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11th March (week 2) - Research Update.
Here is what I've been reading, looking at and watching in the past week!
Dune: Part Two, 2024.
I went to see the most recent Dune film in iMax on Friday night. I thought it was really great, but I did have some critiques. I was not into the cinematography, I don't think there was one composition that blew me away. Almost every shot was panning, which took away from some moments where a longer, locked off shot would've allowed for the scene to be taken in more. The world that has been so masterfully created for the film is one I would have love to've been given the opportunity to soak in. but alas Greig Fraser did not allow me any such luxuries. Compared to the first film the pace was much faster, which in terms of story worked well, it was very easy to follow which I think is quite impressive considering the source material. But the pace of the editing felt a bit off to me, rarely was a shot longer than 3 seconds, which similarly to the cinematography didn't allow for greater immersion.
I've never really written about a film before so I thought this would be a good opportunity.
Teva Cosic
Just became aware of Teva Cosic's work, wtf.. it's so nice! She seems to work in pretty similar territory as myself.
"Teva Cosic (b.1994) is an artist based in Australia between Naarm/Melbourne and Gimuy/Cairns whose work explores ideas around memory, loss and place. Influenced by her cross-cultural (Swedish/Croatian) background, she is interested in how we create and sustain social, cultural and emotional connections through images and image making practices." From Website tevacosic.com
As I said, she works in territories similar to me, but with a fairly different visual style. I really like her project Wander Lines!
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Regarding Visual Research
Last week I had outlined the goal to write a blog post each week about my visual research and to write about an art work or an artist. Already I'm thinking that these posts should be reworked. It's not realistic to write 4 different posts a week, I just don't have enough time. Also, visual research is something you're encouraged to do at uni to build a habit, but I have that habit so I don't think I need to be so deliberate.
Instead I will merge the two research based blog posts into one, if there is a more visual based subject I want to write about then I'll write about that, but if it is just something I've read then I will write about that!
New amended weekly blog goals:
Conceptual writing update
Research update
Making update
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11th March (week 2) - Conceptual Writing Update.
Thoughts after last week and idea for project
Ok so, finding the time last week to write about all my different conceptual ideas was though. I didn't expect them to need much as much writing as I had to do for them. I only got through 2 of the 4 ideas that I currently have on the back burner. The amount of writing I needed to do also meant I couldn't even start on my 3 other posts, those being my book research update, my visual research update and my Making update blog post.
Thinking, about what I wrote last week and what I've made in the past.
After having written about my idea for the potential project War Games (working title) I found myself wondering if a this kind of conceptual/political narrative is one I would be able to execute. I think that I'm quite apt at communicating more personal/emotional ideas in my work, then through research, tying in broader ideas to support a richer conceptual meaning within the work. In past projects I think I've been able to have my more personal ideas be felt through the work itself (in just a visual sense).
But these more political ideas are ones which I've never attempted to communicate in my work and honestly I'm not sure I currently have the tools with which to do that. My Uncle is an artist who makes pretty politically charged art, but the ideas within his work never feel heavy handed. He has spent much of his life interested in and researching the ideas which now feature in his work, so he's able to include these ideas with a lot of nuance.
I just don't think I've done enough reading basically, to have be able to bring these ideas into my work in a way that would feel as natural as how I bring other ideas. This is not to say I feel as though I could never work in a more political space, but that I'll need to do a lot more research if I ever want to.
Thinking still about my previous work, I've had a pretty consistent visual style/language, one which I've refined a lot of the years. A style which I have also become known for and one that as afforded me some good opportunities and accolades. In this respect I think that my iPhone Panoramas may not be the best project to show publicly. It's quite a change in style and not exactly a style of work I could see myself pursuing in the future. I do think it's important to work with some consistency if you're wanting to present your work to any kind of audience.
Idea. 3, Visiting Dad
One of the conceptual ideas I didn't get to write about last week was an idea I've got, potentially a photo book?
I went to visit my Dad mid-way through last year, I shot a lot. I've always taken my camera with me when I've been to visit and over the years I've made some quite nice images. On the last trip though I shot about 7 or 8 rolls and I got some really nice pictures! There are enough pictures from just the last trip for a small book. But I think an even more interesting book could be produced using these most recent pictures, pictures from past trips and ones from future trips. There is a lot at play there, rich conceptual soil haha.
This is slightly frustrating though as I'd love to put something out now, but I've got no clue when this project would be finished, it has the potential to be very long term.
I've been going to some counselling sessions recently, trying to work through things related to my relationship with my dad. So this potential project is really on my mind.

