Seeing as we all need to have our opinions, here are my thoughts on Instagram as a choice of photography style / medium... [see mine here if you want]
Who cares? shoot what you like with what you like. If you like the result, great.
Sony weapons grade | Welcome back
I'm going to kick this post off with "I'm not an Audiophile" ...I'm a listener, a lover of, a player of and a believer in good music. I'm the kind of guy that stands in front of his home audio stuff and smiles. I listen to everything from Miles to Metallica, lots of formats, lossy mp3 to Flac to CD to SACD and Vinyl, too... (Project, thanks)
I was taken along to the unveiling of the (one of only two current pairs in existence?) Sony SS-AR1 today, along with the new 84" 4K screen and the 4K projector, too... And there really is only one word that sums my experience to a point, and that is...
WOW. <- This should be 96 point...
The AR1's are truly a work of aural and visual art...
To go along with the AR series, which I'm told won't make to Australian shores just yet (with a projected price tag expected to be marginally above your regular 'off the shelf boxed hifi', I'd imagine a limited CE market, more aimed at purists, audiophiles and people that like to involuntarily smile whilst listening to a 55 year old recording of Nat King Cole...oh MY goodness.. spine tingling) Is the ES series, also wildly amazing, but after hearing the AR series, they were going to have to bring a lot to the floor to impress. Impress they did! Married to the 9.2 channel STRDA5800ES and fronted by the 4K Bravia, watching Battle : LA was nothing short of mind blowing.... The 4K Bravia, from even a mere meter away is outstanding.... (I had to sit for a second and think of a word strong enough to convey my experience!)
Experience
There's something I want to admit... I read a lot of reviews about tech and I sometimes form opinions based on what others say - not the fly by night "this is how it is" "off the cuff" type, but yes... I heard about the new 4K 84" Sony and thought - Yes, I'd need a new house to fit one of these things... After today, after standing 4' away from this thing and being totally immersed in the on screen. Not seeing any pixelation, no shake, no lines, no artefact ... this thing is a weapon... It's certainly not for the average Joe (Or, in my case, Simon) but if you simply 'want the best' and your budget allows for 'the best' ...just get one - I've never seen anything like it.
My Projection?
Leaving the second room, and heading into the room with the new Sony 4K Projector, The SXRD VPLVW1000ES. Four times 1080p resolution, anamorphic 3D and 1080p to 4K upscaling... I'm not a huge projector fan - I've had a bad experience in the past, Yeah, as above really *WOW*
Sony, thanks for making me smile today - despite never leaving the game, you're sure as hell BACK in it...
Bravo.
A non-set of images for you, and some music...
I've downloaded an app tonight [air, for the geeks] called BulkR which is currently downloading 6,816 of my images from Flickr - some I've lost over the last couple of years, so this is a good backup. Original size, too! Here's a few that have come down so far... some fun moments! Let me talk you through them...
So, the shot above, it's Nathan Pask and me going a little crazy in Jodi's old office late one evening... We had set up our cameras and were taking silly photos - The semi-funny story behind this is that somehow Google managed to get this photo in front of Jodi's boss... he had to deny all knowledge - or something like that. Quite amusing really! Nathan Pask is a very good photographer, you should go check him out
This is a pier in Los Angeles, we were in L.A. for a few days on the way to the snow one year, did the usual touristy things...
This is my friend Louise, or Susan, depending on who you are. This was a weekend down the beach with Disco Stu (from the internet) and Nathan Pask, we had a great weekend including comedy glasses on the sand + cameras. You may just be able to make out that I'm also wearing a Scottish ginger wig, Mr Nathan is in a (?) Pirate mask perhaps? Great weekend.
I think this was our last holiday before Sebastian arrived. M was rather large and it was very hot. This is Greece somewhere, a great trip.
You can see in this guy's glasses that there is a sunny English sky reflecting. That's out at Knebworth - the very first Sonisphere festival, and I think Alice In Chains first outting to the UK with their new front man pictured here, Will DuVall... RIP Layne [nod to fave film, Singles]
And this is Hannes Arch, he is flying in the Edge 540 you can see here... Background look odd? It's the o2 Arena.... London.... Innit.... It was great photographing the Redbull air race, I had to pretend to be a woman named Olly, but hey - these are the sacrifices we make, right?
Thought I should take you back to 1992 for 6:56 seconds... Pearl Jam at Pinkpop - if you can get and watch the whole concert, do it... it will change your life...
