Art Classes DIY

I walked 15 miles yesterday (half by choice) and had lots of time to think. Sometimes it just feels quite good to be alone. Have a shitty camera and shoot with it, because real artists don't care about their equipment - yeah, real artists also die from overdose or kill themselves, or both - please go ahead and be a real artist. Start today.

What we learned this week:

1) Pictures of yourself in a gallery are cool. They help the person who sees your pictures link up with your experience (no thanks. please fuck off and just don't look at my pictures. I refuse to use the timer to take pictures of myself. end of story)

2) Trash is cool. pictures of trash create identity. People link to that. Look, we use the same laxative. I can relate to that - i might like his pictures. (Imbecile!)

3) Subtle is not always good. Subtle is good because it sounds intelligent when you say it. Not when you do it ( subtle in pictures is bad because most idiots won't fucking get it )

4) art can be made with compact cameras. They are nice and very very good. People don't notice you ( I hate compact cameras. And people who take shitty pictures with them and after that hang them at the Tate Modern. Only an idiot could write a book about 20 unsharp pixelated pictures done with a phone )

4) The verbal diarrhea that you produce is always more important than others ( for me it's a rule - because you're still reading this )

But i suppose the path less traveled and not taking the free ride in your own life kinda make better topics of discussion. Dead chickens and pictures of your feet just don't cut it.

Ektar

So in the weekend i had a few rolls of film to put through a Leica M6, of which most interesting was one i saw in a shop and i wanted it: Ektar 100. Here are some of the test results.

Friends will be friends - Fundraiser

One of the most important assets you can have in life is friends. They can't be bought, or sold, but i presume that you could get a pretty nice price for a really good one.

And it's friends you help when they're in need because you know that whatever happens, they'll have your back for better or worse.

I presume it's my time to try and help a friend and, since there's not much i can do, i'm writing this.

My friend, Andreea, is one of only a handful of people i know who have the strength and determination to do what she did throughout the years. She owns a highly visited blog where she writes quite frequently, which has received a number of awards. The texts there have created the basis for two theater plays which have been on for a while now and have also been awarded important prizes in Austria.

Her life depends on a specialized electric wheelchair which she doesn't have anymore. A new one is priced around 5000 euros and it's quite hard to get the money. Friends have helped as much as they could but at this point there is still need for 500 more euros.

For this she's organized a sale, where friends have put up stuff like earrings, vases, blouses and frames, for people to purchase in order to raise money. I offered to put up two of my prints as well, for not very much money - but in the hope that they'll help. All of the stuff is CRAFTED AND PAINTED BY HAND (well save for my images) and is up for sale for very very little money. They're excellent gifts for anyone and their prices are a whole lot less than what you would pay in a normal shop for a consumer item - plus that all of them are unique. So what i would say is go to

http://www.andreeadora.wordpress.com/

Check out the pictures and see if there's anything you like. If so (even if it's in another language) drop a line at blogcaritabil@gmail.com and ask them to calculate the price in pounds for you. YOU'LL BE SURPRISED!

Give it a shot. It won't hurt and it will actually help someone and make you feel a whole lot better about yourself.

What do you do when there's nothing there to be done?

Lately i have this feeling i'm not doing enough with my time. There's an underlying fear of failure, which everyone feels i guess. But throughout the day and in the evenings i get that shitty feeling you all hate: that somebody else who has your possibilities would have done so much more. Maybe it's true. Maybe it isn't. I suppose i'll never know because i won't care enough to do so.

On the other hand, what do you do when there's nothing to do? You have Canons, Hasselblads, Mamyias, Horsemans, Nikons, Wistas and i've probably named just about most proper camera makers - at your service.

What do we do with them?

I have a camera, now what? How do i get the subject? How do i make the first step?

Is there a way of convincing yourself that messenger/facebook are not the answer? They're fine and dandy when you have something that you MUST do and avoid it by staying on messenger, but when you want to take pictures, have a series, do what is known as PERSONAL WORK (the reason you started photography in the first place) - what do you do? where do you start?

I know the answer. If you would ask me i could probably tell you what to do.

But surely enough i can't seem to be doing it myself. It's only reasonable. The people who can't do much, teach other people how to do their thing. It's the way the world works. Odd, isn't it?

PS: that is my fridge
PPS: i have lots more film* than food now
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*the amount of film is constant. the food resources drastically diminished.