Untitled, 2023.

Untitled, 2023.

Untitled, 2019.

Untitled, 2023.

Untitled, 2019.

Untitled, 2023.
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5th March (week 1) - Conceptual… CONTINUED.
Idea 2, War Games (working title).
This is my most recent conceptual idea for a project and the one I'm most interested in perusing.
Concept/narrative:
When I was in primary school we used to love playing war games. Running around and shooting our friends with sticks posing as imaginary guns. But the principle of our school banned the games, she tried to help us understand the reality of what we found so entertaining. I'm not sure if it's true but, she told us about her brother who had been shot through the leg at war and was now unable to walk. But this story did little to sway us, we would just wait until the weekend to play the same games at a friends house.
We were just children after all, the realities of war are hard to grasp and explosions look so cool.
War is really in Vogue right now. It's seemingly unavoidable online. We're in an unprecedented time for war voyeurism, consensually or not you can witness war truely second hand through the lens of it's victims phone's. A stark difference to previous documentation.
So with gruesome war footage finding common place on main stream online media sources (previously these kinds of videos were hidden online, LiveLeak ect...) you would assume a glorification of this violence would be a difficult mental leap to make. I couldn't imagine playing the war games I used to as a child.
But, there are adults that do still play war games, or as they call them Mil Sims. So that's where the concept is, exploring this social niche of adults who take joy in simulating war, even now when the realities of it are so hard to miss.
I also think the idea of such realistic simulations of war (they wear very modern war kit, with very realistic guns) taking place in Aotearoa is quite interesting. Does our (geographical) distance from conflict play a roll in their comfort in playing war?
Intent/What would the work look like:
So this idea is purely conceptual at this point, I haven't made any work to support it.
I could see the work taking shape in a number of ways. I had the idea to contact a local mil sim group and ask to take pictures at some of their events. These pictures could be shot in two ways, the first being documentary style, the second a more surreal style. The latter would work best in my opinion.
The main issue I could see with this would be the mil sim group taking offence from my project. My intention would not be to make a mockery of these people so I would need to really get that across to them.
The other visual direction I could see for the work would be to use found imagery of war related stuff. Not necessarily war clips, but screen shots from youtube videos of war related content. ( I saw this video once posted by the Korean military of weapons test, but the video had been shot and edited in a very stylish way, it was easy to forget everything in the video was built to kill people.)
Well, that's the idea for now. Will write more about it in the future and see where it goes.

Found photo, Auckland based Milsim/Airsoft group.

Found photo, Auckland based Milsim/Airsoft group.
These kind of scenes are so interesting to me. Seeing the Punga in the background, juxtaposed with these guys in military get up, it's so alien.
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3:07 on the 13th of October, 2023.

10:02 on the 19th of June, 2023.

6:09 on the 19th of February, 2023.

2:16 on the 17th of September, 2023.
like the others there are more, but this is just a selection.
Nature images.
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3:21 on the 13th of October, 2023.

11:33 on the 7th of August, 2023.

2:31 on the 24th of February, 2023.

12:16 on the 10th of November, 2023.

11:26 on the 7th of August, 2023.

