Nice bike!

Some people get their kicks in different ways. Consider the construction site - there is a lot more to this image than first meets the eye:

People running aound a sports field might be just about as interesting but some get a lot of fun out of watching it. I bet this is a real hit at the formworker's pub though. Did you realise that:

The bloke on the welding was capped 22 times for Australia in welding dynamics - and you can see his latest cap sitting beside him. The bloke in the red shirt is rated #1 in Concrete Pours Australia mag and commands a transfer fee of (AUD) M$1! Hows that!

Also voted the best hairy chest in elastic sided steel capped boots by the girls down at the Walla Walla Club.

I suppose excitement is in the eyes of the beholder :)

... and the other two blokes - well they are just working up from the blue-shirt reserves to try and become the red-shirts ..

Sometimes ones sense of humour has to be of the form that states something but leaves it very much up to the viewer to work out what is the point in the image. In this image I am trying to point out that this very much shut up store is brightly lit to add to its visibility and candidly proclaiming that it is a "convenience store". Hardly convenient in its shuttered state and perhaps one might think the owners might be a little less lighting-vocal in proclaiming its inconvenient state.

On the other hand the same bright lights have obviously made it very convenient for the graffiti artist and the inconveniently closed shutter is, in fact, very convenient for this form of artistic expression.

The shop next door is operated by "The Language People" who might take some amusement from the fact that the convenience store is in fact not very convenient. Certainly they don't hold out to be convenient themselves. Moreover they don't conveniently light up their frontage to help the graffiti artist who has accordingly left their shutter alone.

One is left musing on whether the graffiti artist was frustrated because of the lack of convenience in the convenience store or perhaps he thought that the good lighting actually made his trade that much more convenient. Consequently in the mixed up mind of those that specialise in the useless trade of graffiti is this convenince or frustration for lack of convenience?

I had thought of leaving out the shop on the left but I think it important in this image because of the "langauge" comment on "convenience". I also think that its clean exterior and relative lack of strong lighting contrast well with the strongly lit graffiti bill board next door. I also think that the reflected light on the street outside the shop is essential to the overall image. The darkness over the facades shows that it is indeed in the middle of the night and perhaps the "Convenience Store" has some excuse for not currently being convenient.

Sure I would like to get someone in the picture in the act of being inconvenienced, but there was nobody about to volunteer. I would really have liked it to be the graffti artist in full flight!

All this I saw in a fleeting split second and it took even less time to capture. A good number of words to explain my meaning - I had hoped that a viewer might work out the message by themselves. I do think the image has a point.

Please note that others have won acclaim for pictures of vacant store fronts. In particular I have seen pictures of shop fronts in rural Australia that have a charm of their own. Eugene Atget is now famous for documenting the Paris of his day by taking (amongst other things) many pictures of shop fronts. This shopfront is not glamorous or architecturallly noteable but it is typical of an older poorer-area style that is disappearing in these days of shopping malls. Perhaps it is the last gasp of the walk-to neighbourhood convenience outlet that is disappearing in these days of vast mechanical store-barns and mammoth parking lots. If this is the case then there is a case for documenting a remnnant of a shopping culture that still exists in 2004.

The other, less obvious, comment that would only be known to "locals" is the fact that these shops look a little seedy and run down but are only a block away from one of the trendier "Cafe Society" areas of Brisbane : "the West End". This is a wry comment to "Brisbanites" only.

I hope that this is a thinking picture with a slightly ironic twist. I didn't mean it to be a "pretty" picture.

More and more I see potential "comment photographs" on interesting things that otherwise go unseen.

I think the subconscious takes in more than the conscious mind will admit. Consequently I often take pictures of things because somehow "it seems interesting". It is only after I retrieve the picture from the camera that I realise just what had been interesting.

Digital has the beauty of allowing "hunch" pictures in great quantities and if they don't work, just shrug the shoulders and move on.

Cameras and human eyes do see things differently - the human eye is closer to a camcorder without the tape and the memory brings back a series of short clips and stills. In real life the brain filters out what it deems are irrelevancies and it only in photographs that the brain takes time to look at detail otherwise filtered out.

The trick of a photographer is to pick up on these nuances instantly in order to capture the image. What it is telling me is that the subconscious always sees everything but there is a very big filter there blocking out all but the most essential information from the conscious. If the conscious “got the lot” you would certainly go mad. Following on the same theory I suppose the faster you go the less detail is transmitted and this is easily seen in the simple process of driving a car. As the human brain has adapted to suppress more and more detail as life gets faster then the process of adapting ones brain to photography may well be in letting more detail through that filter between the limited conscious thought and the vast amount of data processed instantaneously by the subconscious.

In other words: the brain must see and sends a quick message "this looks good" but doesn't explain why unless it gets a message back - "have another look" or, simply, "why?". If you are busy you move on and the rest of the message is not transmitted.

A photograph will always show more in the picture than the eye has transmitted but perhaps a good deal of what has been seen has already been absorbed and filtered by the brain without visualising the detail.

This leaf was suspended on the thread of a spider's web yesterday and consequently only temporarily interrupted in its inevitable mission to succumb to gravity and life. I went out this morning hoping to retrieve it to preserve it for posterity only to find that it was truly still "falling" when I caught its image for now it has gone and disappeared forever.

Neal Peres da Costa plays his harpsichord at Coffs Harbour 8 April 2005

I must admit that everyone must be missing my weather update. I have been slack!

7:30 am 13 April 2005. Fine sunny beautiful day, 'tis a terrible thing to be going to work for sure, not too hot but it is 24C inside and something cooler outside at this time in the morning - don't expect it to change much inside during the day. Outside it will get a bit warmer and it is cooler at night. There is a pleasant coolish feel to the air but it is far from cold We have had a couple of weeks of this weather and I expect it will stay much the same until "Winter" (June-July) we might then have to put a fire on at night if it turns wet and damp. If we have a dry winter a fire is hardly necessary and a small electric radiator will be enough to help make the nights more pleasant. A cheery fire in winter is a nice comforting human thing but if we overdo it we have to open the doors sometimes to cool the place down :) Humidity 70.2% Barometer 76.2

9:30pm 13 April 2005. Brilliant day looked like rain for a little while but nothing came of it. 26C inside humidity 66% Barometer 76.2

Genevieve Lacey plays baroque at Coffs Harbour 8 April 2005

Thanks to Maurice Smith who sent me this information in 1984. A careful draughtsman and a work of art.