Here’s a random pick from my flickr page:

In short I love the little camera. It’s got great focus and nice vignetting that makes the images produced feel like if they were seen through human eyes. It’s also really covert when taking pictures.

What I’d like to do now is take more portrait photos. Which brings me to the slight problem that I need subjects for that. Hopefully more visual news about this in the near future.

Oli, if you ever read this, I hope you’re still taking pictures every now and then. I love you man.

Mies van der Rohe’s work left me feeling somewhat bitter at the sterility and detachedness he implanted into society. It would have been nice if not everyone had started imitating with varying degrees of success his totally functional and “humble” approach. Too much of this and you get, well, this:

It’s the stuff that makes Monsieur Hulot flip out. God is not only in the details.

The film about Rem Koolhaas’ meanderings through Lagos offered an amazing if somewhat short view on the almost uncontrolled and explosive evolution of the city over the course of 4 years (1998-2002). One notable anecdote was that some market vendors had built their own little prison for detaining local criminals. No need for police and interviewed people seemed quite happy about this. Opportunity moves in mysterious ways.

No real conclusions were illustrated by the filmmaker however, which left some people wondering if Koolhaas and his students had actually reached them or if they had all been lost/negated during the intensity of the trip. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Godspeed, Mr. Koolhaas.

Which leaves me Santiago Calatrava’s work to bombinate about. And oh boy words fail me. All I can say is that if you like the pictures you see on the right and you haven’t yet experienced his work, then go and check it out. I’ve had the fortune of visiting two of his creations, the Gare do Oriente train station in Lisbon and Trinity Bridge in Manchester. Great moments.

Cet homme a plusieurs cordes à son arc!

More info:

• Sculptures by Calatrava

Just a quick post to bring the new EP of The Black Keys to attention. On it the two man band from Ohio travel through the mouth of the Mississippi Delta and sing the blues of Junior Kimbrough. Here’s a track called “Meet Me In The City” to enjoy.

You might also enjoy this nice portrait by Bill Steber titled African-American Music from the Mississippi Hill Country: “They Say Drums was a-Calling”.

You can buy the mp3 album at emusic.com or from your local record farmer.

Yes, this post is all about sandwiches. Beautiful sandwiches of different plumage that have been carefully crafted to ensure a supreme culinary experience. These sandwiches are for rods and cones.

Here’s a selection of the 15 photos I took:

I still have to get the hang of it a little. I had pushed the film from 400 to 800 ISO to get more grain and I think that confused me so I didn’t develop quite long enough.
Only one way to get better: more practise!

New Zealand certainly has its fair share of those. And I’ve been bad not photographing many of them.

This sky and rare “rainbow” were spotted over Idaho. The “rainbow” arc spanned several hundred square miles of sky and lasted for about an hour. It isn’t a real rainbow as such, but rather:

The circumhorizontal arc is caused by light passing through wispy, high-altitude cirrus clouds. The sight occurs only when the sun is very high in the sky (more than 58° above the horizon). What’s more, the hexagonal ice crystals that make up cirrus clouds must be shaped like thick plates with their faces parallel to the ground.

When light enters through a vertical side face of such an ice crystal and leaves from the bottom face, it refracts, or bends, in the same way that light passes through a prism. If a cirrus’s crystals are aligned just right, the whole cloud lights up in a spectrum of colors.

Read the full article on NationalGeographic.com.

I hereby also promise to photograph a few of the beautiful skies that grace Wellington during the next few weeks.

Through a fortunate coincidence I was recently introduced to the work of Russian born illustrator Ivan Bilibin (1876-1942), the beauty of which blew me away.

A large number of his haunting and expressive drawings revolve around Slavic mythology and are usually set against the mountains and forests of Old Russia.

From “Vasilissa the Beautiful” (1900), a story about Baba Yaga:

• Vasilissa outside Baba Yaga’s house
• Baba Yaga flying through the forest in her mortar
• Vasilissa and the white rider
• The black rider

Some other works:

• The Tsar’s son catches the Firebird’s feather from “The Firebird and the Grey Wolf” (1899)
• The merchants visit Tsar Saltan from “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” (1905)
• A Tsar outside a snowy house (not sure what this is from…)

More about Ivan Bilibin:

• wikipedia.org
• Biography
• Biography at Bud Plant Illustrated Books
• A collection of illustrations
• surlalunefairytales.com
• Buy books
• Buy prints
• Buy more prints

A UK graffiti artist going by the name of “Moose” makes his art not by painting onto walls, but by cleaning them. He’s been doing it to the ever so predictable annoyance of local authorities who are resolutely calling it vandalism. Apparently the council of Leeds has even asked him to “clean up” one of his pieces. Besides the fact that his works are obviously already clean they usually last only a few days.

The technique dubbed “grime writing” also holds interesting symbolic values. It accentuates the fact that our cities are getting increasingly dirty because of air pollution. The grey coat that covers many buildings, tunnels and streets and that is usually almost forgotten – or at least part of mundane scenery – suddenly becomes visible to all.

You can see some more of Paul Curtis aka Moose’s work at symbolix.com.

You know, to offset the seriousness.

This type of counter-attack may or may not result in serious injury, death or perky nips.