3 Phases of The Moon

I've been taking photographs and stargazing for a long time; inevitably, those two pursuits cross paths now and then. It might be a startrails pic, a guided exposure of a comet, or something a bit more whimsical.

Delving into the archives, I took a moon photo from circa 1984, and played with it a bit to create this image. I'm not divulging the recipe, but you won't find it as a simple Photoshop tool! Actually, I'd probably find it difficult to reproduce myself; sometimes I 'explore' an image, making derivative copies, modifying and combining them in different ways until I create something that looks a bit interesting. Usually, I leap rapidly from one transformation to the next, without recording exactly what I've done, so the end result is usually unreproducable. One such exploration, that I didn't save in the end, produced some images that looked like an aged Daguerreotype, and to some extent I was trying to recreate that here.

Click the image to buy from Redbubble
(Available as a card, laminated print, matted print, and more)

Free Retro ebook

Hop over to Retrothing and download a copy of James Grahame's "Essential Retro" ebook, while it's available. James has obviously had a knock on the head, because he's giving this away free for a while. Miss out and you'll have to buy the real thing, or ... miss out.


I've been nosing around retrothing for a couple of years now, and find it a fascinating collection of what-used-to-be, what-is-again, and possibly, what-never-should-have-been-in-the-first-place. I don't share the interest in computer games (can't see why anyone would get excited about playing a 20-year-old game on an obsolete platform; actually, I don't get excited about computer games at all), but there's plenty other stuff besides.

Just like Grandma used to do it

There is a certain delight to be had in using a device that provokes your children to say "what's that?" - not because they haven't yet been introduced to one in school, but because they never will. I decided to make a meatloaf tonight (I'm no expert at it, this being only the second time I've done it. Bravely, I'm flying blind this time, as I can't be bothered to look out the recipe, wherever it might be!). Anyway, the meat was already minced, but I decided to mince the other ingredients - bread & vegies. It's such a satisfying process, and takes me back 40-odd years, when my mother would get the mincer out every Monday, to reduce the leftover Sunday roast to rissoles. I still love to scoff cold minced meat; there's something very pleasing about the texture (and taste). Now I think about it, the tadpoles in the garden also loved a bit of minced meat, as they nibbled furiously at small bits dropped in the water.

This one is a bit more decorative than the one my mother used (hers wasn't coloured), but it does the same efficient job.

Of course, one of the pleasures of the mincer was being allowed to turn the handle and watch the pulverized food pour out of the front. It's also very satisfying, just feeling the mechanism chew through the food as it does. This hasn't changed; I don't bring out this wondrous machine very often, but always enjoy the process. I think I probably bought the mincer simply so that I could relive that happy memory. Strange though, that neither of my children wanted to try it tonight, but then I suppose there's little fun to be had in using something that doesn't have LEDs, push buttons and a motor.


They say youth is wasted on the young; is that also true for simple pleasures?

Can I be an artist please?

I’ve been taking photographs for many moons now (or to put it another way, more than a full orbit of Saturn). In that time, I’ve exposed many frames of film, and printed more than a few boxes of paper. I started with a Box Brownie, moved on to my Dad’s Yashicamat, then on through a succession of 35mm, rollfilm & 5×4 cameras of varying quality and pedigree. [The largest camera I ever used was 48 inches (1.2 metres) in aperture, and took thin glass plates 14 inches (356mm) square … the UK Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory. However, as you can’t actually look through a Schmidt, it is technically just a big camera.]

Professionally, my work was scientific in nature, while my spare time interests were more creative. I have produced some right old rubbish, and a few more memorable and enduring images. My aim was always to produce something that I’d be happy to hang on my wall, and which would be a pleasing image of some sort. Apart from a few years in a camera club, almost at the start of my involvement with photography, and a couple of later low-key exhibitions, I never seriously contemplated the possibility of providing my photography for wider consumption. Redbubble, however, has been influential in changing my mind on that.

