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Showing posts from November, 2011

Inkjet fail

2 into 1

NFS

Self As Landscape | Make Your Own Book

That's me in the corner

4MM

What to wear

Part of the motivation to have a dressing-up shoot today was to see what I might wear to the Uncertain States salon opening on Dec 6th.  I'm a bit nervous about it as I'm not particulary relaxed at social occasions but also I want to take the opportunity to go out in something other than regular male clothing.  Which adds additional anxiety and fear is a great inhibitor.  I'll be travelling from South London on public transport and I'm self-conscious most of the time anyway.  Grayson Perry made a valid point a few years ago on some programme he was making that transvestites need to stop making excuses for holding themselves back and blaming 'the world' out there.  It's not as bad as you think it will be.  That inspired me to take the risk a few times - though travelling around dressed up does make you realise hardly any transvestite people do it in the same way you rarely see openly gay couples walking around hand in hand or sharing a kiss.  Most of the time

eBay big shoe fail

The light fades quickly these days so my dress-up shoots only last 2 - 3 hours after a morning's prep dithers  into early afternoon.  So there's even less chance to take a time-out (and go bid on eBay) half way through.  Anyway the amazing shoes I'd seen last night would go for a whole lot , so there was no real point.  So post shoot and the light is gone and dresses and skirts and tops are scattered everywhere and I set the camera to download and had a peek on eBay.  They went for a ultra cheap £2.20.  Oh.  Obviously (?) there are far more significant disheartening events in the world but ouch!  E-ow.

Fade-insistent inks/anti-value

I don't know if there is much of a market for anti-archival inks for home photo printing but I'm interested.  I'd like ink which is carefully designed to have very limited stability and which will quickly colour shift badly (across various hues, ideally) before then fading in a few days to next to nothing, just a smudge, an indistinct trace in, ooh, say 26 weeks.  Give or take an hour or two. My fridge freezer was looking bare, down to a 50 gm of cheese in one half and three-quarters of a packet of frozen mixed veg in the other, so I gave in and went to the supermarket after work, camera obligitory and packed in the morning.  I even managed to remember to actually get some food this time and as security only swept by as I was on my way to the till and had pocketed the ultra compact there was no need even for some rambling justification or other.

30 per cent off

The Blurb discount on orders of two or more books (see below) has crept up from 20 per cent to 25 per cent and has now reached 30 per cent (till Nov 28 2011).  My recent editing-phobia has correspondingly lessened from 100 per cent to 95 per cent to a slightly less oppressive 90 per cent.  A level of discomfort I found I could handle for about 75 minutes today and start the process of hacking my way through recent folders of photos I've mostly not properly looked at since downloading and backing up. Like Garry Winogrand where shooting became the over-riding compulsion and the editing process was gradually abandoned (left to John Szarkowski at MOMA to labour through) there are advantages of not actually looking at what you've shot and just to keep on making more.  You don't have to acknowledge your huge failure rate or get trapped selecting which of one or two (or three or four) near identical images is the better.  It's tough but as long as Blurb keeps offering  disco

Unexpected Offers

Some days are just way better than the average day (which is OK, on the whole, I'm glad to say) but now and then something special and unexpected happens and for a few hours life is different - sort of the way you vaguely wondered if it would turn out to be (a long time ago).  These satisfying interludes are usually accompanied after a few hours by a slight foreboding. This irregular day followed soon after a phone conversation the night before that had finished at 4.30 am.  So I was feeling a bit light-headed from lack of sleep which gave things a slightly pleasant unreality anyway. The definite highlights, though were two unexpected offers.  One was an email from photographer Richard Ansett who is considering including me in a show he is curating which is planned for next year WOW! and a brief message from Ursula who likes to dress in latex outfits including full face masks and who is deeply into S&M and who likes transvestites  and wants me to get in touch with her as s

A Room Of One's Own

Gift wrap

Cafe Show

The limitation of only showing one photo means I probably can't show a diptych (unless it's tiny and on a single sheet of print paper)  - so I'm submitting this image from a couple of years ago for the consideration.

photographer-model - 4MM

The Look/The Sky/The Construction Site

From somewhere deep down inside I wish I looked like her

eBay dream dresses temptation

It's hard to believe that for well under £100 delivered (from China) it's possible to have dresses as stunning as this : O

With text... or without

Hmm.  

Shop fail

I went to get some food shopping for the weekend from the local supermarket but brought my camera along, too.  The last time I'd taken some Value Range shots there I'd set the camera to too low an ISO to avoid noise and many of the files suffered from camera-shake, so this was a chance to try again at 200 and also take more than one shot of each thing so maybe I'd get a useable one.  When I'd done a lap of the store and pushed my trolley up to the till I noticed I had hardly bought anything - an aubergine, a box of three pairs of sunblush sheer gloss tights (my total faves - and at half price, too so that was a bonus) and some crusty cobs.  I'd been distracted.  Sometimes it feels as if photographing things is like putting them in my trolley to take home.  It would be Value products only which would look kinda odd.  And I don't have a cat.

&

The little Uncertain States cafe show in Highgate opens in a month's time, on Dec 6th.  It's problematic getting time off from work just then, so I might not actually make it along - even though I'm already considering what to wear  if I did go - currently I'm likely to choose a plain but lovely velvety fabric black knee length skirt, with black tights and long black boots with a two-three inch heel.  Not sure about what top - tops are a challenge.  As too is picking one image to show (more important than what to wear?).  I tried a few combinations of photos this evening from the last two shoots I've done this month, one indoors, one outside.  It's an exercise in indecision and I almost certainly won't go with any of these - but at least I've started so that'something.

Signs

Abstract Hair

Low light and high heels

An autumn day with unrelenting cloud cover meant exposure times of around a second and a half in my front bedroom this afternoon.

Swoon dresses

I had the day off work and dropped off some Uncertain States magazines to the University photography and art departments.  I'd hesitated as it is potentially 'coming out' in my own city and I have no control over who finds out, family or friends.  They are largely self-contained  worlds, though so I don't think that copies will necessarily be circulated among local people.  I will probably ask if I can leave some at The Collection, the local art gallery, at some point, and that will be much more public.  Afterwards I popped into a few charity shops nearby - and came across a swoon dress.  These are rare occurances of finding a dress so 'perfect' that I feel sensory overload just taking if off the rail.  For a few moments it's quite disorientating - maybe like striking gold - and I feel my heart beating faster and harder and even lose some of my usual self-consciousness at looking through women's clothing.  I also feel a protective urge to keep hold on

Flight, and then again