One year!

One year ago I started this blog. As a way of celebrating I thought I would share a collection of all the headers from the last year. As with many things on this little blog I try pay attention to little details, visually at least. Most of the time the header banner reflects the subject of a current post, or maybe something going on in my life. Additional interesting note: the L85 is my hand writing, I chose two out of about 20 or so different tries and alternate depending on the picture content. Here you go:

Insta-tastic!

It's been a bit quiet on the blog front the last two months as I have taken some time to actually try and work on some art, but fear not creativity is still afoot! One creative outlet I have started having fun with is Instagram. For those of you who don't know, Instagram is an app for the iPhone (which I finally recently acquired)which allows you to take and share photos. Part of what makes it unique is that it has a battery of filters, which allow you to filter your pictures to resemble the output of various cameras, or era's of photography. I have to admit, at first I was a detractor of this "vintage" phone based filtering, as I was a supporter of doing it the "hard way" quite literally with hardware like my Holga or my Harinezumi The Harinezumi site nails it (Japanese translation):
"We did not want the Digital Harinezumi to take sharp, crisp images - we prefer its slightly blurred focus and inaccurate colours, thrilling our lives with a dream-like view, interpreting and re-inventing what is around us."
Yes! Thrilling our lives! The point being, I thought all this phone filtering was cheating. Then I picked up a iPhone 4s, and was thrilled with the camera. I had been seeing a lot of awesome output from Instagram on sites like Iso50 and decided to give it a go. First thing I found is that, most of the filters, are actually quiet good. They don't allow for some of the same mistakes as the Holga, but they looked really nice in use. I am not really a fan of the fake borders, which mimics the print of old film (I think this is best left for the real deal), but these are only options and most people choose not to use them. For me, the real magic of Instagram is the sharing. The application is setup much like a familiar social network, you can follow people, they can follow you, but there are no updates, no links, no games, no drama! You can 'like' and comment on photos but that's it. You just see the things that the people you follow find visually interesting, how great is that? I constantly see things I find visually peculiar or awesome, but I'm not apt to share them on the "book", constantly filling peoples feed with stuff they don't care about or want to see. With Instagram you just see photos by people you want to see photos from. It's a great outlet for me to share things that don't quiet warrant a blog post, or something I might not post on other social networks. I've even started sharing pictures I've taken with my Holga through Instagram. The Harinezumi will not be far behind. All this being said you should give Instagram a try, or if you already have Instagram, follow me @axisnms
Below are a few of my favorite from my Instagram, all of them taken with my iPhone:

Macro Love

Just a few little details that I found going through some of my pictures...
They really highlight some of the things I find attractive in the marco mode of the Harinezumi camera, the texture, the noise, the smearing focus contrasted against the sharp focus, all contributing to the other worldly feel of these pictures. I still love the hyper crispness of a high quality macro picture from a SLR or something along those lines, but these just have something about them that I really adore. I think my love of slightly fuzzy macro-photography can be traced back to the back page of '3 2 1 Contact' magazine, where it featured different close ups of objects, and you had to guess the object. Ah memories. Maybe I will see if I can buy some old back issues...

Dos Studios

Unlike some of my other multiple exsposures that I have done with the Holga this one was accidental. This is both my studio work space, and the main room over at Good Dannys. I took the picture at my place on a tripod, in the dark, over a long period, and forgot to roll the film. A few days later we went into Good Dannys Studio to mix and I snapped the picture at his place. The below is the result of 'mixing' of two studios.

PS: I love the lens flare 'halo' I think that it's fuzziness is a result of the plastic lens.

Not Staged

The year is rapidly drawing to a close, and it seems like the number of good musical events are starting to ramp up. Slowly, but with greater frequency, I'm starting to have a weekly itinerary good of shows I would like to see, a list I should probably just add to my calender instead of keeping in my head. In Austin, this ramping up of awesome shows always seems to continue till it explodes into SXSW. People have pretty varied opinions on SXSW, and I totally understand both sides of the SXSW pro/con coin, but whether it is official or not, I can already feel a distant giddiness in anticipation of the hive of musical and cultural activity that comes with that part of the year. To me, a lot of the fun, and the experience is not just who is on what stage at what time, but the frenzy, the excitement in the air, and the general adventures that come a long with it. You find your self in some odd and awesome scenes. So in that light, I thought I would share some of my favorite pictures from SXSW 2011 that aren't looking towards the stage. Some times the environment around you tells you when to capture the moment.

These are all unedited and taken with my lil Harinezumi camera whose noise I love so much...

Falling Tree Audio

Some years ago me and Scot decided to start a musical project. We both had strong backgrounds in the ways of electronic music. Agreeing that we would not me making 'dance' music, we decided to make something that would showcase the sounds we liked, something that would not really follow any rules (because you know, we're rebels. Cheese on!) and something that might even follow the accessible structures of pop music. This was Grackle Pop. Grackle Pop has since ended up sort of being an umbrella name for what we have been up to, and once more things have started to happen. As part of that process Scot and I have setup:


Go ahead and click that.
This is a place to showcase some of whats been going on in our speakers these years since the inception of the project. I wont explain too much more as I wrote a nice post HERE explaining why the blog is there. I'll still post audio oddities and such here, there may be some doubling up on both sites, but Falling Tree Audio will give a more complete picture as to what the two of us have been doing. Our first release will be coming up soon!

Speaking of doubling up, check this cool tile image comprised of details of pictures take with my Hazcam:

Multispozer

Click above to embiggen.

This was taken with my Holga on my way home from work. With the Holga firmly wedged in between the dashboard and the window I snapped pictures at various moments on the way home from work, thus this image is a mutli-exposure compilation of my daily voyage home. There are a multitude of amazing cameras out there that can give you a very concise, focused, image of what it is your capturing, I'm trying to use the Holga with it's 120 film to make a sort visual impression of what I want to capture, not just a record.