For much of the last 15 years, my photographic effort has been almost nil. I seemed to have lost touch with my muse. Some time within the last 5 years or so, I did start playing with images again – initially just dabbling with low-res digital tweaking of some of the few pics I had taken. Gradually, I started feeling the desire to do more than this, and as my PC systems were upgraded, was able to work at higher resolutions until I could handle poster-sized images without too much difficulty. But still I wasn’t shooting much to speak of, so the end results were little more than just stretching my photographic muscles again, so to speak.

I dragged myself out of hiding to take part in a fun photographic event hosted by the Regional Gallery, where photographers were invited to bring along a BW image and talk about it briefly; I really enjoyed that, partly because it brought me into contact with the local art community. This is what I took along:

Pigeon Woman

For the ensuing year or so, I began to take my photography more seriously again, and wondered whether some of what I was doing might be suitable for any of the local galleries. Somehow, I always had difficulty with that – whether photography, mine in particular, could stand alongside works that were palpably more worthy of being called art. That’s just me. Somewhere, there was always a nagging feeling that I wasn’t an artist, that my reason for taking pictures was just to hang something on the wall that was nice to look at, without there being any greater substance, any social comment or underlying meaning to the images.

Then on that wonderful evening in November last year, I stumbled upon redbubble; seeing the tremendous wealth of talent out there seemed to be the catalyst I needed. Since then I have been gradually developing a body of work – very mixed, it has to be said – that might soon become something more than just a few images on the HDD. I might at last dare to call myself an artist. Maybe I’m too left-brain though, too concerned with technical quality, and not sufficiently able to let go and just be utterly creative, without always comparing with existing standards and references. I hope not!

3:58 pm

A couple of weeks ago, I visited the regional gallery again, and found an exhibition that in itself I didn’t find particularly enthralling. The following part of the brief introduction to the work on display did catch my eye though:

• His figures can be easily read as archetypal images of ‘man’ giving no indication of external factors, no clues, and no contextualization, leaving viewers to contemplate the trans-historical universal human.

Now, I’m curious about how many other visitors to that exhibition will have "contemplated the trans-historical" ... etc, as it hadn’t occurred to me to do so. I think that this is substantially why I have had difficulty seeing myself as An Artist. I don’t seem to understand the lingo. My more frequent reaction to exhibitions is "yes, but is it art?" Or perhaps, "why is it art?" I think I’d like to take a group of artists, critics, gallery directors and other cognoscenti, as well as the lay public, through such an exhibition without their reading the introduction, and see how many of them would actually come up with a reaction that reflected the commentary. It might be an interesting experiment.

Wild dreams

You know that dramatic/elusive quality that dreams can have? You have an extraordinarily vivid nocturnal experience, full of bizarre and surreal goings-on, and yet come morning, there is just a tantalising wisp remaining. Like a word on the tip of your tongue, you may almost be able to recall what it was that was such fun (assuming it was fun), but the more you probe, the fainter the recollection becomes. So frustrating, it could drive you to distraction. Well, the guys at xkcd obviously recognise this situation, and have illustrated it quite succinctly; glad I have my dreams though!



Here's the full image.

Breathing deeply now...

Went to the doc yesterday, to investigate the possibility that I might have asthma, as "sources close to my sister-in-law" have previously said that my cough sounds like her son's asthma cough. Certainly, the last couple of times there's been smoke around from bushfires, my chest has felt a bit tight. So, to be on the safe side, I thought an appointment wouldn't be a bad idea.

Having blown, puffed and wheezed into a couple of devices, been measured for height (2 distinctly different values there!), and briefly quizzed about my history, it seems I have the lungs of a 39-year-old. I want to thank that person, whoever they may be. I don't remember receiving the gift, but the evidence is incontrovertible: for sheer volume of puff, my lungs are 10 years younger than I am, and in seeing how hard I could blow out, my ability proved to be right at the top of the scale for my age. Interesting - and rather reassuring. Nonetheless, I did opt to try an inhaler for a while, to see if it makes any difference to the cough. There's nothing like testing a hypothesis properly.

