my website

This is now my official website. I did have another that was, but I have decided that this blog better serves the purpose that I wish it to.

I have been, in recent times, taking quite a few self-portraits. I always have, however I have done so more than usual. This one I made some time back this year, but didn't post. However, here it is now, it is quite intriguing I think.

tree

It seems I havn't posted this image yet. It is from the same area as the rock and concrete images. I had thought that I had run out of the images that I had taken in this area, it seems there is this last one left.

I have been making quite a few more colour images than black and white images over the recent months. However you can't tell by looking at this blog can you!? I will have to get around to posting them too, however in my defence we are in the process of moving, very shortly this computer will have to get packed away, and for a few weeks we will be on dial up interent. Shock horror! So I will have to see how posting from that will work! So posting will possibly be a tad slower than usual, or maybe it won't be... we will just have to see.

pylon

As I said in an earlier post, I was truly inspired in this area in The South Island, so much so that I think every image that I have posted in recent times has come from there! Here is yet another, don't worry, I think I may have run out of them now.

Pylons are another industrial image that I come back to time and again. There is something about them that really intrigues me. It is both their physical form as well as their purpose.

Rembrant and the agument of the value in art

Here is a post in one of my new found art blogs that I posted about recently. After reading the post, looking at the picture and then reading the comments, I started to think, 'well this is very interesting'.

It's an argument (all though I'm not sure what side of the argument I'm on at the best of times) that I often have, sometimes just with myself if necessary. The argument is about the value of art and where it derives from. In this particular instance linked to above a painting of Rembrandt that experts have decided is not a self portrait by him, but rather a painting of him by one of his students has just sold for US$4.5 million instead of the predicted US$3,000 that would have been more appropriate of a painting of Rembrandt. So then the article and comments go on about how perhaps this buyer knew something no one else did, as a real Rembrandt can and does sell for US$25 million, in which case he got a bargain. And they say how it does look very much like a Rembrandt...

Well, this is the point of question for me. Should an art piece be worth something for who it is by or for its quality? If this painting was of a quality that it was almost impossible to tell that it wasn't a Rembrandt, then should it not be worth the same as Rembrandt? For what is it that made Rembrandt’s worth so much in the beginning, his talent, style etc?

The other side of the argument is of course that Rembrandt was the creative genus behind the style, and the copier of that style was just a copier. And of course the fame side of things comes in to play too; after all, most people would rather have a date with a famous person rather than someone that just looks like a famous person.

In reality, I would much rather have a real Rembrandt rather than a copy of a Rembrandt, but isn't it interesting, how much value we can put onto something and why!

rock

After not being too inspired to make many images of landscape type images for a while, when we drove past an area in the South Island, to my own surprise my camera almost jumped out of its sleeping bag. This image and the last several before it are all from the same area. My attraction to a very industrial landscape is evident here. I'm not sure why I like industry aesthetically as in general I'm a bit of a hippy (so I'm told anyway). Nonetheless I always come back to it, perhaps it is the age old 'man vs nature' that I like about it.

dream home

"As I progressed further with my project, it became obvious that it was really unimportant where I chose to photograph. The particular place simply provided an excuse to produce work... you can only see what you are ready to see - what mirrors your mind at that particular time.

-George Tice

Not too long ago I finished reading a book that I had been meaning to read for some time - Susan Sontags on Photography. Overall, it can be summed up to be a very good book on photography, written even though in the late 1970s it still pertains to today equally well. There were certain parts that I thought were overly verbose, and others that I thought were just plain opinion and not correct (according to my opinion anyway). But mostly, it had some good ideas and points, most ideas I had heard of or considered before, yet still really good to see it all worked through in words on paper. I will have to read it again, as it contains a lot of theory that can really only be absorbed upon repetition. The above quote is out of the book, and is one that I quite enjoy.

concrete (2)

Here is another image taken a few meters further down from the previous post concrete.


I think I'm almost starting to think of myself as an application writer rather than an artist. Just when I thought I'd done all of the ones I needed to do for this year, one more comes up. But I'm almost done now, and I was thinking, well, what do I do now. Then I realised, oh that's right... take photos! Ha! Very exciting.