Faces

Faces
Originally uploaded by Max_Fax

I attended a basic life support course last week. It was very basic indeed but it was good to get out the department. It's great when these images present themselves to you.

Evolution of Photoshop

Love this. Amazing.

Infographic: The Darwinian Evolution of Photoshop by Tech King

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Last of the season?

Last of the season?
Originally uploaded by Max_Fax

Well I thought I had made it through the summer with out seeing too many of these horrors. My phobia is subsiding about them these days. I actually like looking at their faces now. Very Art Deco I think.

See Me... Photography Competition.

I was sent to photograph the local winners of the See Me... Photographic prize this week. The theme this year was 'Support' which turned up some quite interesting takes on the subject.

The competition is organised by the charity See Me... which aims at removing the stigma of people who suffer from mental health problems. It's a very worthy cause and is a great way of using photography to help reflect on people's attitudes towards mental health issues.

Check out the website here: See Me...





Of all the entries the one bellow caught my eye. It didn't win and isn't what you would call a great photo in the traditional sense but it still draws me in. It's a self portrait of a victim of bullying. Sad but reaffirming I think.





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Ayrshire

Awards News and Sandro, Ex-What The Blood Revealed

Sadro Ex-What The Blood Revealed
Originally uploaded by Max_Fax

I was able to get out with my camera the other night. It was Sandro Del Greco's last gig with my old band What The Blood Revealed. When I got there I was told that they had been on for ages and that it was their last song. I jumped down the front and startted shooting away in what can best be described as 'pish light'. Anyway excuses aside I got a few images that I'm happy with so go have a look.

In other more me orientated news, two of my submissions for this years Institute of Medical Illustrators Awards won a bronze certificate. The first was of a Papule in a a left ear. Not very exciting but I really was quite chuffed with the way it looked. I had cross lit the ear from the left with a rim light from the right. I'd go into more detail if I had the inclination but I don't. So secondly my black and white image of Seafeild hospital (derelict), seen earlier in this blog, giving me added impetus to get on with the project I have been trying to start for almost a year.

Speaking of which, a patient I photographed turned out to have access to Seafeild Hospital. I explained my project to him: the taking of images of the condemned hospital with condemned film from our old stock. He seemed very keen to be involved and now that I have won the award I think it will put a bit of momentum on the whole project. We can but hope.

A New Direction

I've been asked by a hair stylist to shoot a model for a new line in hair care products. I've never done anything like this before so I thought 'Bonus! Something other than weddings!' it's coming up on Sunday (weather permitting) and the model in question is a former miss Scotland finalist. How it got to this point from the 'few head shots' I don't know...and don't really care. I like trying new things and it will be good to put my camera to other uses besides just weddings. If I could make money doing my own projects I would be happier of course, but these jobs help fund those projects in the first place.

In other news my IMI (Institute of Medical Illustrators) award submissions were posted the other week. Subjects (good ones) have been a bit thin on the ground the past couple of years so if I win anything it will be a bonus. Anyway here's hoping, I'll find out in a few weeks. Go have a look at previous winners www.imi.org.uk


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod

What's Best For Them...

What's Best For Them...
Originally uploaded by Max_Fax

This poor girl set up her nest on our bathroom windowsill. Kim wouldn't let me get rid of them. She said that we should leave the window open and they would make their way out when they hatched. Hmm. Interesting theory. Anyway, once they hatched she changed her mind about the subject but still wanted to spare their lives. I explained that they would die as a result of being moved anyway, and that the mother was due to die anyway. If you look at her abdomen it has collapsed as a result of her starving herself to protect her babies. Anyway I scooped them up as gently as I could and sat them in the pile of wood in the garden. Who knows, they might make it.

Sucioperro (Unscene)

Sucioperro
Originally uploaded by Max_Fax

Another one from the archives. This is one of my favourites, taken on my Centon DF-300. Small and basic SLR camera but I still love it.

Open Goal

Village Centre Car Park, Bourtreehill
Originally uploaded by Max_Fax

I've put together a wee project over on Flickr in honor of the World Cup. I hate football but even i must acknowledge it's omnipresent hold on the world.  Link here!

Busy is not the word.

