"I Don't Get People"

"I don't get people."

Who's not said something like that? In these instances, "people" usually means someone specific who either for an isolated moment in time, or long-term represents a subset of the population in general.

A lot of people don't "get people." I suppose it's just a reflection of how different we each can be; how vague the rules can be that govern human interactions and relationships. I also find it fascinating how those interactions are now being translated from the IRL world to the online world of social media. It's seems there are similarities between the "people" I don't "get" online and IRL (maybe another blog subject).

A Mother's Journey

There's a photo I've been wanting to get for ages. A cursory glance through Google images and Flickr shows that nobody else has got it either. At least the exact shot I have in mind. It's probably out there somewhere, but I haven't seen it.

So, today I saw a mummy duck with a bunch of ducklings.

Update!

Well. What a week. Month. Year!

The planning for the next Addington Cup Day starts pretty much the day after the current one finishes. There are a million people (slightly exaggerated) involved but my point of contact has been the beautiful Charlotte Mooney of Addington Events Centre. We had a bit of a debrief the other day and I got a little insight into just what she has to deal with in the organisation and execution of your average run of the mill Cup Day. Except, this year was not your average run of the mill Cup Day. It was bigger and better and more specifically focussed.

Well done Charlotte!

Photographically, Cup Day must be one of the funnest days of the year. Rarely do you get such a concentration of gorgeous, snazzily dressed people. It never ceases to astound me how many gorgeous people there are in our city! I know such things are very subjective, but for me, with so many gorgeous people on display, whether in the competitions or in the public areas, it might be prejudicial at best to single anyone out. But I will anyway.

If I could be caught swooning it was mostly over this daring little number (the dress, I mean, though the model is gorgeous too!). I never thought it had a chance (as one dear, elderly patron told me, anything off the shoulder is totally inappropriate for the races!), but I loved it nonetheless. And it did make it to the final.

I'm no fashionista, but I know what I like. I loved this ensemble. But it's impossible to choose among so many beautiful outfits. Have a look at the rest of the line-up here.

The winner of Best Dressed Lady (right). I actually really liked it too!




With so many beautiful people on stage it's still impossible to ignore the other 22000 beautiful people not competing in the fashion stakes. 

And lest the impression be left that it's all about the ladies (even though it really is!) the guys are definitely not backward in coming forward to give the girls a run for their money.

I had a very special assignment for the afternoon. I got to hang out with The Ridges. Of course, not that much hanging out took place. They were swamped with adoring fans and full on the whole afternoon. But we managed to get a few snaps.

Colin Mathura-Jeffree is a regular attraction at Cup Day, and I've never been ashamed of the little man-crush I have on him. And I have to say that the Ridges were thoroughly charming and engaging, and so accommodating with the crowds who demanded their attention and a photo-opp. There will be more photos of The Ridges on the Addington page any day now.

THEN! Yesterday was another racing day at Addington. It was Lindauer Race Day, a more family oriented low key affair. But just as much fun! Jordan Luck entertained between races and rocked the crowd. What a showman.











And wouldn't you know it - it's Race Day, and MORE beautiful people!!!!

The collective sigh of relief was palpable Wednesday morning. Another Cup Day done and dusted and, from the fringe outside, it appeared to go swimmingly. More credit to Charlotte and the team! Do check out the photos on the Addington Facebook page. We'll be adding more over the next few days and weeks. Bernard and Gudrun did a fantastic job and took thousands of awesome photos!! Thanks guys...pleasure working with you :)

Kate?

I couldn't resist. I was going to avoid the much-vaunted Kate Middleton topless photos out of principle. I'd like to think that, as a photographer, viewing such photos online would only encourage more such ridiculousness. But also, as a photographer, not only was I fascinated by the legal wrangling that will undoubtedly take place, I was intrigued by more mundane, technical things like, what could the photos possibly look like quality-wise?

I assume the photographer was a fair distance away from the couple (I heard it was a kilometre).

Deep Breath

My first thought was to put up a massive headline. Like this.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH TOLD TO 

FUCK OFF AT PROTEST

But then, my kinder gentler side kicked in and I took a deep breath. He's angry. Hurting. Pushed to the edge by bureaucracy and financial ruin maybe. Or something. Here's how the conversation went (sort of):

What Balloons Do When No One's Watching

When I was about 8 or 9 (early 70s) I seemingly out of nowhere began to suffer from severe headaches and hallucinations. I remember being taken to Dr. Wilcox ( a gruff old bugger typical of GPs of the time) whose best guess was migraines (keeping in mind that it's all a bit hazy for me now). What he could not explain was the hallucinations. I would spend night after night terrified, screaming and crying.

