I'm a digital advertising creative living in Sydney. This is a collection of my work and some stuff that interests me. If you don't like Courier you should subscribe to my RSS Feed.
After weeks and weeks of mismatched schedules, my friend Andrea and I finally made it to Cockatoo Island to see the the Bienalle just before it ended. I’m annoyed I didn’t go to the other exhibitions to see more painting, but there were a few pieces which made the trip well worth it.
This piece captured everything that fascinated me in Europe; display of glass coffins, Madame Tussauds and of course dead politicians. The first glass coffin I walked up to was Kim Il Sung and then I saw Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, and Vladimir Lenin. Without reading a blurb I instantly recoginised each leader from the fantastic wax modelling and could assume it was a meeting of the great Communist minds. I saw Andrea standing next to Fidel Castro and thought what is he doing here, wont he live forever? When I walked over I realised the model of Castro was not in a glass coffin, but on a makeshift hospital bed with air being pumped out his mouth as though he was breathing.
This exhibition had the perfect setting, an old lodge house which had 1960s wallpaper falling onto the floor. The slightly creepy portraits of teenage girls reminded me of Twin Peaks, especially the figure in “Goat Sluice” (left). Laura Palmer much?
We spend a long time sitting in a circular room with 9 screens playing this video. It was mesmorising and some how very relaxing. You can watch it on YouTube, but it has nowhere near the same effect:
This ad is beautifully shot, but makes little sense. It plays on the fact that St Mark’s square is filled with pigeons and when the world warms up those pigeons will be replaced by tropical birds. Sure St Marks square has more pigeons than Trafalgar (which has none), BUT when they leave they will be replaced by whales.
Anyway here is another photo of St Marks Square taken by @jonohutchison the first time I went to Venice:
At 7.30am we started our Obscura Day adventure. We took a train three hours out of Sydney, past Paramatta, past Penrith up into the Blue Mountains.
The drive from Lithgow with the other explorers was slow and dusty with very high chances of death. After an hour of windy cliff roads and termite hills we made it to a point where we could only proceed on foot. The lush ferns in the forest reminded me of home until we came across a large red bellied black snake who slithered away we neared him.
After following the old railway line for 15 minutes we entered the tunnel, every so often turning off our torches to reveal the glow worms. They were pretty, but not as impressive as some of the caves I have seen in NZ. When we reached the end the others stopped to take photographs outside, James and I went back into the tunnel. This time waiting still and quiet for several minutes as the glow worms lit up. We even found one who was broken and stayed glowing when the torch was on.
On the return trip we found some more treasures which Lithgow had to offer including a Mining Museum which we jumped the fence and had a look at and the Blast Furnace (below). With trains scarce from the remote location we got a lift home with two lovely friends we made (above, crossing the bridge).
The drive home was probably the highlight of the trip with sing alongs and driving past Hooters, who knew there was one in Sydney! We got home 14 hours after our trip had begun incredibly tired, but surprisingly alive.
Astronaut Robert L. Curbeam Jr. (left) and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Christer Fuglesang participate in the mission’s first of three planned sessions of extravehicular activity (EVA) as construction continues on the International Space Station.
These delightful engagement photos have brightened what has been a stressful day. Engagement photos are such an American thing – I can’t imagine any kiwi man allowing a photo shoot for cutesy couple pics.
This dinosaur comic inspired me to research William H. Mumler, the spirit photographer. He took the photo on the left of Abraham Lincoln’s “ghost” standing over his widow. It’s a creepy concept, before everyone realised he was a fake it would have seemed very eerie. After looking at that I saw the photo on the right on Atlas Obscura’s blog about spiral staircases. The ghost on the left is a maid who fell down those spiral staircases to her death.
- On a side note there is a secret five storey spiral staircase at the university where my pa works and I loved going up and down it as a child. It starts on the bottom floor in an instrument room and leads up to the light tracks on the ceiling of the theatre, connecting his two office spaces in between. -
My knowledge of photography means I can’t accept these photos have actually captured images of spirits. However I’m not decided on the existence of such things. When I was much younger I had a couple of ghost experiences, one in a graveyard and one with my deceased cat. Perhaps they were real or perhaps it was just my over-active imagination. Has anyone else had supernatural experiences or photos?
This photo of the President when he was about my age are delightfully eye opening! I am interested to see where he goes politically, and I am skeptical of his Nobel Peace Prize, but I love the person Barack Obama is. He’s come along way from the icecream shop and the badass 80s.
“Not So Little Red Riding Hood” by Dina Goldstein’s Fallen Princesses series.
I like these, they somewhat remid me of a photo exhibition I saw a couple of months ago in the Customs House Library. The Regel Twelve by Alexia Sinclair.
