DrJoolz Snapshotz on Life

Tropical

Originally uploaded by Trois Têtes (TT)

Went to Peace in the Park on Saturday. Some interesting stuff to photograph and saw a wonderful band Just Potatoes. The lead singer had the most beautiful rich Blues voice but could also belt out the Waits’ Chocolate Jesus, giving a momentous performance.

(This is the singer from Just Potatoes.)

I found out about the event in several ways - all of which were to do with my ‘life online’ Firstly I took a photo last week of a a performer advertising the event - but only found out about the event after I took the shot for my Flickr stream (not yet uploaded); secondly I heard about the event on a discussion thread on Flickr; thirdly I heard about it via a contact on Facebook.

While I was there, I was intent on getting good shots to put on Flickr … but most uncanny was when Ian Jones came up to me and said ‘Hi you’r DrJoolz aren’t you? I recognise you from Flickr … Life Online, huh? Blending Identities.

(Thanks to TT for the images.)

A few months ago I brought you this story - from my fridge.

And now I see that there is a wonderful blog here all about ‘passive-aggressive notes from roommates, neighbors, coworkers and strangers’

Do other people find notes round their houses?

This is the latest one in my house:

Rosa likes to leave notes … another one here…

I think it is interesting the way people leave text around the place. Sometimes with no hope of seeing most of their audience.

This one is quite bemusing:

And I like Lemon2’s shot here which captures a moment where the text seems to have a relationship with the person in front:

But the relationship is only made by the reader. There are just two items in the image and we as readers join them in a narrative; we make connections between one element of the image and another.

I am really interested in the ways in which environment can change the meanings of text and vice versa. I am interested in the way text changes over time. This one is funny:

But really I am interested in interactivity of the environment - including people, and even the weather - with texts that are in the street …. specifically streetart and grafitti. The life and meanings of street texts.

I feel a a new project coming on ….

I love to take photos and then fiddle around and use photoshop to crop or fiddle with colour etc.

Lots of people are against such post-photographic tampering. But I see it as aprt of the whole photographic process. Even in the ‘darkroom’ used for processing film, there are decisions to be made about chemicals, exposure time etc etc. The type of film used brings about differebnt results, and of course printing can make a qwhole lot of difference in terms of colour outcome, type of paper (glossy or matt), size and even borders.

I like to use photoshop and because I think that because you have to frame the image, focus in a particular way, shoot at a particular angle, wait for the right moment (etc.) the image is always just a representation, never ‘real’. It is not a snap from reality but a version. It is the photographer’s view; it reflects a set of choices or circumstances. It is amazing how you can get so many different types of image when many people take a picture of one thing. (Compare the shots of the same Banksy stencils, for example.) .

I photoshopped this image:

I wanted to also play with the idea that you can shoot in black and white or colour. I called this ‘Shooting in Colour’.

I also wanted to show my position on streetart - that it brightens the environment and can improve and humanise negelgted and forgotten spaces.

I like this video about transforming a model through photography. The video is supposed to shopw how shallow we are in having only one version of beauty. It is apart of a campaign for ‘real beauty’. What is ‘real’? I like the transformative process. It interests me a lot. And what do we mean by ‘natural’ or ‘real’?

Some people are getting all excited about ZOOMR
This is a fabulous new photosharing site which is much much speedier (zoomier) than Flickr.

I think Flickr peeps may be scared, especially as so much stuff from Flickr is duplicated here. And it is multilingual.

But I am not sure that a move away from Flickr would be worth it as I would now want to leave all my lovely new friends behind.
I also cannot see any real interactivity happening on Zoomr yet…. but it is like a school disco I spose … everyone else is wondering who will dance first.
At the moment everyone is still standing round the walls.

I joined to check it out and here is one of my photos … just to be a rebel it is a shot of someone on a recent Sheffield Flickrmeet!!

Flickr meet Hosted on Zooomr

Meanwhile ianya tells us all about mediaed.org
Here you can get all sorts of info and resources as well as free video downloads.