I got back from a little family holiday last week. Nothing extravigant or anything just a few days away in the Lake District at a caravan park named The Beeches in a small village called Gilcrux. It was nice to get away despite our most exciting visit of the weekend being a trip to a pencil museum in Keswick. We went to a James Bond museum directly behind the main pencil factory afterwords and it was guff. How sad it was that 007 was shown up by a 2B.
Anyway, after our return life seems to have hit a fast ball at me. I've got so much work on at the moment that I might just colapse in a heap of panic and farts. The wedding on Saturday was a blast though. Hardly felt like work at all.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Duffy dies

http://gu.com/p/2hff8/ip

Sad news indeed. I watched 'The Man Who Shot The 60s' on BBC 4 a few months back about his return to photography after a self imposed exile. An amazing talent and one third of the Cockney Trinity that dominated 60s fashion photography Bailey and Donovan being the others.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Caught

Caught
Originally uploaded by Max_Fax

It's the start of summer which, for the small insignificant creatures around us, is time of reawakening and rebirth. Also it's a time when many such little 'uns meet untimely ends. Good news for my 'Windowsill Graveyard' series bad news for the arachnids, insects and other crawlies that creep!

Lazy Saturdays

I'm sitting watching Art Rocks with Gaham Nash talking about his photography and thinking about the job tomorow. I'm shooting a christening in Renfrew, a first for me and my first big job outside of work this year. Although I'm not dreading the actual job I am starting to want a bit more from my photography. Doing these jobs is a good way of funding other projects but in doing them I'm always worried about denying myself days like this. Just sitting doing nothing is a good way of healing the mind. I think that I may give more attention to my own projects next year avoiding these hefty jobs. We'll see though. There might be a D400 round the corner!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

IMI Glasgow School of Art 3D Design Studio Visit

Our institute, the Istitute of Medical Illustrators, held a gathering in the new premises of the Glasgow School of Art 3D Design Studio on the Clyde last night 26/05/2010.  I was amazing to say the least.  We were shown 3D displays of various historical sites on a screen so big that God would've complained about it being too big...if he was there.  Also we got to wa;k through the torso of a man with an odd shaped penis before ending on a trip down the colon. As horrid as it sounds it was quite amusing and interesting getting a 'turd's-eye-view'. Ever wondered where the sweetcorn in the toilet came from? Well now I know. If you can get down and see this place and see how a work place should look...like an Ikea with good views...then do it.



Along with the jaw dropping offices and amazing technology on display Ashley Cowie gave a talk on the Roslyn Chapel and basically destroyed all the myths and nonsense that surround the place. Check his book out if you can.


Pics on Flickr.

Memories

My Final Wish
Originally uploaded by Max_Fax

I'm getting to the stage now where I'm harking back to the 'good old days'. I gave my band What The Blood The Blood Revealed up last year and haven't picked up the bass since. It hasn't really been a problem up until recently when I came to realize that I had abandoned the project I pretty much dedicated my entire playing days to. Unscene was the name I had given to an exhibition I was hoping to put on at the Harbour Arts Centre at some stage. The closest I got was a room of my photos to show along side the photographer Alisdair Devine's exhibition. Sadly this fell through when the plug was pulled on the Low Wattage gigs (more on them later) and the project was relegated to the attic along with my hopes of ever putting it into any format. Now though I might just put it together on Flickr and see what happens after that. So here is one of my favorite images I captured during that mad period. More to come!

Photographers In the Movies

At the moment I am laid up with one less toenail than yesterday.  After months of agony I finally had an ingrown toenail removed at the doctors.  Not very pleasant it has to be said and I am now hobbling about like a gorilla with no rhythm or coordination while I am being reduced to looking out the window, watching Sky+ stuff from months ago and going through photographs.  After a while I was put in mind of James Stewart in Rear Window, except in my case the only crimes I've viewed today are the noisy bin men shouting about nothing and a boy-racer with really shit taste in music driving at 100mph past the window every ten minutes.  However I started thinking about other photographers in films and tried to come up with ten so here they are in no particular order:

1. Rear Window - Hitchcock classic about an injured photographer who bares witness to a possible murder.  Exactly what you'd expect from Hitchcock, jet black comedic touches garnishing a tense thriller. 

2. Blow Up - 60s 'Swinging' London plays background and star of this very very period piece about...a photographer who may or may not have captured a murder on film (a pattern emerging?).  David Hemmings' character is quite obviously a David Baily homage but there's also a wee guest shot of a very young Jimmy Page with the Yardbirds and the 'tennis match' ending will make you soil yourself in confusion but it's all good.

3. Spiderman Trilogy - Peter Parker is Spiderman...and a photographer.  That is all.

4. Full Metal Jacket - Stanley Kuberick walks us through the lives of young G.I.s as they prepare for the front line both as soldiers, and in the case of our lead, as a photojournalist for the Stars and Stripes magazine.  It plays out in two parts, the training at base camp in America before moving to the wars destructive core in Vietnam.  All this and the cast and crew never left England.