Keep on rockin' in the free world... thank Neil... Eddie... Yay for Polaroids...
A Short Story : Terry the man #62019A
Terry the man lived in a little house, and slept on a little rug. Terry was a simple man with simple pleasures, he liked the feel of the 23 year old brown woollen rug under his smooth yet strangely durable body. He liked the way the tufts in the carpet gently poked his little back and legs.
One day, Terry climbed the back of one of the 46 year old kitchen chairs to take a look over the massive pile of shop catalogues that someone had started collecting, Terry had no idea why they would do this, but it wasn't his to reason why. Terry climbed his little heart out, up the tattered chair filled with horses hair stuffing until he reached the very top! Reaching his arms high above his head, which he does often, he gazed out across the countryside. There wasn't all that much to see Terry though... Not much at all...
Just then, some miles below, or perhaps just 73.6cm, Terry heard a commotion, a terrible din of some description! Terry picked up his gaze and focused on the sound! he couldn't quite make out what it was, growing louder, clicking and clacking! The muscular, yet small (for his age) plastic man wasn't scared, he'd happily tackle the approaching clicking clacking phantom HEAD ON! Terry stood his ground, as only a plastic figure with no actual working legs can.. His steely gaze fixed on the crest of the hill, err, table...
He was ready, his hands were steady, he got varm.. oh, sorry, that was an Eminem [M&M? Whatever] lyric that popped into Terry's head.... he was there, like a tiny plastic mule, poised - ready to strike! On the edge of the valley of doom that was the side table! It was right at that moment that Terry caught a glimpse of the reflection of himself in the end of my 100mm macro... Terry smiled a cheeky smile, flicked me the bird and then stood there wondering what in the plastic devil of playtimes name I was doing... I explained to him that I was waiting for Steve, Terry didn't buy it...
Scratching his head, Terry got a firm grip on his small, but big for a plastic man sized nerves and had a good hard look in the mirror, the mirror with disco-ball dots (which he's sure his friend Chrystal would like) ..he thought about life, the universe and how a camera had made him think his life was about to end... Sometimes life is like that...
The End... for someone... what will happen next time! #62019
Goodbye Channel Nine, Hello Mark...
Photographers, globally, have one similar problem - be it perceived or not - in that people, security people, managers, police, whoever, seem to want to ask them what they're doing... So, in keeping with the standard, I was just wandering around the block taking some happy snaps with the pretty amazing (yes, really!) new Sony Powershot HX20V... There's a massive building site that is the old channel nine building just up the road and there are some very interesting old buildings, as well as a handful of tractors (Seb loves tractors!) so I was standing taking a couple of pictures when Mark asked me what I was doing... (outside the boundary on public property)
As has been the case on previous occasion, I immediately thought "Who is he to ask me what I'm doing!" ...but, for a change, took a moment to think before I answered! Yay me.. I told Mark that I thought it was almost amusing that the building had "Live Sub Station" sprayed on the side... like it was some living building... Then I asked Mark who he was and what he was doing - turns out Mark is the foreman on the whole project and was just wondering what I was up to. We had a long old chat about how it was all going and how it was going to effect the area and what are the strange noises that Seb asks me about "What's that noise?" (Turns out it's bead blasting to remove old lead based paint, and they keep a mist in the air to remove any dust / risk of breathing the stuff in)
...all in all, a much better result that having Mark haul me over the coals because I got my back up and replied with some smart comment like "I know my rights, you can't tell me to go away, I'm an awesome street photographer, look at my awesome camera, I'm so old skool, you can't controllll meeeee!!!..." oh, hang on, I may be letting my recent personal experiences with some ridiculous street photographers, who are an embarrassment to us all, cloud my comments... hmmm
When you stop and think about it, there's no reason someone shouldn't be able to simply ask you what you're doing, really, is there? A straight answer will pretty much always defuse the situation, and if you need to, show the person a photo or two (I showed Mark the new Sony..) ..who cares?
We're all just trying to do our thing, I guess, so I am going to be more helpful from now on and not so daftly, unnecessarily aggressive when people say "Hey, what are you doing there?" ..well, not aggressive, just unhelpful...
On a personal note, I'm looking forward to the channel nine property being finished - as long as we don't end up with a massive traffic problem, which based on what the sausage lady says, we shouldn't... And the facilities that the place will have are going to be a great benefit to the community.
Fun.