I’m an emotional retard. There seems to be this inability for me to understand how to act in some instances. When life throws me a curve ball, I sit there stewing about what I think I should do. Sometimes I make the right choice while other times I try and figure out ways of avoiding the problem; burying my head in the sand so to speak. I had some pretty comprehensive testing done on me when I was in my early 20s by a friend who needed a case study for his psychology subjects at uni and while I demonstrated above average IQ, I was well below on the EQ. I’m hypersensitive to other people’s emotions but can’t seem to control mine to make the right choices.

I’m Peter Pan; I never want to grow up and make grown up decisions.

Strobist:

Tripod at the centre bottom of image
580EX @ 1/2 into reflective umbrella
430EX @ 1/8 into gobo far back left

Life sometimes gets in the way of this website and this is another case. These are some photos from Australia’s latest hip-hop gods Bliss N Eso who I checked out nearly 2 weeks ago. They’ve been around for a couple of years and after a lot of hard work, they’re headlining their very own sold out national tour. Proof that hard work and some good tracks can get you anywhere.

Bliss N Eso were supported by Pez, who became almost instantly famous with last years song “The Festival Song”.

Check out the full gallery including more shots at The Dwarf.

Click on each image to go to their story.

As always, click on the image to go to the story.

For a band that thrives on a lunatic-like tour schedule, Cog have been quiet for what seems an eternity. Their last album, Sharing Space, has been available for nearly a year and the band has been quiet in Australia since touring for that album. I figured since I’m a newbie in Brisbane, I’d check out some of the local venues with the HiFi Bar being one of the newer, and theoretically one of the better venues. How wrong I was.

Cog, as always, were great but the HiFi Bar just can’t seem to figure out how to do some things. When I go to see a band, I don’t just go to see them, I want to be deaf at the end of it. The HiFi Bar’s sound is one of the worst I’ve ever heard at a gig, it sounds so empty and hollow. I saw The Drones a couple of weeks back and the sound was equally bad so it’s fair to say the blame doesn’t lay at the hands of the sound engineers. I felt like I was listening to a Cog bootleg, recorded by some guy with a microphone hidden in his hat, it was seriously that bad. Secondly, having the multi-tier system is great for visibility, but in terms of getting in or out of the photo pit/floor area, it’s an absolute joke. We’d all be dead if there was a fire.

Anyways, enough ranting, photos ahead.

Cog were supported by UK prog/art rockers Oceansize (and Calling All Cars who I didn’t arrive in time to see). I thought Oceansize also suffered from bad sound but I enjoyed their stuff regardless. I’m not sure about a lot of other people though, the strange chords, time signatures and structures looked like it was freaking out a few punters…

I’ve spent my whole life trying to make other people happy. I often end up in a position where I tend to make decisions that provide comfort for others while doing exactly the opposite for myself.

Making decisions for yourself doesn’t make you selfish, and realisation of this is something that takes time.

It feels like it’s been ages since I posted a 52, and I guess that’s just one instance where I’m making a decision for myself. I’m tired, I’ve had so much stuff to do and I decided that this is something I can delay to give me a life that resembles something normal.

Strobist: 580 EX @ 1/8 into shoot through umbrella camera right, 430 EX @ 1/2 gelled blue.

The smoke is provided by my friend aknacer. Thanks mate!

So I’ve started another project to completely fill up my already filled up schedule. It’s really quite simple.

1) One photo per day for a whole year

2) One lens: Canon 50mm f1.2

3) One aperture setting: f1.2

I’m going to upload them onto here on a weekly basis so I don’t end up with 365+ posts per year. If you’re desperate to keep up on a daily basis, I suggest you find a life, but at the end of that, if you’re still keen, watch my flickr. Click on each image to head to the flickr page which may or may not have a bit of a story about the image.

I accidentally deleted Day 5 before saving. Not a good start…

I have a bad habit of sometimes saying stuff without thinking. Like the time when I was working as a shoe salesman in high school and told a person that the shoe they were trying on was a ladies shoe. That person’s friend then proceeded to tell me that their friend was actually a woman.

Strobist: 580EX @ 1/8 into partially collapsed reflective umbrella camera right, 580EX @ 1/4 into reflective umbrella camera top left, 430 EX @ 1/8 into snoot top camera right slightly behind for hair light.

We spend so much of our lives trying to gain acceptance. A large amount of that consists of filtering out the bad little bits and promoting the good. The next month of photos will consist of my flaws; things in my life that I want to improve and things that I’m not very good at. First up, materialism.

One of the main tenets of Buddhism espouses the need to relinquish all desire for worldly possessions. These possessions just provide complication and give us reason to worry. If we only have the basics for what we need to live, those complications don’t exist. While I’m not really a practising Buddhist, it’s one of the aspects that I really respect.

I just need to reduce my life down to what I need to get by.

Strobist: 580EX @ 1/8 into shoot through umbrella below camera.

I knew that the first few weeks I spent here would be lonely. I just had no idea how lonely it would be.

I want to be surrounded by Soph, my family and friends like I have for the last 27 years, but that was the chapter in my life I have just completed. I’m living the words of that next chapter and I hope this narrative ends up being a comedy and not a tragedy.

Strobist: 580EX bare @ 1/2 camera back right, 430EX @ 1/8 with diffuser camera front right. The sunlight was a little bit challenging to reproduce and took more than a few goes to get it kinda right.

The background image is provided very kindly by night-fate on sxc.hu. Thank you for sharing!

The title is inspired by the amazing Jeff Buckley song of the same name.

After a pretty long hiatus, I’ve finally had a chance to get back on the 52 Week bandwagon. I’m sitting in my new lounge room in the lovely little suburb of Newmarket in Brisbane where I’m living with a fellow flickrite Matt and his partner Beth. They’re pretty cool people and the house is pretty awesome too.

Matt has a little studio in the garage which makes these portraits a little easier to do, hopefully they get better than this one!

Strobist: 580EX @ 1/16 gelled blue directly above me, 430 EX @ 1/16 with purple gel below camera.

I had the privilege of checking out the Kaiser Chiefs and Razorlight at the Enmore Theatre on behalf of Reverb magazine, a cool little street press in Newcastle and the Central Coast. I wasn’t 100% familiar with either band’s catalogue but had heard songs by both and seen plenty of images of the Kaiser Chiefs in full flight.

Opening the evening was Razorlight who were travelling on the V-Festival tour around Australia with the Kaiser Chiefs and a bunch of other huge acts. Lighting was tough with pretty much zero white light from in front, just single colour washes across most of the stage (mostly blue as the following shots show).

After a short delay, the Kaiser Chiefs came out and started their trademark show. Lead singer Ricky, as always, was pretty active, running around and getting the crowd involved. Again, the lighting was pretty tough with not much front light.

As Dan said, it was a bit of a photographic reunion for us Sydney shooters, there were probably only 2 or 3 of the real regulars missing. And meeting Antz from Perth out the front was pretty random and surprising. He actually is as nice as everyone reckons he is!

So this is the jump shot that pretty much everyone in the pit was waiting for!

The last week in my life has been pretty dramatic to say the least.

The main change is the fact that I am going to become a card carrying Queenslander; For those not in the know, Queenslanders are also known somewhat unaffectionately as Banana Benders. Further to last week’s photo, my interview up at QUT in Brisbane went quite well and I was offered the position as a Post Doctoral Research Fellow. As a result, I’ll be moving up to Brisbane in the next 2 or 3 weeks and will be there for at least the next 3 years.

Anyways, I’m going to be quite busy getting everything organised so I doubt I’ll have time to do 52s between now and then. So for now, good night, and good luck!