5. Kids - Although this doesn't have any photographers in it, it was written and directed by Larry Clark.  Clark's 'Tulsa' book included sex, drugs and gun wounds and just so happened to be a documentation of his life at that time.  The movie revolves around the discovery that a young boy with a prolific sex life has AIDs and his infected ex-girlfriend and friend are trying to find him before he infects the whole world!  Harrowing and bleak but probably the best film on this list if it weren't for...

6. The Public Eye - Joe Pesci excels as a photographer of the Weegee mould.  Developing his plates in the trunk of his car as he scours New York's underworld at night, he is in danger of becoming a victim of one of his subjects.  Noir awsomeness.

7. Harrison's Flowers - An American photographer, believed to have been killed in a bomb blast in Eastern Europe is tracked down by his wife with the help of other photographers.  I thought it was a true story but it turns out it's not.  The most annoying thing about this film is the 'photographers' all seem to have taken their camera lessons from 'Commando' era Arnnie.  Have they not heard of camera-shake?  And a Nikon is not a gun!  I wanted to like this film but it's just not that good.

8. Backbeat - German photographer Astrid Kirchherr and Stuart Sutcliffe's love affair are central to the this telling of the story of the 'Lost Beatle".  It's a great film and Ian Hart is fantastic as the caustic John Lennon. 
9. The Killing Fields - An American photographer goes back to the horrors of Cambodia to find his guide and friend.  Heart breaking but well worth seeing.  This film was on TV the night my little sister was born...just saying.
10. Apocalypse Now - And finlly we finnish on one of the best screen performances by a man and his 35mm.  Dennis Hopper is amazing in this film and if you watch 'Heart of Darkness' it's hard to tell where the character stops a Hopper starts.


Well I'll need to go and do something else as my butt has fell asleep and my eyes have gone square.  Damn it I forgot about Pecker...

My Run

My Run
Originally uploaded by Max_Fax

I thought I'd give running a bash to try and get of my backside and not just sit staring at a computer all day. So, after getting an iPod Touch from Santa I bought the Get Running app
http://splendid-things.co.uk/getrunning/
and within weeks I was runing without going into spasms of pain. I've been doing it for four months now and I've stuck to the same route pretty much from the start. It takes me all over Bourtreehill, Girdle Toll and down into Irvine so I decided to document the route so here we are. My Run

Juicy Melons

It was my birthday last week, nothing special about that. I'll assume the card is in the post. One of the cards I received was of David McEnerey's photograph 'Juicy Melons', a saucy 'post-cardesque' photo of a melon seller (is there or has there ever been such a thing?) posing suggestively with a pair of his finest wares while a young, well-endowed lady walks past him. I know it's probably not very correct politically, but sod it parliament has been dissolved anyway. The reason I'm compelled to write about this image is that I've been reading plenty of Journals, magazines, weblogs and mental jottings of phsycos about photography of late and the one thing this image made me ask was 'where's the humor?' I love photography and at it's best it holds a mirror up to life as a whole, which is my point: there's humor in life so why isn't there much humor in photography?

As with film, I suppose the reasoning would be there isn't much reward for such a hard task. When did a comedy last win the Best Film Oscar? Creating something funny in a single image is even tougher. You must create a narrative, set-up and punch-line in a single frame, and there isn't much by way of kudos in the end product.

David McEnery died in 2002 and was hailed by his peers as "The World's Funniest Photographers" but I some how doubt there will ever be a retrospective at the Tate.

The Saga of Seafield Childrens Hospital

Seafield Childrens Hospital
Originally uploaded by Max_Fax

As this is my first post, please forgive any mistakes, omissions or bollocks that you find within these words.

I had came up with the idea of using the outdated stock that resides in the film fridge at work (35mm Ilford black and white, Kodak 120, and various other gelatin based formats) to try and document the demise of a former NHS building. The condemned visualizing the condemned as it were. After visiting the Arrol Park site in Ayr which resides within the grounds of the old Seafield Children's hospital grounds, I was struck at how dignified the old building looked. I took a few shots around the exterior of the main building, which has been sealed off by a temporary fence and decided that this was the perfect location and building for my idea.

After a few more visits and a few digital shots to garner some ideas I looked into gaining access to the building itself. Numerous phone calls later I was dealt a major blow to the project. The building, having sustained serious damage in a fire three years ago, is now in such a bad state of repair that entry would not be possible. It is literally collapsing in on it's self.

So that was in the inside of the structure out of the picture per se. I still want to pursue entry but at the moment I'll need to content myself with exterior shots and perhaps, just maybe, i can sneak past all the skanky pigeons who now reside in the towers and gutted main wards area and get some results. Who knows.