5:46 on the 16th of November, 2023.
There are more, but this is just a selection.
City images. One urban.
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4th March (week 1) - Conceptual... CONTINUED.
Idea 1, iPhone Panoramas, 1/2
The idea.
This idea is the one I have produced the most work for, I begun making these images in December 2022 and consistently made images throughout 2023. They started off purely as something fun, I had just finished an intensive year of making, finishing my Hons year at uni. But more over it had been an intensive few years of making at uni. Throughout uni I had worked in many different avenues of photography, but with a consistent interest throughout all four years, in B&W analogue photography.
By the end of the degree I was feeling burnt out by making, I found that the majority of images I made in the following months were just on my iPhone. Far less pressure was felt with this way of making, for the first few months it didn't occur to me that I was making at all, I was just having fun and taking (not making) pictures, based off pure instinct.
After a while though I begun to ponder what meaning might be found in these pictures. The first thing that came to mind for me was Value. Fine Art Photography (hate to use that term lol, but the distinction from photography is important) is in somewhat of a constant questioning of value, in both literal financial value and more abstractly, artistic value. It's hard to measure what brings value to an art photograph. Many art outsiders, I think, would see little difference in value between Fine Art and regular photography. But these same outsiders will find easy distinction in the value of a photograph and an oil painting. This is a fairly basic thought, but, I think, worth mentioning.
So what can give a photograph value? I think there are a number of potential factors, one being process. With my own practice as an example, working in more "traditional" methods of black and white hand printed photography, can easily add an element of greater value than say a more modern everyday photograph. There are more elements to this (Which I aim to write about further in the future) but for sake of time I'd like to stick with just this one.
So, with these ideas of value and process in mind, I made a connection to my iPhone panoramas, they have almost no perceivable value to them. They are just iPhone photos, the most everyday vernacular images. So to me these works became more about the act of making (no longer taking).

12:06 on the 26th of January, 2023, 250x172.
This is the first and so far only panorama to be shown publicly. It was shown and sold at PhotoForum's silent auction in July 2023.

12:06 on the 26th of January, 2023
I took this picture on a drive down south for a festival, we had made a quick stop to pee and also admire the view of Mount Ruapehu, which you can see in between the trucks freight containers. When making the images I panned my phone following the trucks speed which produced the extending effect, I really like how this effect works in the image. It's not so obvious at first glance that something is "wrong" with the image, as everything else is in order. A few people have commented that at first they assumed the truck to be a train. I also think that the truck almost entirely covering Ruapehu is visually interesting, as Ruapehu would typically be the main point of focus in this scene. I think the colour pallet is very pleasing too :)
I also cropped the image down to a ratio close to 4x5, this was done to displace the image from what would typically be expected of a panorama. Which is, I think, key to making these images interesting.
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4th March (week 1) - Conceptual… CONTINUED.
Idea 1, iPhone Panoramas, 2/2
This post is taking much longer to write than I thought it would, even the first post can be expanded further, I'll have a go at it in the coming week. But I'm going to try wrap this post up now, in one more post.
I made hundreds of panoramas, but I wasn't sure where I was going with them. I could see a body of work starting to emerge but I wasn't sure if there was something "worthwhile" in the work. I was asked to feature a work in PhotoForum's auction, Gabby suggested I use it as an option to test public interest in the panoramas. After showing the previously mentioned image "12:06 on the 26th of January" I recognised that there was indeed some interest, so I begun to go through the images and pick out the better ones and start to look for some connections.
There hadn't been any real intention when making these images, with no real focus on any subject, so finding connections was quite difficult. I printed off a small selection of my favourites and experimented with different selections. In this selection I also included some images that weren't panos, just regular iPhone pics.

