Primary Colour Car

Here’s another picture from this year’s World Toy Camera Day (20 October), shot at Yass Mitsubishi on the main street of town. It’s challenging to compose in-camera montages like this, especially as my Truview (Diana clone) has a totally unreliable viewfinder. The result may have been totally unplanned, but the neat diagonals and primary colours create depth and boldness. I must confess I was attracted to the subject purely because the proprietor uses huge, bright balloons to advertise his cars. I also love the price dangling from the car’s bonnet — it adds a documentary touch.

As an aside, I get a kick out of meeting people as I photograph my town. Like many, the proprietor of Yass Mitsubishi was curious about what I was doing and rather chuffed that I found his car yard interesting. I do find it hard to explain why I photograph subjects the average person would not just find boring, but also pointless. In everyday domestic life, photography is so closely linked with birthdays, weddings and summer holidays that people find photography as an artform difficult to comprehend.

For information on my technique in this image, see A Waste Bin of Flowers.

Manneqins and Men's Toilets

I was recently given a Holga Micro, a tiny 110 camera that's about half the size of a Mars Bar. As the name suggests, it's a point-n-shoot plastic number with a single f-stop (f/8) and shutter speed (1/125 sec). It's so basic that the film cartridge doubles as the camera back and child-sized fingers are a distinct operational advantage.

Sceptical, I took it for a spin downtown to my favourite junk store, which has the most fantastic mannequins. I love that the girl-next-door one has pendulous boobs and is totally naked.

I’m also a fan of mind-boggling, yet telling juxtapositions. Aboriginal art decorating the wall of a public toilet? I walk past this beautiful mural most days and only just realised what its location suggests about the status of Aborigines in Australian society.

Shown together, these images tell another story, but I might leave a narrative about fake naked women and men’s toilets up to your imagination!

Despite the Holga Micro’s obvious limitations, I was impressed that most of my shots were well exposed and thrilled to get a handful I loved from a 24 exposure film (I’ll put the others up soon).

As you can see, this camera doesn't vignette like its big sister, but it does have other creative advantages. The yellow emulsion and frame numbers of the Ferrania Sakura film are super cool. The 110 format is only available in print film these days, but I created the cross-processed look by scanning the negative on the Fuji NPS 160 6x6 profile in SilverFast.

Scanogram: Bird, Hands, Thread

As long as I’ve known her, my friend Marion has struggled to pin down what she calls the “rules” of photography. But the more pictures I make, the more flexible my definition becomes. I’ve now even decided that photography doesn’t require a camera.

I remember being shocked when I first saw the work of Stuart Owen Fox in early 2005. Using nothing but a flatbed scanner, he produces delicate, luminous images of plants and animals — flowers, frogs, seahorses and geckoes.

“Is this really photography?” I asked.

Here I am three years later creating my first “scanogram”, a digital photomontage pieced together from scans of my hands, a metal bird I picked up in India, a twine placemat and vintage needlework (which I obsessively collect).

I loved shifting the elements in Photoshop into pleasing arrangements and adjusting the opacity of each to create a sense of form and punch.

Three Golden Onions

From fighting cancer to keeping your car windscreen frost-free on a chilly night, onions have many useful properties apart from their tangy flavour. I personally haven’t eaten one for three years, thanks to a newly-developed sensitive stomach, but I can see why the ancient Egyptians worshipped them — just look at these smooth, glowing skins.

I took this shot at my aunt’s house in 2003 as winter’s low afternoon light punched through the windows. You’d never guess it was taken in a lounge room against a humble cotton scarf and wooden storage box.

I used my Pentax K1000, a 50mm lens and close-up filter, with the addition of an 81B filter to create the rich and nostalgic warmth. In keeping with my habit of getting negatives processed and not printed, I’ve only just scanned and touched-up the image.

Self Portrait: Always Be Yourself

“Always be yourself” is the theme of chapter 16 in Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. There's more much more joy to be had in being you, he says than a second or third-rate imitation of someone else. Did you know the careers of Charlie Chaplin and Bob Hope were going nowhere until the stopped copying more famous comedians and let their own personalities twinkle through?

A self portrait was the obvious subject when I turned to this chapter in my altered book art journal. My techniques were inspired by Misty Mawn’s article “The Workshop: Using a Single Image to Explore Different Media” in issue 13 of Cloth Paper Scissors magazine. The background is a collage of sewing patterns, fabric and negatives, which are overlaid with acrylic paint and coloured pencils. You may recognise the portrait — it’s the photograph from my Friends, Family and Available Light entry back in June. I sanded it with an emery board and coated it with acrylic paint and coloured pencils.

Sanding photographs is my latest indulgence. Rough sanding creates white scrape marks, which are great for edges or parts of an image you want to fade into the background. Soft rubbing can give the impression of burned-in detail, create a vintage-style patina or, in prints from those black-and-white films that you process colour, add a rusted sepia tint.