yuletide

i think a new year's resolution is in order.




more looking





less snoozing! and getting back on track with picture taking.


this is my brother, with whom i share a cornucopia of our most redeeming qualities, such as pretending to be a festive paprika raccoon.

productivity levels reach a new high

an accurate visual rendition of how sharp le brain is feeling.

going to the shop round the corner twice (effort!) in a span of three days is surely more than enough reason to have spent the remainder of all these days indoors writing an essay working on a research project doing seminar work taking daily photos socialising with other homo sapiens procrastinating on the internet.

alright, shan't be too negative. i have
1. only succumbed to one toast-for-all-meals day;
2. played one game of trivial pursuit (social);
3. made an international call with family;
4. attempted 'exercise' (with resulting two-day muscle aches);
5. and written 'RESEARCH WORKBOOK' on the first page of the research workbook.

the procrastination snake has started eating its own tail, and it's harder to start retaking photographs when consumed by the self-induced guilt of not being up for it for several weeks. the truth is, taking dimly lit tungsten-cast photos of my bedroom walls every evening is only starting to further underline the fact that i don't.go.out.

LXXXIX & LXXXX - time

i'm losing track of when i've taken which photos - i've definitely forgotten on some days. i've been developing and scanning and printing for the time project and been in contact with photos all day, i've forgotten i haven't taken some more. but perhaps the interwebs will be forgiving. there are some days that i haven't yet put up because i was using a disposable camera and the photos i took those days were too underexposed to really show anything. and crap photos from some other times. maybe i'll scan the negatives at some point just for the sake of documentation.

so here are some photographs taken on sunday and monday, for time.



























the objective of this project was to explore the concept of time and make a series of at least six images using analogue 35mm colour film.

i decided to go with the present as time - i'd been reading up on zen buddhism and was inspired by the notion of the present as all there is, no matter how banal or boring it may seem, but still as glorious a moment as any. i decided to juxtaposition this with imagery from traditional travel advertising, because i felt like that was a good comparison in what not to believe in: that life is only amazing when you're doing something extreme or escaping to turquoise beaches. it's still the same person doing those things. it's still sixty seconds in one minute.

i used my own home as the location, because that is obviously where i most often find myself bored and wishing i was "doing something better". i set about exploring how little everyday things could be presented in a curious, positive way, using the aforementioned travel clichés as starting points but not as the end in and of itself. anine and charles graciously feature in these photos (thanks!), but i intentionally made them quite impersonal so as to not become too portrait-like.

for the actual pin-up i'll present them differently, so that the blue wavey photos will seem to flow through the series (it looks a bit odd put up this way).

overall i'm pretty satisfied - i feel like i utilised the skills i knew i had, plus a bit more, and knew what the images would look like at the moment of shooting, as opposed to hoping for lucky mistakes to get it through. i tried to do something else at first, using a flash and stuff, but that just looked quite confusing. i still don't have a working light meter, so all the exposures were guesstimated. in terms of subject matter, i did stay quite firmly within my comfort zone, though given the personal nature of the series i guess this is justifiable. i also wish i'd done more 'scenes' so there would be more to pick and edit from. next time i'll try to branch out a bit.

:)