Back from Borneo…
Posted by Dean Bradshaw | Filed under Travel Photography
Back in Perth.
Borneo was awesome. Shot many, many photos though there was less emphasis on this than there was in exploring the place for myself and doing a bit of reconnaissance for future photographic adventures. Ala my previous post we spent about 2 weeks in Sabah, drifting between the Kinabatangan River, Danum Valley Research Station and Mount Kinabalu. Photos will be emerging in the coming weeks, but in the meantime I’ll leave you with a haphhazardly composed self portrait shot almost at the summit of Mount Kinabalu - the highest peak in Southeast Asia (4000 odd meteres).
Don’t let the smile fool you, it was very cold and I was very, very tired. We had set off that morning at 2:30am (though I would argue that such a time is not well described by the term ‘morning), having slept only a few hours in unheated cabins at 3000 odd metres. We then trudged upwards for 2.5 hours to a summit which obscured by the inky night sky only became distinguishable in the very last few metres. I say ‘we’, but I really mean ‘me’ as I made the summit climb alone. This made it all the more difficult, and aside from the last 100m where I summoned enough energy to strike up a conversation with a pair of Australians, the climb was made in painful silence - intermittently dissected by the howl of the wind.
Having not trained for it, climbing Mount Kinabalu was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. I’m not usually one to climb things for the sake of climbing, but It was an experience I’ll never forget and one does gather some sort of feeling of achievement having been somewhere that the human body was never equipped to ever be in the first place.
Unfortunately I didn’t take as many photos at the summit as I’d have liked. FIrstly I was using NiMH AA batteries in my 5D mkII (My batter charger had gone walkabouts - long story) and they couldn’t deal with the cold. Every 3 or 4 shots the camera would shut down and I’d have to take the tray of batteries out and place them at some warm junction of body and clothing. Secondly, about 15 minutes after arriving at the summit (we got there around 4:50am) - billowing clouds enshrouded the entire vista in mist, meaning all the wonderful landscape images I had envishioned never came to be. Alas.
Believe me, appreciating vistas becomes more difficult at high altitude, let alone photographing them…
…better luck next time I guess.
If you’d like to see some really nice images of what I should have seen, check out ‘Stoncel’s’ flickr photostream.
Back to my roots then to the polar opposite - Borneo to California
Posted by Dean Bradshaw | Filed under Travel Photography, Wildlife Photography
Big change is coming. I’ve once again self diagnosed extreme wanderlust and have made plans to have myself remedied - too long have I been cooped up in the studio.
First stop - Malaysian Borneo - where I will live for two weeks deep in the South East Asian Jungle. Sabah is where I’ll be going, a Malaysian State on the north-eastern part of Borneo, the world’s third largest island and known as arguably the best place in Southeast Asia to observe wildlife. We’ll be spending most of our time in the interior of the region, along the edge of the Kinabatangan River and at a research station in one of Sabah’s largest reserves. The jungles of Sabah contain some of the oldest rainforests in the world and are home to an abundance of animal and plant species. Pygmy elephants, Proboscis Monkeys, Orangutans, pitcher plants, orchids, and the world’s largest flower, the Rafflesia, can be found. Lots of photography will be taking place and I have an interesting and somewhat innovative project to trial while I’m there.
Second Stop - California - where I will be working with a photographer who I greatly admire to help coordinate photo shoots for some of the biggest brands in the world. More news on that when I touch down in early June.
Lots of new photos landing soon…
Seth Godin on Creativity…
Posted by Dean Bradshaw | Filed under Thoughts and Theory
99% of the time, in my experience, the hard part about creativity isn’t coming up with something no one has ever thought of before. The hard part is actually executing the thing you’ve thought of.
- Seth Godin
Tags: creativity
Do schools kill creativity?
Posted by Dean Bradshaw | Filed under Thoughts and Theory
From TED
________________________
Why don’t we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it’s because we’ve been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies — far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity — are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. “We are educating people out of their creativity,” Robinson says. It’s a message with deep resonance. Robinson’s TEDTalk has been distributed widely around the Web since its release in June 2006. The most popular words framing blog posts on his talk? “Everyone should watch this.”
_______________________
I just grabbed a copy of Ken’s latest book from Amazon (which he mentions in this talk) as soon as I watched this . His newest book ‘Element - How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything’ can be found here - I can’t wait to read it! For those of you in Perth, you can find it in Boffins Bookshop in the city - though at a heftier price. You can read more about Ken here and here.
Tags: TED
TED Talks: spreading ideas that change the world
Posted by Dean Bradshaw | Filed under Photography Links, Thoughts and Theory
I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a while. I enjoy sharing important learning resources with other people out there and the following is one of the most empowering (knowledge is power, right?) resources on the internet.
