24
June
2009

Bits & Bobs II

Random links of interest:

Purpose, always an interesting browse on photography. Ditto for Ahorn, 1000words and Burn all of which I've recently started to follow. One story that sticks out recently is that Kodak are discontinuing Kodachrome 64 after 74 years; it had to happen sometime I guess. While I use digital I can remember back when I was getting into photography that the film was pretty damned iconic, the gold standard by which all others were judged.

Environmental documentary available HOME on YouTube. I'm a sucker for this type of thing, especially when the photography is so good. Speaking of sumptuous visuals, but in an entirely different direction, Tim Burton's OTT take on Alice in Wonderland looks like being madder than a mad thing. Loving the colour work of Andy Gilmore, and his illustrations aren't bad either: talented git. Also muchly liking the black and white and red illustrations of Hakuchi. Free fonts, you gotta love them, especially when they're not shit, which Chunk most certainly isn't.

Eric Karjaluoto has some sensible things to say about social media; if only the people who are mindlessly using social media to 'market' their message would shut the fuck up and listen they might learn something from the people they're trying to engage with.


24
June
2009

A Good Day


Had a good meeting with one of our clients yesterday: Goldcore. Funnily enough the discussion came around to data visualisation, which I was pleased about. They were one of the companies I had in my head recently when I was thinking about which of our clients could benefit from user data transaction analysis and presentation. By taking disparate clusters of information, and information types, and presenting them in a visually structured graphical interface all data relating to business transactions could be viewed at a number of levels and from a number of viewpoints. From a business point of view it would allow the ability to visualise trends, prioritise opportunities, or even stress test possible weaknesses.

The other thing that really interests me lately is the rise and fall social networks, usually massive/rapid expansion of one idea following by niche like fragmentation. To keep up you have to be in a number of places at once: replying to emails, blog entries (which is why I don't have them on here), instant messages, following Twitter, getting LinkdIn, updating Flickr / Tumblr / Behance, checking in to forums, RSS feeds, yadda yadda yadda. All very time consuming, not just from a noise to signal ratio (which increases dramatically with the amount of hype the next big thing gets) but simply having to go to this place or that and perhaps trawl back and search through conversations, ones you can't quite remember where on when they took place, to find something. Yes, there's aggregators out there that do so much to make life a bit easier but they don't do everything in one simple intuitive interface. It's a bit like a bike wheel: the net being the outer rim, all your connections to people/groups being the spokes and having to go to each spoke to connect to one point of interactivity - the twitter spoke, the flickr spoke, the IM spoke, etc. The central hub that joins everything up is missing. That's why I like the idea of Google's Wave technology; it might not be the answer to everything that's so unconnected about social/business communications, but it should be far better than what we have now.



22
June
2009

William Albert Allard


Decided to buy a book by William Albert Allard so i chose this one: Portraits Of America. Think he was the first photographer that I thought of as having such a cool damned job. When I was in my mid teens in the early 80s we were given a ton of National Geographic magazines, I'm not sure who by. They dated from the mid-50s, I think, right up to the early 80s. I would get lost in them for ours, dreaming of far away places or reading about the Amish or wondering what it must be like to travel the world photographing whatever took your fancy. Recently when I was back home visiting my parents I went upstairs and they were still there, and I found myself myself flicking through them looking at the ads (the copy was very different, and the illustrations of cars were gorgeous). Anyway, way back then one of the images that lodged in my brain, and it's never really disappeared entirely, was by Allard. It was of a bull that had been killed in a slaughterhouse in Peru. I was stunned by how vibrant and red the blood was, and how much of it there was. Of course, there was far more to the article than that one image - here's a vid of Allard talking about another one - but that's the one that stuck with me. Up until then I'd wanted to be an illustrator, it's what I ended up going to college to study, but I think those magazines, and that article in particular, may have been what initially got me interested in photography. Funny that after thirty years or so I end up setting myself wee little projects, ones where I go out on my own and photograph subject matter that grabs my interest for extended periods of time.


22
June
2009

Data Flow


haven't bought design or photography books in a wee while, so I figured it was time to get back into doing so again. Ordered Data Flow: Visualising Information in Graphic Design today. Normally I work on frontend designs for browsers (websites, intranets, extranets, apps, etc), that's the day job, and it's easy enough to keep up with who's doing what just by surfing and faffing about online. But Nexus451 has changed over the last year or so and we're moving away from brochure sites; we still do them, and enjoy doing them, but the focus has shifted more towards data integration and presentation. Of course, our clients have changed over time too. When we started out in 2002 we were doing small quick turnaround brochure sites for friends and family, then bigger brochure sites for larger clients and some eCommerce stuff. Nowadays we work with companies involved in insurance, energy, wealth management and travel - companies that have lots of people performing thousands of data transactions. It's becoming increasingly important to be able to display large amounts of data in meaningful ways.

