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Showing posts from February, 2021

SFF Music Video of the Week - #81

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Welcome to the 3x3x3x3 installment! This week let's have a look at a Norwegian singer who released this track about the healing power of letting your emotions out at the ripe old age of 21. A powerful message about how does not make you weak to express yourself emotionally - in particular that it is OK to cry. An uplifting song that should be heard more in these especially trying times. As for the video ... well, she's got plants growing from her eyes. I'm choosing to interpret the whole thing as a coming-of-age tale for a dryad who does not know (or is rejecting) what she is. (I am certain that the actual intent is as that the growth of the plants are a metaphor for tears, and their cutting is the suppression of sadness. The releasing of the scissors and running being the acceptance of sorrow and the growth it brings.) So, here is 2019's "The River" by Aurora. 

Serpent of Fire by the sea

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 This evening we stayed longer than usual at the Scarborough Sunset Markets , and got to see the fire-dancing side of the performance group  Serpent of Fire .  They were great fun to watch, and were more than happy for me to take some photos of them. So have a look at these very cool folks!

Photography Scavenger Hunt Round 30 Results

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 So Round 30 of the Photography Scavenger Hunt is over, the judges have had their say, and the photos have been revealed. I did surprisingly well, with a couple of placings and a few HMs. So, have a look at everyone's wonderful work, especially our winner, Eric Raeber, and think about signing up for the next one, which will kick off in a few weeks. https://scavengerhunt.photography/round-30/ A collage of my entries

Things that annoy me about the 2021 W.A. Election

 So in a few weeks time the W.A. population go to the polls. The incumbent party (Labor) is riding an unprecedented wave of popularity, mainly due to our Premier, who basically got us through The 19 with minimal deaths, and a roaring economy.  The other side (Liberal/National coalition) has had their former leader jump ship just a few months ago, and have a perfectly decent, young, attentive, and (for a politician) honest chap in her place. He is largely resigned to the fact that he is not going to win. The Greens are just plugging away with a 'Keep them both honest" theme.  So what is annoying me? 1/ The Labor party is choosing to target the Opposition Leader's youth and the fact that he's only been in Parliament for one term. Not a good look, and Labor can do better than that. 2/ The Coalition is basing their campaign on the idea that Labor must be prevented from gaining control of the upper house (the Legislative Council) - or as they call it 'full control'.

SFF Music Video of the Week - #80

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So this week we are back with another Lindsey Stirling effort, with vocals by Dia Frampton (no relation to Peter).  This time we go full animation and down the daikaiju alleyway in a delightful little romp that is a healthy antidote to the current times. There are tropes a-plenty, and many of them averted, inverted, or otherwise played with, and, when it comes down to it, it is just plain fun. Enjoy "We Are Giants" by Lindsey Stirling (featuring Dia Frampton) from 2015.

Another thing I have learnt while shooting cyanotype.

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 Here is a scene I shot this afternoon: Here is the same scene as a cyanotype (reflected, unwashed, and still a negative): One thing really stands out for me - and that is how little the grass reflects UV. Here is a crop of the two images overlaid and scaled. There are some inconsistencies, due to the differing characteristics of the lenses, but you can see how little the unshaded grass is exposed. And the shaded grass is almost completely unexposed.  And, indeed, checking the research, I find that one of the lowest natural UV albedos is from grass, at 0.02. ( https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3846/1648-6897.2008.16.83-88 ) So my little hypothesis appears to have been borne out by independent research, and a source of other information about things I cannot see when taking the cyanographs, which will help me plan future exposures.  

SFF Music Video of the Week - #79

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Ok, time for a big jump back through time. The year is 1977, and Star Wars has just come out. Around the same time, a sound engineer's collaboration with a songwriter had just released their second album. Their first album explored the dark writings of a gothic writer and essayist. This one looked at the likelihood of robots and AIs ultimately subjugating and/or replacing us as the dominant life-form.  Originally inspired by the works of Asimov, they could not get the rights to one of his most famous stories, and so they were freed from the Three Laws and their essential optimism. To solve the lack of rights, a simple punctuation change was employed. They deleted a comma. I am talking about the second album by The Alan Parsons Project, 'I Robot'. APP's first commercial success at the time (Tales of Mystery and Imagination did not sell well until some years after release), it went platinum, and effectively launched the project's on-going success. This video is ... lo

Photography Scavenger Hunt Round 30 Behind The Scenes

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There is a tradition amongst the members of The Photography Scavenger Hunt of showing how  their various clever images came to be. Normally this is a "Here is how I made this particularly clever shot" sort of thing. Not this one. This is about the whole series of images. And I'm not actually going to show any of the ones I used.  Why? Because I'd like to think that I have been especially clever this round, even if I did not submit all ten images. And because it is so cool! First up, I have used a bunch of cameras. No big surprise there, lots of people do. But this is one of them. Mk1 Camera. There are a couple of special things about this camera. Firstly is that I built it myself. The second is that it has no shutter.  "Wait!", I hear you interject, "If it has no shutter, how do you control the exposure?" The answer lays in the the other side of the equation. What it is that I am shooting onto. Because it is not photographic film. Or even photograp

Cyanotype In-Camera Imaging - Part 3 - Final Thoughts

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38mm f/1.5 120 minutes. Back Garden.                                        There are two things that are very attractive to me about shooting in-camera images with cyanotype. One is that it is cheap, very cheap. No dark room, no expensive and troublesome to dispose of chemicals, no film - just the solutions and paper. The other is the curious juxtaposition of almost instant availability of the image afterwards against the long period of shooting.  This is one of the most rewarding aspects of the technique. You have almost instant gratification upon recovering the negative, combined with the forced patience required in setting and taking the shot. Added to that is an amount of uncertainty about exactly how the shot will turn out - because we cannot see exactly how much UV is reflecting off the surfaces being imaged. This makes the process very exciting. Not to mention the sometimes very alien scenes that result. Combine this with the very limited optical capabilities of also using hom

SFF Music Video of the Week - #78

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You can always rely on Swedish House Mafia for solid dance/trance track with a sponsored music video. And you can rely on a certain vodka brand to throw lots of money at all sorts of videos. In this case we have a robotic avatar greyhound race, a bunch of escapees from Bladerunner, and a plot that really goes nowhere very fast. Much like the music, really. But, it does technically fall into my remit, so here is 2012's "Greyhound" by Swedish House Mafia.