I researched what potatoes were most suitable for my needs and bought a small bag at a nursery. Instructions stated that they had to be laid out in a warm place and not planted in the ground until they had sprouted.
The problem for me was as soon as they sprouted I enjoyed their look so much I couldn’t bear to bury them. Yesterday and today I have been looking again, now several months on. The sprouts have a purplish hue.
Still not reached the final version but my educational opinion is that it’s a good idea to keep making sketches. Living with the versions that don’t work helps me to understand what needs to be done. Not that I do it in words, much of it probably happens when I’m asleep. If I don’t understand why a work falls under the bar I may be doomed to repeat it, which is what I fear most.
Astronomy and the Camera.
The camera has since its invention been put to many important uses.
Currently, cameras are busy recording photos of the universe, landscapes of new beauty. Here is a site that publishes many of these images.
I visited this radio telescope in 2000. Called the Very Large Array, VLA for short,it’s in an isolated part of New Mexico, USA.
I took these two photos while there, but only ever made a couple of prints of each.
Contact
I’m going through my history and as a result came across this contact sheet.
I remember this occasion, I was at St.Aubyn’s Street, Devonport Auckland.
The image that I chose 22 years ago was the top right hand one.
Now, I think I would have chosen the frame from the bottom left corner.
The more open one as below.
Buick Dynaflow.
in New Plymouth over the last few days he said that the Buick Dynaflow was his favourite. As it happened, of all the cars that I looked at, it was my favourite too. I even had a photo in my camphone to prove it. Mark saw it with its hood down.
After writing the posting below, about clouds, I was reminded ofI began photographing in my early 30’s, for some reason or other not being the least bit interested in the camera until then. I was fortunate to have studied for a B.A in English from Auckland University at a time when Tim Shadbolt was making speeches in the university quad, promoting books such as Bullshit and Jellybeans. Students in Paris were rioting, Vietnam war sinking deeper into the quagmire. The English department was a crown jewel in the university.
These were times when Marxist interpretations about art were popular. I have respect for these and am glad that I caught this philosphy when it was in its heyday. There are still Marxist interpreters around and I’m glad about this too because one of the basic maxims of Marxism is that the bourgeousie will overwhelm the proletariat ie the managerial class will always tend to exploit the workers, and I think that it is important for me to remember this. In my career in the arts I deal with ‘managers’ most days.
From Auckland University, I have an MA in Education. I was interested especially in how to design and evaluate a curriculum. How do you teach someone how to be a poet, for example?
Not going to art school I had to design my own programme for learning about photography and it was natural for me to follow the example that I had experienced when studying English. I studied great works, the lives and context of those who made them. Read a little bit of comment from time to time, but not a great deal. There didn’t seem to be as much ‘theory around then. My guess is that in schools, theory has well and truly supplanted history.
I still read biographies of artists. It helps me to keep my courage up.
Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz were two that I was interested in and read a lot about. Georgia O’Keeffe was one of the first American artists to forsake Paris and head for the American hinterland, in this case the desert of New Mexico, and I think that this appealed to me.
Not just their work inspired me, but their commitment to their work.
The relationship between Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe is a great love story.
Georgia O’Keeffe- Shell and Shingle 1926
(this is the actual colour. click on any image in my site to see it on a larger scale.)
Three Crosses
These Russian Yak sports planes were flying over my home on Sunday afternoon. Luckily for me three of these planes are based in New Plymouth.
When in the 90’s, latter part, I was visiting Sydney from New Zealand, on a regular basis, I took this photo.
On one of my trips, I went to a maritime museum in Sydney Harbour. On view was a Russian submarine that had been bought by someone with good taste after the collapse of Communism, although I don’t know who. I could be wildly wrong here but I think that they were for sale for $US250,000. My understanding was that it was one of fleet kept in Vladivostok, and used to patrol the Pacific. I went on a detailed tour of the Sydney one and I recommend it to anyone.
Again Im relying on my memory here, but my current understanding is that there were 17 of these submarines based there, and that were used to patrol the Pacific. There were rumours that they went through Cook Strait, although I know no facts.