One of the things that terrified me was the feeling (hallucination) of being tiny in an incredibly huge warehouse/train station. I wan't tiny in a normal warehouse; I was normal size in an incredibly oversized space and the feeling was literally overwhelming.

One Day Down at the Implosion

What do you do, when you are at an "event" to take photos, and realise that every second person has a camera and the "event" will probably be one of the most photographed events in your city since it fell down on its own?

You lose a little bit of interest and start thinking outside the square.

I read a thing on the Internet (so it must be true) recently about how now that there are so many cameras around, a lot of people have started missing big events. Specifically, it was about weddings, and the reason many people were "missing" the event was because they were too busy checking their camera screen, settings, etc and the event passed them by. Sure they were there, and they had some photos of it for posterity (hopefully). But they couldn't actually remember much of the specifics of the ceremony. They were to busy recording it and waiting for that one special moment to take a photo of.

So I wondered how many people this morning missed seeing the event with their own eyes because they were watching it on the LCD screen of their camera/iPhone/video recorder.

I'm one of them. I didn't "see" the building come down with my own eyes. I watched it in my LCD screen. And, of course, it was over in less than ten seconds and all that was left was the memory of it on my SD card and in my ears. So I got to taking some sneaky photos of as many cameras that were around me as I could, being a bit bored and knowing that every man and his dog would have photos of the actual implosion as good as or better than mine.

It intrigues me how technology has changed the way we do things. There were photos and video of the implosion on Facebook before I got back to my car. Admittedly I hung around a bit (taking photos of people taking photos), but still. Within ten minutes the whole event was online and going global.

So, in light of there being a million photos of this mornings implosion out there somewhere, I am proud to present my mornings work. I call it:

Photos of people taking photos moments after the Implosion.

I'd like to think this was a unique idea, but I just saw on Facebook a photo of a camera taking a photo of the implosion, so pretty much I should have just stayed in bed this morning.


RIP Radio Network House

Married According to the Mob

I think everyone has an idea of what the word “marriage” means. It can, and does, mean many things to many people, but I would hazard a guess that for most “marriage” is generally understood to mean something like a man and a woman have the ceremony where they are pronounced man and wife, they live in a house together, have children and live happily ever after. That’s what “marriage” means in the Western mind.

Undoubtedly, however, we live in changing times. As little as a hundred and fifty years ago, humans flying somewhere was incomprehensible. Travelling anywhere of great distance required months of hardship and the chances of death en route were as good as arriving safely. Just two generations ago space travel was the domain of nutters and science fiction writers. Within my life time, television was a miracle. Colour television was unheard of. Computers were the domain of the aforementioned nutters and science fiction writers who droned on about space travel.

Is it art?

I had fully intended to post this photo I took a couple weeks ago, and then I saw this blog post asking the very question I had in my mind. Is it art? Of course, I knew my answer already but I'm sure there are some who would disagree.

To me it's ... blank dreary cracked wall, or...this? I'm thinking this hands down.

Similar art works are popping up all over town. Even pre-earthquake there were many art works like this, as I've photographed already. But post-earthquake there seems to be, first of all, more of it (as more blank walls become available), and second, an almost tacit appreciation of it as Christchurch grapples with ideas of how to make our ravaged, uglified city more attractive.

I love this stuff. What do you think?

Every Little Boy's Dream House

Were things in the 60s and 70s simpler or just different?

We didn't have computers or iPods or iPads or Wii or Xbox. We didn't even have TV. I remember my first direct brush with technology was listening to Dad's Army on a valve radio in my bedroom on Sunday nights. I wonder if Josh will remember, 40 years from now, huddling under the covers playing Minecraft on his iPod.

As nostalgic as I tend to be, I realise times have changed, priorities are different, and it's a brave new world. But every now and then I enjoy how Josh simply does not understand what it means when I tell him that I did not have a TV or a computer when I was his age. We comprehend these things as adults, but children simply have no concept. "No TV? You mean, you didn't have one in your room?" "No Josh, we didn't HAVE one. At all. Possibly no one on the whole street had one." Oh, yeah. He finally understands. "So why didn't you just go buy one?"

Arrgghhh...

Anyway, I digress. Sort of. When I was a boy, an awesome treehut was probably the epitome of entertainment. Sure we had bikes, and toy cars, and even train sets. We made guns out of bits of wood, and bows and arrows out of tree branches.