In addition to having good bellows, my hairline is much less receded than anyone knowing my family history would have bet on (maybe that came from the same source as the lungs). Maybe I was built from a kit, cherry-picked from a set of possibilities, to create the best result. The only thing that spoils it is that I've always felt I was born old; the tea beside me now is in a mug adorned with "World's greatest boring old fart," a treasured memento from a previous job, where my level of wisdom and knowledge of trivia and bad old jokes that should have retired long ago, were held in some regard.

We used to joke at college about one bloke, whose musical tastes seemed to be 10 years in the past; I'm very much like that now - haven't much idea who's who these days, and who my kids are listening to. Recent music is anything written since the days of JS Bach. And yes, policemen (and women) are looking remarkably junior these days. Never mind, at least I've plenty of puff - even if the legs don't always want me to use it.

Tidy desk, tidy mind?

Having written previously about my battle with clutter, I was interested to find this post by the Closet Entrepreneur on the subject. I thought it might have been discussing big stuff - stacks of printer paper, cases of beer, dead-but-might-be-repairable computers, etc. Not quite, but it is a strange and compelling, if possibly Utopian, view of what can be achieved with pegboard & cable ties.

Declutter the mess under your desk

I've no time for this

Time management: there's a knack to it, I'm sure - one that I never seem to have had. Or so I thought ... I now suspect the Universe is just against me in this regard.

I realised today that, in addition to having recently bought a wristwatch with a dodgy strap (so it's not very wearable), and my mobile phone having suffered an accident that renders much of the screen unusable - including the time display - the recently-bought 2nd hand car has a clock that resets every time the ignition is turned off. Someone doesn't want me to know what the time is. Now, perhaps all I need to do is work out the significance of this, and there might be a profound revelation that positively affects the course of my life henceforth.

Or it might just be proof of the adage about unwelcome things coming in 3s. But then again, as I write, I realise also that the new digital camera doesn't seem to preserve the precise time of exposure in the downloaded filename, just the date. AAaaargh! I don't have time for paranoia!

The Dictionary Effect

One of the perils of life online is distraction. You want some information and go looking for it; you might or might not find what you want, but you will almost certainly find other things that you don't want either, but which are very tempting. You know how it goes: one query spawns five links worth looking at; each of those leads to five others, and so on. Within minutes, you can forget what you went in search of, and spend an obscene and distressing amount of time looking elsewhere at undeniably fascinating sites. Then, when you try to retrace your steps from the final page you dare look at, you will find it's next to impossible.

I always used to have this problem with dictionaries (still do), as they can be similarly engaging with serendipitous disovery. Dictionaries are safer though - each new link takes but seconds to read, and probably only leads you on a single trail, instead of an almost infinitely diverging set of possibilities.

xkcd expresses it thus...

Subtitle: "'Taft in a wet t-shirt contest' is the key image here."

Bad dreams

For many years, I worked in an environment where procedures had to be followed very precisely, processes had to be rigorously tested and monitored, and where cleanliness (the workplace, not personal) was of paramount importance. The fact that I grew tired, not so much of the need for such tight control, but of the monotony of it all, meant that I baled out when the opportunity arose. About a couple of years afterwards, I returned to a similar role on a temporary basis, which merely served to confirm that I was right to leave in the first place.

Ever since that time, 12 years ago, I have had occasional unwelcome dreams that I am back in the old place, finding that all is not as it should be; the clean room is filthy, a vital part of the processing chain has not been turned on, I have forgotten to attend to a task until far too late, or I am simply back in purgatory, doing a job that has lost all of its appeal. Whatever the circumstance, it is usually a minor disaster, and fills me with feelings of utter dread.

The other night though, came a new variation: the entire facility had been dismantled, leaving only a leaky water supply. Does this mean that I have finally laid the ghost? Will I be able to sleep in peace from now on? I live in hope. Or perhaps I will be like Tantalus, where the waters recede every time I try to mop them up, and flow again when my back is turned. That I could cope with!