Whacking the moon, aside, Melbourne!

Hello world,

It feels nice to be human again, after long torturous nights of rushing my stop motion animation (for those who don’t know what it is – basically a form of frame-by-frame animation, where you capture every slight move and put together as a video/animation… yes sounds tedious right? it is!), its as if I’ll never get rid of this habit of starting assignments, last minute. I’m glad I started a few days early, and not the day before. I literally would’ve died and gone to students-hell.

Overall, its pretty shit.

notice how messy it got near the end?

I’m ashamed to show it, the quality is really crap since I did it at home with my make shift studio set up, and used a 5mp web cam, since apparently if I used my DSLR as a ‘webcam/video cam’, it will shorten the life span of my sensor… no way am I going to put my baby through that!

I just convince myself that the noise adds to the visual aesthetics.

Finished product.

It was such a race against time this afternoon. Practically an hour before it’s due, I had to drive out and get my DVD printed on (yes print directly on to CD requirement, such a pain). It costed me $8ish just for that! Times like these I wish my capable printer was functioning! Saw a few other people’s packaging, it was 100x more awesome, professional, so I cringed. Oh well, I have next semester to prove myself with packaging… ha ha.

Now that the 50% media project is aside, up next is a 2500-3000 word media essay which I absolutely dread. It’s due on Friday, but news is… I’m going to Melbourne Early Friday Morning! So deadline is Thursday for me. 3000 word essay, no way am I going to start day before. It is literally impossible, not a risk i’d take for a 40% assignment.

It feels like I haven’t written an essay since the longest time, since like last year, and I don’t do well with long breaks between things ;( 13 references.. argh so much reading to be done.. I’m hoping Melbourne will motivate me to get it done asap so I can start planning . Lastly on that note, I have another essay due Next Wednesday, which is also worth 40% or so. Guess who’s going to be ‘working hard’ in Melbourne at night?

I ain’t the only one, boyfriend has 4 exams the following week. youch!

I’m going to Melbourne primarily with the bf, cos he wants to pick up some ‘shoes’ for his car from Melbourne, and we though we might as well go for a weekend and make it in time for PMA! And a few friends are going down along with us too, so fun fun! PMA – is a Photography, Imaging Exhibition… where they showcase camera gear (from all brands), printing services, frames, photo albums etc.etc. anything photo related, you’ll find it there. Oh Adobe as well and Wacom I’m geed, cos we’re attending as ‘trade’ people, since I’ve got my own ABN/business.. so we can get in before the public

I’m excited. I went to the Sydney one last year and loved it! Don’t know… its like I’m stepping into my ‘my world’, it’s like eyegasm just seeing cameras and ginormous lenses :D

OTHER than that, Melbourne - shopping, shopping, DFO Southbank

Another thing is. FOOOOOOOOOD! My taste buds are gonna have a festive weekend! haha. Can’t wait to to try, Sushi Burger, Little Cupcakes, just to name a few. We only have a few nights and days to eat there – with a budget-, so gotta be selective!

Any yum Melbourne food spots, drop me a comment!

UNSW Photo Club outings to date #1

Happy Easter!

Hope you are all swell at home stuffing your faces with chocolate eggs during this festive season!

Uni mid semester break has finally began =), not that it makes much of a difference for me since I only go to uni 1.5 days anyway…. and I am ‘meant’ to get started on some heavily weighted assignments =( boo!

I say, a well deserved break (from accomplishing i-dont-know-what) this weekend, and deal with it all later =)

Today, we had a spontaneous lunch with the girlfriends; yum cha @ Marigold, it wasn’t As packed as we imagined, but thankfully we didn’t had to queue for too long.. we almost decided to split up into pairs to about 3-4 different restaurants to queue up.. so whoever gets a table first, buzz each other! would’ve been a funny highlight to Good Friday 2010.

