looking for models to achieve the desired outcome.

I’m posting two casting calls as I have two concepts I’d like to explore.

This one is “When Life Was All About Fun” and it’s an exploration of adults doing activities usually reserved for children. The activities we give away as we grow up.

The shots will include activities like:

• Playing hopscotch using a chalk-drawn hopscotch on a road or path.
• Running through the sprinkler or a hot summer’s day (we’ll have to fake the summer’s day part)
• Playing knuckles/jacks sitting cross-legged in a circle
• Having a spacehopper / sack / three-legged race
• Climbing a tree, hanging from its branches
• Getting a scrapped knee and a bandaid applied
• Playing on a Pogostick
• Playing in a park, on a roundabout (if I can find one these days), a slide, hanging from bars
• Big birthday cakes with candles and sheer joy on the face of the model
• Any activity that is viewed as something for kids.

I’ll also try to source clothes with a 70/80s feel to date the concept cause let’s be honest most kid activities these days revolve around a computer of some kind rather than the outdoors.

Prefer to do this as TFCD as I don’t have a huge budget.

There will be street / park locations and I’ll obtain permits where required, I’ll also source clothing but am open to anything models may have that would suit.

Don’t require the same models for all shots so if there is something that interests you we can shoot shots individually.

The long date range is because it will be an ongoing project with some planning and because shots can be taken over time, we don’t have to try and get it all done in one day. Having said that, if I can get a group of about five models we may be able to shoot it all on a single shoot.

If you’re interested or have any questions about the concept please let me know.

A Forest of Fashion

Hey All,

I’m a student photographer looking to create my portfolio for the end of second semester and I’m looking for models to achieve the desired outcome.

I’m posting two casting calls as I have two concepts I’d like to explore.

This one is “A Forest of Fashion” and it’s basically a fashion shoot on the darker side. Shot in a heavy wood where the light heavily filtered by the trees and augmented by low-power strobes to light up the model and clothing.

I’ll try to source clothes once models are worked out, but it would be awesome of the model/s have appropriate clothing.

Prefer to do this as TFCD as I don’t have a huge budget but can chip in for any travel costs.

The locations I’m looking at are Long Forest (north west of Melbourne), Mornington (south), Dandenongs (east), King Lake (north), Ottways (south west), which ever is closest to the models. Long Forest being preferred but can do any dense wooded area.

Would be great if I can get three to four models of mixed gender.

The long date range is because it will be an ongoing project with some planning and because shots can be taken over time, though ideally we’ll knock it out in the one shoot of a few hours.

If you’re interested or have any questions about the concept please let me know.

September 1, 2010 (US time) Apple announced changes to their suite of iPod products, iTunes, iOS and AppleTV.

iPods

It’s crazy how small and thin these things are becoming. Also crazy Apple have kept the Shuffle when the new Nano is almost the same size.

iPod Shuffle

Not much to say about the shuffle other than its existence is purely a price-point decision. With the Nano starting at AU$199 they needed to keep around a less expensive model. The buttons however have re-appeared with the previous shuffle not finding favour as a voice-operated only device. Available in a range of colours, just 2GB for AU$69.

iPod Nano

To me the iPod Nano is a disappointment. Harsh I know, but it cost $20 more than it did before starting at AU$199 and has less features. It no longer plays, nor captures, video. A calculated decision, I believe, to drive sales of the new iPod Touch.

Some will argue that as it now has multi-touch and apps it’s an improved product but I disagree. The old Nano was a great product for younger teens. The kids who’d go skateboarding with their friends and want to record their adventures on a robust, small device that could easily survive a small drop and the odd scrape. They could instantly playback the movies to wow their friends. But alas no more. The only option is now the iPod Touch (considerably more breakable) or the iPhone (also breakable and more costly).

Sure the iPod Nano is cute and “wearable” with its clip, but for me it’s a big “meh!” moment. At present you can’t install new apps for it, you just have the ones it comes preinstalled with.

Maybe I am being too harsh. It will be a great device for those who don’t want to run with their iPod Touch, iPhone or other arm-banded device. It comes with a clock app, photos app, iPod app, Nike+, Pedometer and FM Radio. And with either 8GB (AU$199) or 16GB (AU$289) it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than my first generation iPod which cost me just over AU$1,000 for 5GB and all the first gen did was play songs.