For example the one from Bel hooks in New York.

An interesting mix of promo videos (to entice you to buy videos) and pdf downloads, the site offers a mix of takes on media education issues. … so I am not quite so keen on the message in this video here that advertsing is propaganda…

Quite a goldmine anyway for anyone thinking of running an online course soon….

Thanks for the tip off anya!!

TT is not happy as he is holed up in FINLAND where he claims it is pitch black and very cold.

Maybe it USED to be called Funland, but they had to change it.

TT has two vouchers to go to the bar. But it is closed.

How crap is that?

He has rearranged his hotel room and taken pictures but cannot upload them to Flickr as there is no Internet access.

But I have found that when he gets back he can upload pictures to the hotel website here.

Can’t be all bad; he will be able to show the shots he took where he was rearranging his room.

Here he is, holding his electronic tagging device. (Silly old twit)

dirty girl

Originally uploaded by kreativekell.

From KreativeKell … who is fabulous and who I met in New York in July.

I wanna go baa-a-a-a-a-a-a-ack.

I like this photo which seems to imitate an advertisement which is imitating life.

Yesterday went to a Photography festival in DERBY???!

We went by train and as usual TT was behaving just a tad pretentiously:

there were exhibitions going on all through the town and I especially enjoyed the work by:

• Julian Germaine (exhibited by bus stops in the city - HUU-U-U-U-U-UGE pictures;
• Nudrat Afza - (bizarrely exhibited amongst great big Rolls Royce plane engines and such) - poignant images of isolated people;
• Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin - incredible pictures of Chicago - in the middle of a desert in the middle east - a place where wars are rehearsed

It was all pretty wonderful and a surprise to enjoy the riches Derby had to offer in this respect … and we discovered it has a wonderful Arts Design and Technology department at the university. I would like to go to this lecture

Finally Format 2006 had a project for kids going on too with a very interesting teaching pack too which you can download from here. Very nice.

City where there is huge Contestation over spaces (what they should be; who owns them;) … people make their marks on walls and live in spaces which others think do not belong to them.

Not everyone is happy with capitalism or that the wall came down. There is sadness and trauma.

But such things bring out creativity- mark making on the city walls reflects some of the characters who use the space

(Art can be transformative; people in the city interact with Art in different ways)

This is Tacheles which was a department store and is now a squat:

Backside:

I see people take photos.
Lots of the people are taking pictures of themselves.
It is so common to see the self portraiters when you are out and about these days.
They seem to want to have pictures of themselves everywhere.
I think that partly they just like to use their gadgets.

They often share them and talk about them in groups, gathering round and looking at the little screens.

It is so easy to hold the technology and take your own photos in different places. VicCarrington talked recently about how she and her partner are pretty obsessed with this activity… and refuse help from kindly passers by who offer to take their photograph for them.

I am interested in the idea that we want to see ourseves positioned in spaces; the way we want to take control of the images. Berger talked of the ways in which women in particular view themselves as if through other’s eyes. This is becoming an obsession for everyone. But if we hold the camera it is as if we are taking control over other people’s gaze.

Putting the images on a website is taking one step further; viewing ourselves on the global stage. Look on Flickr and you will see so many self portraits. Under the tag ’self portrait’ or see the group ‘ of me’.There is something important going on which is to do with identity positioning.

I have never printed off photos taken by my digital camera.
I have 1,407 photos on Flickr. They have been viewed 29,856 times.
Wow.
(I have one self portrait.)

So what do the people of Sheffield do?

they go down to the city centre and walk into the fountains in the Peace gardens .

Amongst all the football fans in their England strips (etc) was the most amazing scene. I saw a group of Muslim women, one of whom was filming their friend like this:

People around her were pretty much absorbed in what THEY were doing:

(Look at that kid on the left!!!) And then out they came again:

Frankly I was so hot in my thin skirt and t-shirt I do not know how people manage wearing long robes. It seemed a great idea to me to walk in the fountain … although a bit hard to walk afterwards!!