The Batblog by Photobat

The Dishcloth.

Way back in 1999, I did a bit of playing on the Scanning electron Microscope at uni. Big, expensive and dam cool “toy”. I did a course on it because I always loved those photos that I kept seeing of dust mites and other tiny insects. My uni course, being scientific photography, didn’t offer it as part of the syllabus, so I did an independent study on it, managed to squeeze into a 1 week intensive course and then had a year to play on the SEM. The next year a heap of people followed in my footsteps and did it, so it was kind of nice to be a trail blazer for that part of my course.

I wish I used it more, I don’t have any really great images that I ca print off, they are all about 20k in size. So only good for the screen.

This was a bit of my dishcloth from my college dorm… It’s my favourite of the 7 images I still have.

Time…

I know I have no time, so why do I kinda procrastinate. I’m sure I could be getting more done in a quicker time. And no, this is not procrastination, I’ve just spend 2 hour solid emailing (which was not procrastination it was letting people know I’m going to visit them in the UK soon).

So my eyes hurt…

On the up, my nice new camera/laptop bad has arrived. The laptop only just fits into it, and it is pretty. I’ll only be using it when I need to carry both camera and laptop at the same time. Still more convenient to carry just the laptop for some meetings (and I don’t look like a dick when I’m trying to get it out of it’s snug bag).

I’m getting very confident in the way the business is going to take shape for the next year. I did a 2 year olds portrait the other day and it was fun, we were looking for crocodiles and bears! I used my new favourite location; so far I have used it for portraits, landscapes and nudes. Very versatile. It pays to look under bridges.

Anyway, I have to get some sleep, my BAS is due tomorrow and unfortunately, it’s still sitting here… dam it.

Also… time to put the comments section to use, the question I need answering is…

“What do you recommend for surviving long flights and that jet lag thing?”

Another thing about weddings…

You make a lot of friends as you grow up, some you manage to hang onto over the years others just fall off the wagon, normally only scene at a distance on a street somewhere. But as my old friends are all getting to the marriage stage of life, they are all starting to call me up again!

I’ve had 3 phone calls from old friends in the last few months, one of them left it a bit late and I already had a booking, the other two are all booked in ready to go. One is a friend from year 11 and 12, the other was also at school at year 11 and 12 but I knew her more from Venturer type activities.

The venturer girl will be great, i know all her family and it’s going to be a bit of a back yard wedding, as their reception venue was sold out from under them and turned into a bushranger theme resturant or somthing.

So I’m looking forward to their weddings, you tend to really get to know a couple prior to their wedding and when they are old friends it makes things so much easier and quite a bit more fun.

I had a couple ring up wanting to change the date of their wedding… Which is a bit of a problem as I’m already booked on the weekend they want to change to, and I know that they would have a hard time getting another photographer for their new date. I hope they can move it to fit me in as I have built up a great relationship with this guys over email. They have been traveling and have only managed to get into Tasmania this week. But I guess that is the way things go sometimes.

Morgan’s Kitchen

Most people have seen the photo I took of Anthony Morgan back in March of 2003. This is one of the first shots from the shoot, just in his kitchen, with a can of Powers Ice in has hand and the stew on the stove. I did have my digital camera with me, but I shot this on film using the old OM1, I think I had a promo roll of neg from Fuji to play with.

So, this shot was taken at about 11am on a Saturday morning. The first thing our kind host offered us (Robbie who was helping me) was a beer. I had just had a fairly large night before and so enquired about some coffee… I ended up with a beer, as did Robbie.

This was shot with natural light through his window to the left, a tungsten bulb over head and with a silver reflector to the right.

I’ve just seen the button to upload pictures direct into blogger. It coincided with the reflective looking through my “to Email” folder which has photos I’ve emailed to people for the last 3 years. I thought there were some good shots in there that needed to be shared. So I’ll put up some every now and then.

This photo is of John X, taken in the Theatre Royal in Hobart during the 2003 Uni Review that I documented. It may be just my sense of humour, but I like the shot heaps.

Refugees

I spent all day in at the Migrant Resource Centre today taking photos of 9 refugees who now live in Launceston. It’s for an exhibition that looks like it will be one of the main attractions of the Refugee Week festivities in October this year. And I think it’s amazing.

The whole project is to produce a series of large format portraits of refugees who are residing in Tasmania. The portraits will be accompanied by a professionally written story describing how each of the subjects came to be in Tasmania. The aim for this exhibition is to promote public knowledge of the people that are now becoming part of our communities.

My friend Benny came up from Hobart to do the interviewing and I sat in and asked questions where possible. Ben is a great interviewer, I am glad he went along with this project. I’m sure his kind and gentle manner helped in some of the revelations that a harsher interviewer probably would not have had a hope of receiving.

We had a very diverse range of people, more than I expected, from Sierra Leone to Ukraine to Vietnam to Chile, and more. .

I could tell you all about the amazing stories we heard, the despair, loss, anger and finally through to the happiness, excitement and relief. But that is what the exhibition is for, so I’ll let you know when it is going to be on.

I’ll hopefully post some stories here after the exhibition is finished for those who can not physically be here.

Getting around to it.

There is a lot to get around to. I think I’m on top of all the wedding work, all the albums are on their way to their new homes, or will be arriving back to me in the next couple of weeks for dispatching. I’m really happy wit the way they have been turning out. I just ordered a large and a small sample album for my office space… Once I get it.

It’s tempting to put lots of things on the credit card so that I have them. I’m not going to be weak. I nearly bought some coffee cups for my office yesterday. But I resisted. Then I bought a few shirts, well… I need them.

I procrastinated a bit this weekend. I did manage to do a couple of shoots, a wedding enquiry meeting and get a little of my tax stuff done but I haven’t even got close to being on top of things that I wanted to be on top of by now.

Last weekend I made a marketing plan for the new financial year. Down to the week, what I need to be doing. I’ve been on the plan for a week, and it’s safe to say I’m now a week behind on it. Not a good start.

I did spend a bit of time with some new muso / inspiring friends, which involved more than one very late night. I need to get the whole 9 - 5 work things going so that I can spend time out in the evening and not get behind on things. So big effort this week.

Working on my new look at the moment, the new photobat logo is in the bag and website plans are coming together. It will be a fairly big change. I’ll probably be using a new web designer. My brother Bruce has been doing a great job for the last 3 years in maintaing the website. So I have tot hank him a lot for all the time and effort that he has put in.

UK is coming along very quickly. It’s a bit worrying with these bomb things going on over there. I’ve been addicted to terrorist news since September 11. It’s kind of like the X-files, After a while I only tuned in for the alien stories, not all the other random ones. Same thing with news for me at the moment, Terrorist activity means that there will be 24 hour news, when London happened I watched for about 5 hours, a mix of BBC world, Sky News, ABC and Seven. Gradually it fades away and I’m back in my little world where everything is a long way away. Until next month, when I’ll be there. I’m sure things are going to be very paranoid over there for a few months so I think I’ll be fine
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Tomorrow I’m off to take photos of some Refugees. Benny Walter and I are working on a project which will involve large portrait prints of 10 refugees from diverse backgrounds who all now live in Launceston. Benny will be doing some interviews with them to learn their story and we will put that along side the photos. It will be very interesting. Exhibition is scheduled for October.

And as for everything else, i’ll get around to it soon.