The line up comes in seven colours including the Product Red version.

iPod Touch

It catches up, as it always does, in many ways to the iPhone. Now with retina high-density display the screen will look amazing. It also comes with front and rear facing cameras so it can be used for high-defition 720 video recording and FaceTime (over wi-fi). It also features the 5MP camera on the back which on my iPhone takes amazing pictures for what it is. Perfect for capturing incidental images.

Other than that the iPod Touch is now even thinner than its predecessors, which just seems insanely unlikely, but true. Just look at the pictures on the Apple website, the volume buttons barely fit on the thing.

Starting at AU$289 (8GB) sales of this one will be helped by the removal of the camera and video capabilities of the iPod Nano. Not that the iPod Touch needs a lot of help to sell, recently being announced as one of the highest selling mobile game platforms.

One weird thing is its capacities are 8GB, then jumping to 32GB (AU$378) and 63GB (AU$499), with the higher range surpassing the iPhones upper limit of 32GB.

iTunes 10

With no real improvements in the application’s functionality, some little things have changed. The interface has changed, for the better I think, but the jury is out on that one. The change of the icon from a music note on a CD has changed to be a music note on a blue button like circle. Steve Jobs firmly stating that music isn’t about the physical media like CDs anymore. I’m not a fan of the new icon, but mainly just because it no longer looks like the icons for the other applications from the iLife Suite, which is where iTunes began its life many, many years ago.

The real changes with iTunes come in the store with the launch of “Ping” a social music service allowing you to follow artists and friends  and to follow along with their purchases, the albums they like and the reviews they post. You can comment on their actions and listen to previews of the music they like. I guess it’s more of a recommendation engine and perhaps a way to try and capture the elusive ‘tween to 20′s market, the later of which in particular are not used to paying for music, more often then not stealing their music via torrents and even content with ripping music from YouTube videos.

I’m not sure how important Ping is just yet. I think its implementation is clunky and needs some refinement, that better happen soon before everyone gets over it, which happens real quick these days. Really they should have just let you connect your Twitter feed to your iTunes Ping. People are already following their artists there. They then could have sent our purchases, reviews etc to our Twitter feeds (if we allowed it via preferences) and already established social connections, rather than try and create a whole new set.

I think Apple’s big problem on this front is their 160 million users. Most social networking APIs¹ would crumble if hit by an additional 160 million users. Ping actually launched with Facebook Connect (Facebook’s API) only to have it removed a short time after as Facebook had blocked Apple’s access. Facebook claims this was because they couldn’t handle the additional traffic, that a lot of their currently 500 million users would have iTunes accounts and that all the additional traffic would be a burden. I speculate it was more because Facebook was concerned about Apple entering their social networking space. They need not have worried. Ping is nowhere near where it needs to be if it wants to be a serious social network contender.

Apple TV

The final announcement of the day, was the reintroduction of the product Steve Jobs refers to as his “hobby” appliance: The Apple TV.

David and I own an Apple TV, the 160GB version and it’s freaking awesome. We love having it and I never understood why it never had a greater take-up. It might have been the expense. It might have been because people didn’t want yet another box connected to their TV. It may really have been that all of the content you wanted to put on there had to be encoded Apple’s way or no play. This means that all video has to be in  MP4 format, rather than something like DIVX, AVI or MPG (previously more common formats). I suspect that this last is the main reason as people who prefer to download their movies and tv shows prefer an easy way to watch it back on the big screen; Apple TV isn’t the device for the lazy.

We download TV, I admit it. Over time I’ve grown annoyed by the lack of support for Sci-fi shows, by Australian networks inability to stick to a schedule, their penchant for moving things from 7.30pm on a Tuesday night to 11pm Saturday at the drop of a hat, but mostly their skill at making us wait up-to a year for a great TV show, or not showing it in Australia at all. We even pay for the service and would happily pay for a subscription to a more legitimate source were one available to us here in Australia.

For us to watch downloaded TV, at present, means downloading the video files in rar format with one program (like Transmission), unrarring the file using another application (like unrar-x), encoding the file from the AVI, DIVX or other file format into Apple’s preferred MP4 using yet another application (like VisualHub – which is no longer made) before it is finally moved to iTunes and synced over to the Apple TV where it is stored for viewing. Sounds like a hassle right? But to us this has become the norm so it’s not really a problem.

But enough about old times: on to the new, second generation, Apple TV, a veritable hockey puck of entertainment.

At about a quarter of the size of the previous Apple TV, the new AppleTV is a tiny little box, heck the remote is bigger than the Apple TV is.

