The Mixer

Woohoo, my first blogging reference to The Fall!

I've given my gallery a much-needed makeover: goodbye to the sea of blue, and hello to a non-distracting dark grey. There'll be a few new feature sections added in the near future too, so there's content as well as cosmetics. Overall I still seem to prefer websites to be as simple and basic as possible, ever a minimalist I suppose. Flash must be one of the most misused tools ever devised - although it can work nicely if done with care, for instance check out Carl de Keyzer's site.

Whilst I'm recommending photographers who make me look like a monkey with a polaroid, I've been fascinated with Larry Towell's work lately. There's a really nice overview of his work with an audio commentary by Towell here.

Pet Cemetery

Until last week I had no idea that the country's biggest pet cemetery was just half an hour's drive away from here. Of course having found out I had to go, and I thought I'd take the Holga - been quite a while since I used it, but it seemed appropriate for the subject. Anyway, whilst I mainly went for the kitsch value (and there was indeed quite a lot of that) I'll admit that I did find some of the simpler little monuments strangely touching...

The rest of the photos are up in the Toy Camera section of my gallery.

Urban Paranoia

I have no idea what this was about.

Peace Out (2)

One more from the same event, roses were placed in the Peace Gardens each dedicated to an individual jailed or otherwise punished for refusing to participate in war.

I calibrated my monitor again and things look a bit less strange, maybe once more will get it back to its pre-calibration normality!

Peace Out

Randomly came across this event in Manchester marking International Conscientious Objector's Day, also went to the Vesak (Buddha's Birthday) celebrations in Piccadilly Gardens, but it was just far too crowded to get any good pictures.

Disorientation

I just found this photo from last year whilst going through some old junk, worth a brief airing at least...

I have to put in a (totally non-photo-related) word for the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, I'd been aware of him for ages but have only just got round to reading some of his books. 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' gave me a good few days of pleasant mind-warpage, to the extent of colouring all my dreams and getting really worried about things like listening to a phone's ring. The only time I can remember such a physical effect from lit. was the first time I read some Italo Calvino and nearly falling down some stairs.

ps/ I've just calibrated my monitor and everything looks a bit weird (in the less good way), hope it looks okay at your end.

Science

I'm just starting an interesting project for the University of Manchester, following around scientists to photograph their daily activities. It's quite an odd thing to do really (as are a lot of the things I seem to end up doing for the sake of photography), both for me to trail someone all day, and for the poor scientist. Reminds me a bit of that Diane Arbus quote about how by having a camera you suddenly have access to things that you would never do normally. I like these little peeks into other places though, and that other Arbus thing about photography being essentially "a naughty thing to do." It really is.