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I must be living in the future. All the stuff that used to be free on planes - snacks and blankets and things - are now chargeable. At least with this US domestic flight. (the flight from London wasn’t quite as parsimonious)
But I can access the Internet via WiFi at a fairly decent speed. Crazy times! Cost me a few dollars, but I was able to get some work done and chat with friends.
Attention all space cadets in the San Francisco Bay Area! The amazing Raygun Gothic Rocketship has landed at Pier 14 for a several month stint. Here’s your opportunity to see this fantastic Burning Man art installation in the proverbial flesh.
Sadly, some parasitic alien spiders escaped the bio containment lab, so they can’t allow anyone to enter the vehicle. But it’s still pretty awesome from the outside.
If you can’t visit San Francisco anytime soon, check out some of my photographs of the work, including some rare pics of the incredibly elaborate interior!
One of the shots in the book that I’m quite pleased with is an image of Poulnabrone dolmen in Ireland, an ancient megalithic monument. I backlit it with a handheld flash, tramping around in the dark one solstice night.
Well, it turns out that in 1944 Harold Edgerton also took a backlit flash photo of an ancient megalithic monument. And holy cow is it an amazing shot.
Incredible what you can do with just a little imagination, some technology and money procured from the world’s biggest military budget.
Musician, producer and entrepreneur Thomas Dolby has released his first new studio recording in almost 20 years!
Best known for 1980s hits such as “She Blinded Me with Science” and “Hyperactive!”, Dolby lived and worked in the Bay Area for many years, but moved back to his native Britain a few years ago. And he’s decided to pick up the keyboards once again.
I was privileged to do a photo shoot with Mr Dolby and members of London’s Clockwork Quartet as part of the preparation for my new book, and now some photos from that shoot have made their way to the cover of “Amerikana.” Exciting stuff!
”Program a map to display frequency of data exchange, every thousand megabytes a single pixel on a very large screen. Manhattan and Atlanta burn solid white. Then they start to pulse, the rate of traffic threatening to overload your simulation. Your map is about to go nova. Cool it down. Up your scale. Each pixel a million megabytes. At a hundred million megabytes per second, you begin to make out certain blocks in midtown Manhattan, outlines of hundred-year-old industrial parks ringing the old core of Atlanta…”
I’m reminded of that old line from William Gibson’s Neuromancer when looking at these fantastic geotagged maps from Eric Fischer. Are the photos in your neighbourhood taken by tourists or locals?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157624209158632/
Beautifully shot video of a trip a young photographer made to the jungles of Indonesia, where he and some friends spent some time interviewing and photographing a community of traditional hunter gatherers, the Mentawai. Gorgeous narrow depth of field PhaseOne work, and an insane amount of gear to be hauling through a rainforest.
http://www.joeyl.com/blog/the-mentawai-behind-the-scenes-documentary-video/
Stopping time with Tarkovsky’s Polaroids:
http://riowang.blogspot.com/2010/06/tarkovskys-polaroids.html
So I’ve been using a little introductory video in my talks. And since not everyone could make the actual presentations I thought I’d post a nice high-resolution version of the video, which is essentially a slideshow consisting uniquely of photographs from my book.
This video is similar to the one on Amazon USA’s website, only in nifty hi-rez 16:9 form, rather than in a limited 4:3 low-rez version. Unfortunately this means it needs a reasonably fast computer and H.263 playback capabilities. So I’m afraid machines older than around 4 to 5 years may not be able to play it.
Extra special thanks to Neil Cowley of Fragile State for kind permission to use the track The Barney Fade, Future Loop Foundation remix.
Slow shutter.
Participatory workshop by NK Guy.
Light painting is a photographic technique dating back to the 1930s. This long exposure method employs the direct manipulation of light sources to create spectral, dreamlike or even abstract images.
13 and 14 May 2010, 9 PM
Shunt
London, England
So as part of the Shunt Lounge and Theatre Company’s official reopening, I’m going to be running live workshops on painting with light. The workshops will be held inside the cavernous labyrinth of brick vaults underneath London Bridge railway station in London, England. I’ll be working with some fantastic talent - members of the Cambridge University Fire Troupe, dancer Anna-Mi Fredriksson, and pyrotechnician Edward Chiswell Jones.
There is no additional charge for either actual workshop, though the usual £10 admission fee to Shunt applies for the event. (buy tickets in advance) Note that Southwark Council requires that Shunt record the photographic ID of every person who enters the building, so government-issued ID is essential.
The specific times are not yet set for either date, though it’s likely to be around 9 pm.
The season finale for the American medical drama House was shot entirely using 5D mark II video. Remarkable!
http://www.petapixel.com/2010/04/09/house-season-finale-filmed-entirely-with-canon-5d-mark-ii/
It’s kind of amazing to think that I’ve got everything I need right here to film an entire movie or TV show. Well. I’ve got the camera and the lenses. So all I’d need would be a set and a crew and a bunch of actors and a script and some lights and a few other things like that.