That’s about all I got up to today, here I am comfortably in my bed with my macbook… intending to blog up on the last 3 weeks of UNSW Photo club events! As I’ve mentioned earlier, I’ve been hesitant about using the dslr at outings, instead bringing my film babies out for some light

The next 2 shots were, the first 2 shots taken with my White Slim Angel. This was at Bronte Beach for a UPA (Universities Photographic Alliance) bbq event. The weather was so lovely, it was just 2 days after Japan, quite a change of environment!

The following weekend, UNSWPhoto had its first outing to… Botanical Gardens. Gardens are always a lovely place to start off, you can never get bored of photographing flowers huh? Even better if you had a macro lens Yet another lovely day…

You can just see the harbor bridge and the Conservatory of Music… taken from the Rose Gardens.

I love trees… especially those that have so much character like this one… it felt ‘cosy’ under there… sorry I couldn’t think of a better word..

Autumn is definitely my favourite season, when it comes to photographing… that reminds me, I’d Love to capture some nice autumn/maple leaves while its in season. Where can I find a ‘forest’ of maple trees? Up north?

Absolutely loved the contrast of the bamboo and its leaves, I’m not sure if I’ve seen bamboo this yellow before mango yellow, mm mm..

The red choo choo train, I don’t even recall seeing this before in the garden! Beautiful blue skies in the background… this was around noon, and we still got pretty good light…

Larger versions of the photos can be found on my flickr Hope you are liking what my White slim angel produces, I have so far inspired* 2 other people to buy one Superheadz rock!

Hello Mr President, doing what he does best *points*

This is just 2 of 3 events that I captured on film, will return with more tomorrow I don’t want to spam the page with photos

MDCM2003 – Reflection Paper: Inspiration Cluster 1

We decided upon wabi sabi as our group inspiration because of the uniqueness of the concept itself, being able to think in a different mindset that is unfamiliar to a western framework. It never occurred to me that Japanese had a particular design sense. After reading the texts, it has highlighted the similarities of design in Japanese society – what appears to us as ‘weird’ but interesting. The idea of wabi sabi or also referred to as a ‘make shift’ phenomenon, as suggested in Juniper; ‘is a quest for the unique and unconventional’. My understanding of this concept overall is to discover the beauty in ugliness in its simplest, natural form.

Juniper has stated the 8 elements of wabi sabi expression; organic, freedom of form, texture, ugliness & beauty, colour, simplicity, space and balance. Through understanding these, I have realized there are many limitations or rather avoidances for my wabi sabi inspired projects. These limitations I will use to my advantage, as it will allow me to further think of other options rather than the norm.

Concepts that inspire me;

I am inspired by the freedom of form; in that you are able to express yourself freely and not have to be mindful of rules as long as there is ‘balance’ in the piece. Texture will be interesting to work with, as the reading suggests – textures can be expressive in it-self. Most of all I am inspired by the notion of beauty in ugliness. Designing accessories in my spare time; I challenge myself to give new life and meaning to a certain material, now it is a chance to translate that into the digital work I am doing. It will be a challenge just trying to understand the conventions of beauty and to surpass it through the little unappealing details which others may have not noticed before.  I’m a fan of simplicity and will try to portray these aesthetics in the simplest ways, highlighting another element of simplicity and use of space.

Translation of ideas;

For the first individual project, some brief ideas I have in mind include a situation of a ‘natural process’, whereby the user is able to experience and interact with it as it occurs. For example, it could be witnessing the change of seasons (represented by textures). Each season will be a different layer which the user will have to pass/interact with, and this layer will tear away showing another. This idea is inspired by the Japanese’ fascination of using layers, and natural processes. The use of layers in architecture is portrayed in the Louis Vuitton building that featured layers to portray suitcases in the Make Shift text.

The colours I consider using include the muted colours you would find on a Japanese scroll/painting on rice paper. I find muted tones are less distracting to the eye, which would keep a simple palette. Another idea is to pair up murky colours with a contrasted colour to see what sort of effect it could create, perhaps the murkier colour will be more interesting in this light. But I will mostly stick to ‘organic’ shades.

More ideas in development…