For the most part the functions of the new Apple TV are the same as the first generation with one massive difference. The new Apple TV has no storage ability. No HDD included in the unit means all of your content will stream wirelessly (or via ethernet) to the device.

The Apple TV still has the movie store (but now only for rentals of movies and TV episodes), still has iTunes, the ability to watch YouTube, view your Flickr, MobileMe or iPhoto-shared photo galleries and now also features NetFlix streaming for the USA residents who subscribe to that service.

They’re also touting “Airplay” which replaces “AirTunes” for media sharing. One feature of AirPlay is the ability to immediately share your content from all of your devices to the Apple TV. Say you’re watching a movie on your iPad while your sitting outside, or in the bath but you come into your lounge room, you can now “send” that movie to your TV; streaming it from your iPad to the Apple TV for viewing. The only shame about AirPlay is it that it doesn’t seem to allow sharing via other devices to each other. For instance I can’t watch movies on my iPad from my iMac unless I sync the movie over, I’d much prefer to be able to watch the movie’s remotely with AirPlay.

At just AU$129 the Apple TV is cheap as chips and might open the market to more people. The announcement falls a little short however of what some of us developers were hoping to see. And with the removal of storage I’m guessing our hope of an app-capable Apple TV is never going to be.

I know I and other developers were hoping for an Apple TV that would allow us to write applications for the device. For TV shows to be delivered by Application. Each show being a single application on your Apple TV and other applications built in or build by developers. I had hoped that Apple’s Magic Trackpad was to be the user input device for the new Apple TV but my hopes and dreams have been dashed.

Also dashed is our current Apple TV, by all accounts it sounds like its life is over with Apple no longer producing updates for the device.

Final Thing: iOS 4.1 & 4.2

This wasn’t Apple’s “One more thing…”, that was the Apple TV, but iOS 4.1 and 4.2 were mentioned throughout the event but not really singled out as their own thing. There aren’t a lot of big changes in 4.1 (available now for your iPhone and iPod Touch – excluding first generations of both), the little things are Ping being added to the iTunes Store on the device and the Camera App’s ability to capture HDR² photos. And of course 4.2 is the iOS that will be coming to the iPad at the end of November 2010, bringing the iPad multi-tasking, folders and other items that are already available on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The Wrap

That’s one big blog post, haven’t written such a big one in quite some time, but you know how I love my Apple products. Apple haven’t revolutionised anything in these announcements. Made one bad decision (in my opinion) by removing the camera/video recording from the iPod Nano and some good decisions like the low-priced Apple TV. Other than curiosity (the new Nano) and the desire to add to my collection I can’t see myself getting any of the devices released today, except maybe the new Apple TV when ours reaches the end of its natural life.

1 - Application Programming Interface – how coders can easily connect to other people’s applications for the purpose of extending their own application or adding to the user experience of the application offering the API.
2 – The process of capturing several images of the exact same scene and tone mapping them, ensuring a more even exposure across the whole photo, rather than dark shadows or blown out skies.

Eww I have the worst taste in my mouth that wont go away. Doesn’t matter what I eat or drink it just lingers and it looks like it may all be down to recent consumption of pine nuts.

Sucks most cause they taste great when you eat them, but word is in recent times people have been reporting that eating pine nuts has lead to a foul, sometimes metallic, taste that lasts for up to 4 weeks!

And it over runs everything. I can eat a Snickers bar and while the bar is on my tongue there is momentary relief but once it is swallowed the taste in my mouth returns.

There’s no evidence that anyone else I interact with is affected, it appears that the nuts have just changed the way my taste receptors are working at the moment.

It’s driving me nuts (pardon the pun). As a vegetarian it seems everything has pine nuts in it and now I have to be even more choosy about what I eat.

I’m thinking this case of pine mouth came from one of four sources I’ve eaten in the last week.

1. Stuffed capsicum from Lee’s, our regular cafe for lunch at work (last Thursday),
2. A pasta dish from Livewire (lunch last Friday),
3. A vegetarian calzone from Crème in Altona (Sunday), or
4. Beetroot, parmesan and pine nut dip I had at home (Monday)

Where ever it came from I wish it would go away. From what I’ve read of late this has become a pretty common thing in the last year or so and seems mostly related to pine nuts coming out of China.

So if you have ever suffered “pine mouth” you’d know it. It is the worst!

What’s the deal? A set of 65 glass negatives were found and believed to have been created by master photographer Ansel Adams. They were bought by some guy in California at a garage sale for $45 after he talked the seller down something like $80.