Large selection

Small selection
Having experimented with different selections I separated the pictures into two categories, Nature and City. They are pretty basic distinctions, but I found that these two categories didn't fit together too well. The more urban pictures especially occupy a different space to the pictures made in nature.
Around this time I also showed some of my panoramas to one of my old lectures Dave, who was interested in potentially featuring some in a future exhibition, but I'm not sure what's happening with that. Dave was most interested in the city pictures, specifically those which had somewhat of a street photography element to them and others which he said worked as unfunctional architecture photography. After seeing Dave I made more panos, but for the first time with more intention, ones relating to his interests.
I haven't really been making many panos for the past few months, I got close to having a full body of work, but I found the final stage of pulling it together into a completed project really difficult and I lost interest. A big thing I struggled with was concept, the biggest conceptual point was value, but ironically I struggled to see the value in these pictures and constantly found myself second guessing if the work was actually interesting. I got caught up with the details of how these pictures could be presented.
Anyway, I've written about them for too long now, I think further writing broken down in more posts will be more worth while.
I'll follow up this post with selections of some of my favourite iPhone Panos.
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4th March (week 1) - Conceptual Writing Update.
Ok, so this blog post will be split into multiple posts. I want to write about what my main conceptual ideas have been in the past few years and outline what it would take to further those projects into a finished body of work. as well as the pros and cons of each idea.
These ideas are:
iPhone Panoramas
Spontaneous Human Combustion
War Games
Visiting Dad
I'll break each of these ideas down in individual blog posts, starting with the iphone Panoramas. the rest will be written about soon enough.
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Further Goals relating to research.
I'm not sure how plausible this is, but I'd like to aim to pull together an essay of sought, connecting various elements of my research!
At this point I'd like to think that in 2 months time I should have enough work to pull together a 2000 word essay connecting a different areas of research.
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4th March (week 1) - Weekly Goals
Been Ages. What am I doing? HOW WILL I DO MORE THINGS?!
I'm trying to get back into it, it's been too long since I've made a full body of work. For the past couple years I've still been making, but nothing of substance. I'm thinking that if I can keep some a blog of my thoughts, work and research it should aid in bringing together a complete project. Hopefully anyway.
I need to come up with a schedule that will work with my full time job schedule. This is what I'm thinking currently. I have three days off a week, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. It's unrealistic to assume I'll use all three to make work so setting aside just Monday to make work will probably work best. But I think I can still find time to do a little research throughout the week. My goal for each week is as follows.
Research:
Book Research - Read at least one book a week and write about said book in a blog post. To begin with I'll keep research vague, to whatever I feel interested in reading about, but as time goes on I'll look to refine toward project based research. This should primarily be text based and not photographic research. Although writing by or about artists can be relative. I'm a slow reader, so I'm not aiming to finish a book each week, but to at least write about it.
Visual Research (what I've been looking at) - Along side my literature based research I will also look to compile my visual research from the week into a blog post. I'm consuming a lot of images through instagram, Pinterest and the like, but this kind of research is rarely worthwhile unless it is delved into deeper. So I will aim to research and write about the images and artists I'm looking at. In these blog post I'll aim to cover a minimum of three works or artists and write critically about the works. The aim for this research will also be to look for visual research from places other than the aforementioned sources.
Making work:
making - I need to be easy on myself with the work load, So I won't be expecting myself to produce "project worthy" work straight from the get go. But at the moment I am still making pictures at least once a week so I'll aim to at make a blog post about those, to write about them in a critical way and try find connections through my images. Keeping a diary of my practice will still be worthwhile in figuring myself out. But in the future I'll aim to be making more directed and intentional work. At the moment writing and research is most important, If I can't find the time to make something each week that's ok!
Conceptual Writing (what I've been thinking about) - I have a number of Ideas in the mix that have been floating in my brain for the past few years, writing about these ideas will hopefully help them evolve further. I'll aim to produce some conceptual based work in a blog post each week, even if this is just a ramble about my thoughts. But hopefully as I find my way through research and making I can start to form a more concise conceptual direction.
So, in short my goals for each week to produce 4 blog posts.
Book research update
Visual Research update
Making update
Conceptual writing update
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This print is too big to fit in the flat bed.

Unfortunately the enlarger in the uni darkroom could not fit the full picture in frame, so I am going to have to print this image, and two more of a similar size, off site. At the black and white box's darkroom.
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Test strips, (left) Yellow, (middle & right) Magenta

The most difficult part of this print was the face, as it holds the most highlights, so I ran multiple tests on just that area



In this print I attempted 3 tone printing, 1 at 00 (Y130, M0) a second at 2.5 (Y45, M43) and a third at 5 (Y0, M130)
I had only tested is on the small "face" only tests. I did not account for the rest of the picture. LOL
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Split tone test strips.
I decided to try print this picture for the third time, this time using the split tone method.

Exposure tests
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