If you haven’t heard of TED talks, then this is your lucky day. I remember when I first came across them. I subscribed to the podcast and furiously went through my itunes playlist, highlighting those including key buzzwords that interested me: photography, biology, evolution etc.
But what are they? Rather than explain, i’ll just feed you the blurb on the about page of TED’s website
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).
When I tell people about TED I tell them ‘Imagine a conference where the smartest people in the world talk to you about what they know most about for 20 minutes’.
I will post links to some of my favourite TED talks relating to photography in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, spend a few hours exploring and listening here.
Darwinian Mechanics
Posted by Dean Bradshaw | Filed under Wildlife Photography
A girl less often found on a grey seamless than your typical rosy-cheeked model…
These Bulldog Ants (Myrmecia spp.) are both ferocious predators and exceedingly alert. Their large eyes afford excellent vision and as such they are eternally vigilant for both prey and intruders. This little girl (ants, like bees reproduce through parthenogenesis and accordingly the workers are all female.) was difficult to deal with - photographed with two lights on a ready-made cyclorama formed from a sheet of crisp laserjet paper. They are the largest ants in Australia, and some species can be in excess of 40mm in length! these ones were around 25mm, toting disproportionately enormous mandibles and a potent sting which they use to subdue prey and fend off predators.
This image is actually about 2 years old. I decided to reprocess and upload it mostly as a reminder to myself of a subject that really is important to me…
If you’d like to read more about these ants, check out a brilliant article featured in National Geographic that deals with them and their fascinating lifestyles, here.
Also, for more macro photos of an enormous array of Perth’s local invertebrate fauna - including more images of these ants, check out two of my good friends and their photostreams here and here. Most of what I know about ants I have learnt from these guys - both incredibly enthusiastic about these diminutive creatures.
Fix it in Photoshop
Posted by Dean Bradshaw | Filed under Thoughts and Theory
Tags: Photoshop
The Story of Stuff…
Posted by Dean Bradshaw | Filed under Thoughts and Theory
I saw this a year or two ago but I was reminded of it by an art director friend of mine.
I could write about this forever, but brevity rules these days, so I’ll pass it on as he did…
_____________________
Pass it on.
_____________________
What is the Story of Stuff?
From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.
Watch the first chapter here:
Tags: consumerism, environment, sustainability
TWITTER: Profound or Banal?
Posted by Dean Bradshaw | Filed under News
So I just gave in..
If you’d like to be informed of the precise moment I eat my next sandwich or have the urge to shout from the rooftops through another means (on top of a blog, flickr and facebook) - follow me on twitter.
It is peculiarly addictive…
Before I joined and even now, I share the wonderful musings of techno-skeptic Margaret Wente.
“If you thought Facebook was banal, try Twitter,” says she. So why do we use the short-messaging network and how can we explain its meteoric growth? The Toronto Globe and Mail columnist/cultural anthropologist gives four possible critical explanations:
1) “Is it really hunger for community? Is it, as one Twittering friend suggested, a safe substitute for talking to yourself, something that other people tend to find disturbing?”
2) “One more symptom of mass attention-deficit disorder – yet another excuse to distract ourselves from the dull or difficult tasks at hand?”
3) “Is it really fear of dying? Maybe Twittering is just another way (like getting and sending e-mail) to reassure ourselves that we exist: Ego tweeto, ergo sum.”
4) “Maybe the drive to tweet is just the logical extension of our narcissistic age, in which nothing in the world could possibly be more fascinating (to us) than what we’re having for lunch.”
But if you can’t beat em’, join em’ …
Tags: social media
Chuck Close: Thoughts on photography and personal voice
Posted by Dean Bradshaw | Filed under visual style in photography
The thing that interests me about photography and why it’s different from all other media, is that it’s the only medium in which there is even the possibility of an accidental masterpiece. You cannot make an accidental masterpiece if you’re a painter or a sculptor. It’s just not going to happen. Something will be wrong.
This is simultaneously photography’s great advantage and its Achilles’ heel: it is the easiest medium in which to be competent. Anybody can be a marginally capable photographer, but it takes a lot of work to learn to become even a competent painter. Now, having said that, I think while photography is the easiest medium in which to be competent, it is probably the hardest one in which to develop an idiosyncratic personal vision. It’s the hardest medium in which to separate yourself from all those other people who are doing reasonably good stuff and to find a personal voice, your own vision, and to make something that is truly, memorably yours and not someone else’s. A recognized signature style of photography is an incredibly difficult thing to achieve.
It always amazes me that just when I think that there’s nothing left to do in photography and that all permutations and possibilities have been exhausted, someone comes along and puts the medium to a new use, and makes it his or her own, yanks it out of this kind of amateur status, and makes it as profound and moving and as formally interesting as any other medium. It’s like pushing something heavy uphill. Photography’s not an easy medium. It is, finally, perhaps the hardest of them all.
Tags: Art, creativity, Style