The Global and the Local

This is a test shot of what i am going to do for my latest project. Shot on Wista, double exposure with Metz and Pocket Wizards. In our friendly Carpenter's Arms, over a pint. And with the ever lasting assistance of Denisa

Cheese

Monday has never been my strongest point really. I just made it out of bed around 12 o'clock (because i was watching stupid horror movies until 5) driven by hunger. Let's cook. What? Mashed potatoes. With?

C H E E S E

Cheese is like, the ultimate food. There are more types of cheese in the world than types of languages. Fact. Cheese is good with anything. Fact. Cheese keeps you happy. Fact.

I have a strong conviction that if people would eat more cheese, there would be less wars in the world - simple explanation to it too. The people who control the cheese thus control the world. And thus the world would be again controlled by the natural state of things - the people who own the food own the world. Right now the people who own the guns own the world. But usually the people who have big guns compensate for something (thus the blushing when they're naked). Guns are like purses. But will explain that later.

Going now to eat cheese.

Good Times Gone

And it's Sunday. How good. The day God said...not sure what but i bet it was important in the context he said it. So i woke up feeling like seven different kinds of shit after the party. Not hung over. Just tired. And strange. Aaaaaanyways...

Firstly, thanks for inviting me Simon. Happy birthday and... well it's all in the greeting card. Read your Facebook inbox, you got a good news on our previous night's topic.

In other news, i did nothing useful today, except talk, after many years, with somebody i used to know and helped out a little bit, or like to think i tried. I had nothing better to do, so after an omlette, i started to watch movies. Shitty ones. And mushy. some violent. Mostly bad.

Like "License to wed". That, my friends, or people who read this blog because they've got nothing better to do, is a waste of time. It was such a sweet movie, i almost got diabetes by the end of it. Weddings and fights and PMS chick with bad cheesy lines. Damnit. Being useless to humanity has never been more degrading.

But it got me thinking. The movie is shit save for a line:

"This is a non smoking flight but you're alowed to light anything up the minute we land in Jamaica"

Funny.

So yeah, it did get me thinking about being good at what you do. Like movies. Those people were most definitely bad at what they did. They sucked. Really really bad. Morally bankrupt and financially illiterate Americans (i'm a hypocrite here because i fit the bill quite well). There's no point in reading this entry to be honest. But if you got this far, i must confess i am eating Camembert (Kamilla and Denisa know) while typing. Disgusting. But tasty. and if you got this far, i must admit that you were just as bored as i was when i started writing.

PS: the picture has no link to anything. It's just a view from the window of someone i sued to know. Cool view.

Public threats

Location Lighting Workshop

i have to admit that any school day that starts with: "Did i ever tell you the story about me, Naomi Campbell and the cupboard?" can not be anything but a good one. As today proved. The story in question did include my teacher, Naomi Campbell, a cupboard, hot coffee and a brush. Let your minds wonder people. So we went on location to shoot and get used to the idea of artificial light. Which frankly some of us really needed. Myself included, as far as complex lighting is concerned. The basic 2 - 3 lights i can handle but metering over that is a bit of a head fuck.

as always, why would i pay attention to what everybody was talking about, when i could step back and photograph what everyobody was doing? So basically i was of no actual use, save for the fact that my Metz with the Pocket Wizard kept going off and i was nowhere to be seen. Just left it there in the hope that somebody would sit in the right position and fall into my photographic trap. No actually, i was just trigger happy today. Here are some tests - as well as some final ideas we got out of today.

1) Herebe the results from the 1Ds Mark 2:




As well as from the 4x5 Wista, with experimental black and white film from China. Cheap and effective:




And these are the making of images.

Theory and Practice

In theory, Rothko said that the artists make people see the world through their eyes. Now i came out of a class where at least half of the people were lobotomized, boring, or just plane stupid and i ask you: WHO THE FUCK WOULD WANT TO SEE THE WOULD THROUGH YOUR EYES?

Project Pictures

This is the final three images for "The Man Made and the Natural" project with Dan Holdsworth.





and the second series, which are more like a test.

Tides

I went again, yesterday, to the sea side to work on my project. I arrived in Broadstairs quite earlyish and started to shoot. Thanks for the flash (he knows who i'm talking about) and the borrwoed music (she knows as well). It was an odd day, alternating rain and sun sustained the feeling.

Odd thing. Click on the first two images and you'll see they're a lot lighter. Strange.

With the high cliffs on one side, filled with caves and openings, and the sea on the other, as well as no traces of human beings (which i can't say i mind), i spent the day doing about 35-40 kilometers, walking between towns on the beach - mostly for myself. But for the project as well, fuck it. It felt like the island Robinson Crusoe would have been marooned on. Just a whole lot bigger.