D'log

Digital 2 chemical:It’s odd, but once you have a camera capable of producing huge file sizes then you start to think seriously about things like…. using digital images to make colour slides (I’ve been asked to give a talk about my images in 2004) & to make chemical prints on photo-paper (I’m scouting around for […]

Little Song:Remember my idea for video haiku? Recently launched, Little Songs seems to be a potential home for such an art form.

Another 300D test photo: (large version, 94kb)

Jem Southam:Appealing & fresh landscape photography, by Jem Southam. I’d like to see more of his work; but there’s little online, and he doesn’t seem to have a web-site. His first solo London show, of new work, is currently running at the Hirshl. His most recent book is from 2000, titled Shape of Time: Rockfalls, […]

300D test photos:My first test photo (108kb) of the Canon 80-200mm zoom working with the 300D. This was at maximum zoom, taken through window glass. It may be a cheap consumer zoom, but I reckon “it’s the cat’s whiskers”.

Canon EOS 300D:I have a new camera . It’s a fully-fledged digital SLR, the new Crumpler bag to hold everything in. It’s quite a leap from the dinky little pocket-friendly Fuji to a chunky bag-hogging SLR with interchangable lenses. So far, I’m pleased with it, and will run it in tandem with the Fuji. I’ll […]

Flood Gates:The world’s first global online premiere of a feature-film opens today. Nothing So Strange is a well-reviewed faux documentary about the assassination of Bill Gates. It’s available via the BitPass micropayments system for $5. No ‘digital rights management’ malarkey; once you’ve downloaded it then you own your copy, just like a DVD. Only cheaper, […]

America 24/7:America 24/7 is published on Monday. It’s a book made by pro & amateur digital photographers across America, who engaged in the largest collaborative photo project in history. The wired project was working on “net time” from the start; publicised by Google, the call produced 250,000 uploaded images. All were taken during one week […]

Dot phot:The Canon 300D camera gets Slashdot-ed.

Festival fun:The Arts Council has just released a new report, Festivals & the creative region (PDF, 1.8mb). It’s a study of what benefits arts & cultural festivals bring to the East Midlands region.

Funding fun:The New Art Gallery at Walsall is to be investigated over the council subsidies it gets.

Spiking theory:Spiked reviews After Theory.

Going, going, gone?:The Government predicts another forthcoming exodus from London and the South East; this time it’s not the educated young downshifters or the retiring baby-boomer generation. It’s the key public-services workers.

More Autumn photos: (large version, 54kb) (large version, 50kb) Hopefully the photos will have less grain and be (maybe) better in future; I’ve just been offered a £3500 project to document the work of 10 artists, so I can afford to splash out on the Canon EOS 300D.

Greymatter v1.3Greymatter is back in active development, and Greymatter v1.3 was released a few weeks ago. It’s the software which runs this weblog.

Leaves & eaves:Trees are difficult to photograph well, even at the best of times. Perhaps now is the best of times, with the fantastic early Autumn colours and strong sunlight. (large version, 65kb) (large version, 80kb) (large version, 70kb)

WebMon:WebMon is clean, simple freeware for monitoring sites which you visit frequently hoping they’ll update, but which rarely do. When they do finally update, it lets you know.

Somewhere in China:I went looking to see what creative street photography is doing in China. I found a few: Liu Zheng; Zheng Nong; Mark Leong; Doug Kim. A couple of photoblogs too: 21mm & ZiBoy (Wen Ling) which features candids of what Beijing’s youth are up to. And there’s a big new book, An Anthology […]

“You canna’ get there from here”:The Scottish Arts Council has just published an 84-page free report on the incomes & expenditures of Scottish artists, Visual Artists Audit (PDF, 500kb).

Broadland Britain:New research from the Prudential estimates that 1.4 million people have already downshifted, confirming what I’m increasingly hearing from rural-minded artists and creatives who own a gentrified city property and/or have an inheritance which will give them a ticket out of the cities. That’s one in 14 active workers in the UK, gone already, […]