Town of Tin

I recently took a trip to Stockton Beach, beyond Newcastle, to see this historic cluster of corrugated sheet dwellings isolated on miles of beach and sand dunes. I was taken in by the total lack of visual clutter. The visual white-noise we have become accustomed to in our city lives is replaced by two dimensions of sand and sky.

Stockton Beach

The weather stayed heavily overcast which only heightened feeling of desolation of this surreal moonscape. The sands of NSW's largest mobile sand mass were deposited here over 6000 years ago (must have been a helluva storm), forming dunes 30m high and constantly sculpted by the wind. Reminders of its WW2 history of barbed wire and tank traps are still uncovered as the sands shift. The shore is unforgiving, and many vessels have beached in the ferocious windstorms that cane the coast.

Sport fishermen roam about, and their 4x4's turn the beach into an extension of the M1, but a breed of blokes stay here permanently in tin dwellings. Full time fishermen, men of the sea, for whom a shower is a water tank with a spout, and a dunny is, well, a hole in the sand. Drink, sleep, fish, no other crap to get in the way. They welcomed us into their home and offered a place to spend the weekend.

I'm grateful to them, esp Dave Chapman, for the experience.

Shoot for M&C Saatchi

Well chuffed to get to work with young and dynamic creatives Nick Bonney and Matt Weston on an funky idea they had. Pulled a shoot together on a shoestring budget so I self-produced and got very hands on. It makes one realise just how much pre prod work goes into a project, even a relatively small one. Casting was spot on, and I was stoked to have stylist Kathy McKinnon and SFX MUA Jen Carlson aboard. The shots came together nicely, albeit juggling time issues and 35+ deg heat. I'll post the finished product in another post, but here are some outtakes.

Mosman Photography Prize

I popped in an entry for the local photo comp (mainly because it was free entry) and was chuffed to get the call that I won a category. Even better news came a week or two later when I sold a print through the Mosman Art Gallery. Strangely it wasn't the one that won the prize, but one of my favourite images of Lenny Warry. Anyway, it made it a cool 2 for 2. Hopefully I'll sell many more prints in the future. Congrats to fine artist Ben Ali Ong for winning the main category with the haunting Songs of Sorrow and Stephen Weissner for the amateur category. I really liked Stephens Anzac day image.

Now I'm gonna have a crack at the National Portrait Prize. If you gonna run with the big dogs...

SoHi

I am very proud to be a contributor to the ubercool SoHi Magazine. Its the kind of publication you just want to see your work in. Beautiful 250gm matte stock, minimalist layout, limited production runs, zero ads. Dig it. I hope they achieve great things.

Better Now

Just had a beer "n chat with Phil from the band "Serenik" They are wanting to use an image from my Personal work as album art for their EP "Better Now" http://www.myspace.com/serenik . Methinks its good exposure, so I'm happy to oblige. I wish them the best success, but, if you make it big ,Serenik, I'm gonna collect. More about this later...
Listen..file:///private/var/tmp/folders.502/TemporaryItems/com.apple.mail.drag-T0x40a320.tmp.PVU2v2/01%20Better%20Now.mp3

Peoples Choice

Always nice, as Friday pace slows, to see a little email to say that you've won something. Yup, after two gallery shows and a website poll, those two Zim painters have been chosen as the Peoples Choice of show. Yay. 1x Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection coming to me! Friday eve is here. Bon weekend

A guy, a valiant, a naked female form.

I'm having fun with recreating traditional darkroom techniques digitally. A solarized split-toned b/w print in the darkroom is a laborious process, but with a little playing around a very acceptable result can be achieved in software. A bit sad really, when true craft is lost, cheapened by digital, but it serves a purpose now and its pointless resisting it. At the end its the photograph that counts and not how it was achieved. The benefits of the digital age to are too vast and exciting to get stuck pining about how it used to be.
With every conceivable image treatment a tweak away, I find I am slowly being drawn back to an unmanipulated, natural aesthetic. Might be awhile off though.