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Friday, March 27, 2009

City Lights.

I used to be intimidated by cities; the size of them, my ability to get lost and confused so easily, along with the sheer mass of people, all combined, was just a recipe for disaster. Today was different. Armed with a camera, things aren't so scary. When you stare down a viewfinder at someone you've just asked permission to take a photo of, they're vulnerable; they're one-hundred per cent at risk of being portrayed in any way, shape or light you want them to be in. You can make someone look ugly, beautiful, in love, hateful - all just by the way you shoot them. Having this power is, in general, fantastic.


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Walshy thought it would be a great experience to pile us onto a bus for Top Designs, a show case of the best 2008 VCE technology and design classes (media, graphic design, visual communications, textiles etc) of the state. The idea sounded good; All i wanted was an excuse to cruise around Federation Square, Flinder's and Swanston Street, find a good coffee shop and talk shit with Kaisha and Jo.
The actual showcase made me want to tear up my folio into a million little pieces, and start all over again. They showcased the folios and the works, to give students a super good inspiration boost; I took loads of mental notes.

There were a few generic pieces - the runner-up was a photography piece about Phobias. Kaisha, Walshy and I guessed it must have been a technologically retarded old person who had chosen it, as the piece was so fucking generic - you see the same kinds of photographs plastered across the internet, all over Scene Girl's myspace profiles. I was just sick of seeing those kinds of unoriginal photos - "Watch me spew up black shit. This represents and symbolises my fear of colours!"
I won't deny the fact that the composition of the photo's was pretty spot on - the colours and everything were great, but they'd stuck little sticker's on the work, explaining what the work was about.
In my mind, if you need to put a sticker on your piece, to tell your audience what its about, you're not confident enough that your photograph isn't getting its message across. If you're not confident that it's message isn't getting across, don't fucking pick it.
Do the job properly, and get the message across. Reshoot the entire thing if you have to; I'm tired of people who do things half-arsed.

Anyway.
We left the museam and bussed it back to Federation Square, where Walshy assigned us a little point-and-shoot task, which involved giving 60-something teenagers free range of the area with our piece of shit camera's that we'd brought along. No good ones were allowed, because you know, we'd probably leave them in a toilet or with a homeless guy or something...

I'll leave you with some pictures from today; the ones that I liked, anyway.



This guy's shirt was angry.




Street Charlie, the performer I could watch all day.


Ten minutes after this shot, this guy got up and put an echidna puppet on his hand.



This guy was more than happy to let me take his picture.



Me hand-feeding greedy gulls.


Jo.



Kaisha @ graffiti lane.


Me @ Graffiti Lane.



Me Above Flinder's St Train yards
(i love how my school jumper turns me into a shapeless maroon blimp)






"fuck balloons."

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