One site I've been visiting reasonably regularly over the last couple of years is infosthetics after seeing it on boingboing. Think that was the first time my interest was tweaked in this area, and it's just turned out my company is heading where something like this might be useful. I doubt every single thing in it will be relevant, but if even one thing in the book sparks an idea worth pursuing then I can't complain. Even if nothing is directly relevant to what we're doing now there may be an indirect influence further down the line. I do get a kick out of all sorts of design: motorbikes, architecture, gadgets, typography, kitchen utensils, packaging, road signs, photography, glasses, cgi, book covers, illustration, automobiles, yachts, furniture, whatever. Data visualisation isn't any different, it's another source of inspiration.


21
June
2009

Coastland | The End


Well, that's that then. Finally finished processing the Coastland project and I'll be uploading the shots later. Sent off some sample shots to Steve and he's printed them on various sample papers for me; just have to collect them later this week. Things to do: pick half a dozen to be printed up large and put the blurb book together; yet to decide on the format or structure. I'm sure once it's done and sent off I'll want to change something.

Feels a bit strange not having a project to shoot. Have a few ideas I want to pursue for the next coupe of projects, but I'm not going to start till I close this one out. Also have to Blurb the farmland project, but that shouldn't take too long...I hope. Been thinking about doing something involving people, just to do something outside my comfort zone. On the other hand I want to have something I can dip into whenever I feel like it, and that might not work with a people based project. So, I'll probably choose two to do.

Having the projects to work on definitely helps give me a start, sort of cuts through the indecision of choosing what to photograph on days when I want to take the camera for a spin. Photographing something over an extended period of time works for me too, making me see things I've seen before differently. Here's hoping I get as much fun out of the next project as I did from the first two. Can't wait to get started now.


21
June
2009

The Book Club


This year's reading material, so far. I usually buy 2-3 books at the end of the month when the pay cheque lands. Jack comes with me and we potter around Hughes& Hughes in The Pavilions in Swords. They've a good kids section, he gets one book too, and a coffee shop upstairs. We buy our books and then go upstairs and chill for a bit. He loves his books, and a bedtime story has been part of his routine for as long as I can remember. Having wanted to be an illustrator at one stage in my life I love his book collection.

Back was in bits again this week. Went to the Well a couple of weeks back for a full check up. Have a small twist in my spine which may be the result of a car crash I was in 15 years or so ago. That may explain some of the back pain but I'm not so sure, think it's more likely to be my pancreas throwing hissy fits again. Bloods came back pretty normal, cholesterol is down from 6 to 5, but I've a slightly elevated white cell count - though I did have a bad chest infection at the time which might account for that, or it may be my skanky pancreas being inflamed. More bloods done last week by my own doc, just to keep an eye on things. If the pain keeps on keeping on it's back to the consultant again, and I know what he'll suggest - probably another MRCP and if that shows anything it'll be time for the knife. Ugh.


09
June
2009

Another Push


May was manic, just too busy to post - hardly even had time to process images for the Coastland project. Getting back into it over the last week or so, managed to do Howth, Salthill, Seapoint & Dun Laoghaire. Started on Portmarnock and I'll get some more done this evening. Feel like I'm only about halfway there, though I must be further along. I did some of the Howth images in B&W and was happy with them, the place and weather seemed to suit black and white more. Looking forward to processing Portmarnock, Sandycove and Malahide. The walk from Portmarnock to Malahide was probably my favourite of the whole project, though my favourite place is Portrane because it has everything; rocky shorelines battered by waves, summer homes, a long clean beach, and the fact that it's only 15 minutes away.

The intention was to process everything first in colour, then choose some images to convert to black and white. Howth threw a spanner in that idea. Nothing from one visit there looked decent in colour so I did that day's images in black and white. Now I want to go back over what I have already processed and choose some for the same treatment. But i'll bite my tongue and carry on, otherwise I'll start dithering and never get anywhere.

Sent a couple of Coastland images off for proof prints to Steve at 360-dpi. Would like to see what colour looks like on Hahnemuhle matt, though Steve is suggesting a pearl might be better suited. Have a small exhibition coming up in August and now it's beginning to feel like I have to get my thumb out. I'll need to chose a paper and then figure out a size to print at and then framing...all that stuff. Be good to have the project done as a blurb book by that stage as well.

Ugh, more work.

All I really want to do is start another project. Something smaller. Definitely.