They were shown to art experts who declared them most likely to be the work of Ansel Adams and valued them at more than $200 million dollars.

Then the Adams crowd came out and said, no they aren’t his work. This was followed by some lady who said they were the work of her uncle Earle and suddenly they ain’t worth squat.

What the hell is that about? It sucks that if you have a name your stuff will sell, but if someone looks at your work, can’t distinguish between it and the work of a master, then your work is worth nothing once they realise they were wrong and you’re not the master.

So kodos to Uncle Earle where ever you may be. You’re work is apparently exquisite. But up yours to the art world who declare it worth a hell of a lot less because while Uncle Earle’s work = Ansel Adams work : Uncle Earle ≠ Ansel Adams.

It’s really just the first one with new photos and new graphics. I did all of the design on the new elements of this application (building on the previous design by our design team at work). I like this one better than the first. I think it has to do with the more colourful imagery rather than the mostly black and white of Our Great Game.

This application is in support of our new book The Story of the Melbourne Cup – Australia’s Greatest Race.

You can download the app for your iPad or buy the book.

I know blogging about dinner seems a little mundane, but it’s not every day I get a dinner like I did tonight, especially after getting home late from a speech by Bill Henson.

David made some great crepes for dinner. Filled with zucchini, corn, sour cream, cheese, leek, capsicum and mushroom. It was awesome.

And not to be outdone, dessert was even awesomer. Sticky date pudding with ice cream.

So as you can see it is worth a blog posting. The photos here taken on my new iPhone 4 and modified with Camera+ app.

We had a great night Saturday night, even though we were a little sad we were one down in our party with Kathryn being ill and having to bail out.

David, Sue and I met with Sandy and Rob at Pellegrini’s (66 Bourke Street, Melbourne) for an awesome dinner. From the outside the place looks like bedlam. People packed in at two long bars down either side of the tiny little restaurant with barely enough room to squish ourselves down to the tiny kitchen in the back, which is where we sat at a long table.

All of the cooking is done on a tiny little stove, feeding the entire restaurant packed with people. And the food was great and relatively inexpensive, not cheap by any means. It seems like it could be hard to get a large group in, at 5 we were only just accommodated. And they don’t take reservations so it might be hit and miss getting in.

After dinner we headed over to the Haunted Bookshop to wait for our Melbourne Ghost Tour to begin. We got there a little early on a nippy night and huddled together trying to stay warm as many other tour participants arrived.

At 8:30 pm the doors to The Haunted Bookshop opened for us all to go in and buy our tickets we then met outside again for the tour to begin. I recorded the tour’s 7km walk on my iPhone’s “Trails” application so I have it plotted out on a map, just have to figure out how to get that on a Google Map at some time.

It was a great talk and walk led by our guide Drew Sinton. To find out we have ghosts all over our city is amazing. It’s great. I can’t wait to get to some of the locations again to check them out in my own time. In particular the ghost who apparently inhabits the State Library in the atrium near the newspaper section. According to our guide there used to be a two storey building on the site and the ghost used to live there and now walks the second floor which extends into the atrium so she appears to float as she walks along a floor that is no longer there.

The other amazing thing to find out is that under a very popular, and Melbourne’s oldest park, Alexandra Gardens, there are thousands of bodies buried. Bodies that were never moved because in the olden days the wooden grave markers were stolen for firewood by the poor parts of the North Melbourne community. So there they lay, below a park that many frequent and many bask in the sun with their lunch in the summertime.

Melbourne’s other old and now gone graveyard with over 10,000 bodies in it now resides under the Queen Victoria Market (a very short walk from Alexandra Garden), of these 10,000+ bodies when the redevelopment came to take place to create the market only about 900 were relocated as only their graves could be identified and their families requested they be moved. All of the other bodies remain under market to this day.

It was a great night and an interesting walk with great friends. I recommend it to anyone. It was only $20 per person, a steal.

A little video of Bill recorded on my iPhone 4 and editied (on iPhone 4) using iMovie. Need to learn to have a more steady hand when doing these things. Also how to use the light a little better. The background gets a little blown out at times.

Looks like my first app is ready and available on the iTunes App Store. Of course even before I was finished developing it I wanted to make changes to it, and those changes will come. But for now, YAY.

There is another application coming that is basically the same as OurGreatGame, but the new one is more my favourite, it looks better than this one in my opinion.

So if you have an iPad, go download it and rate it (well).