Just love this recent image, WL660023101, by Rob Cleary, of a couple of young blokes jumping off the jetty at Coffs Harbour. It’s a very arresting image: the placement of the arms, the bird’s eye view perspective, that intense feeling of free fall and anticipation of the SPLASH. Great capture Rob! He has a large collection from the Coffs Coast region, click here to see it all.
I’m sure that’s exactly what a lot of people in the copyright world would like to see. Graeme Philipson has called for the abolishion of copyright and intellectual property for many years. His recent opinion in last weeks SMH (June 24 2008) was no exception, and was in response to his previous article a fortnight ago, which I wrote a post about as well. I started to think about all the industries that rely on royalties, syndication and licencing as the basis for their existence. I wrote a quick short list: music, still photography, film, stock footage, software, hosted web applications, genetic technologies, pharmaceuticals, copyright lawyers and patent attorneys, not to mention news media organisations - for which Mr Philipson writes for. He goes on to say that without copyright, Musicians would have to play concerts instead of collecting royalties on recorded music. Therefore the Australian stills stock library market, which is roughly worth AUD$100 million, wouldn’t exist - the numbers are staggering. It also means that incredible tradeshows, such as Licensing International Expo wouldn’t happen, where I found another jaw dropping statistic, - “$19.3 Billion - total estimated worldwide retail sale of licensed product in the Art & Design category“. I must say I do enjoy his confronting perspectives, we need more devil’s advocates, it encourages us to step back, reassess and reshape our business model. However, I believe Armageddon will happen just moments before the end of copyright…and mankind.
Another great example that there is more to life than still photography. SBS TV aired this short film several times a couple of years ago -it’s brilliant. It’s a film by Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjarne Nilsson from Kostr-film. A crazy composition of household objects that will have you strumming your dental floss differently every night!
Is it that we are so insecure as creatives that we need to wear the same uniform? You know you’re wearing it right now, look around the studio too - black jacket (usually Italian leather of course), black shirt, blue jeans, black bag, black shoes (Italian too) - OR - black jeans instead of blue. As creatives we strive to be individual, free thinkers, critical, cynical, and yet we really are just sheep. Is our ego so easily bruised, are personality so denuded, if we dare to wear a bit of colour? - “will they talk about me around the water cooler”. As I looked around Surry Hills this morning - I looked just like everyone else - I was a Holden (almost as common as a silver Mercedes) - “it’s like an arse, everyone’s got one”. Then Rudi from Rising Sun Pictures said to me this morning, “Andrew you really look the part of a photographer today”. My immediate internal reaction was, NOOOOOO!! Why can’t we wear a little bit of our personality on our sleeve? We so easily conform, are so stuck in the routine, are so bloody uniform.
Tomorrow….I’m wearing a red shirt!
Abstract Earth, another beautiful exhibition by Wildlight photographer, Richard Woldenorp is coming up at the S.H Ervin Gallery at Observatory Hill, Sydney from 20 June - 3 August, 2008. Richard’s inspiring aerial images have been curated by his good friends, the author, John McDonald and fellow photographer, R. Ian Lloyd. Here at Wildlight we love Richard’s images, and our clients do too, using them in high-end brochures for corporates or as environmental graphics for corporate fitouts.
Last night I suddenly remembered this short film by New York Photographer and designer, Sheldon Nadelman. This film was shown on SBS TV in 2005, it is fantastic, and stuck in my mind as a must see for any photographer or student who is thinking about making a short film from their images. Sheldon, blends thousands of b/w still images with video interviews, wild-sound and contemporary music to create richly layered and textural film piece. Unfortunately, you have to purchase the film, but the 2 minute trailer gives you some idea.
Terminal Bar is a 22 minute, photo-driven documentary of one of the toughest, grittiest bars in Manhattan as seen through the haunting black and white photographs taken by Sheldon Nadelman from 1972 to 1982.
During his 10 year tenure as bartender and day manager, Sheldon amassed over 2,500 portraits of his customers as well as other images of the activities inside and outside of the bar.
‘Terminal Bar’ examines the nature of the establishment, its transformation from an Irish bar to a gay bar, the old timers, winos, junkies, drag queens, and cooks, from the viewpoint of Sheldon and two contemporaneously written news articles.
We do have a lot of fun here at Wildlight, today was no exception. Today, we changed our 404 error page! Yes, it will be a remarkable milestone in our business. After 4 years of loyal service, the cow eating kelp has grown too long in the tooth. A new and exciting image really let’s you know you’ve arrived at the wrong place. The picture by Grenville Turner was shot on one of his many travels around Australia. And, as Jean-Marc pointed out to me, are some of the only opportunities that we actually get to see our unique marsupials.
I’ve been receiving email newsletters ( I don’t remember subscribing) from DooneyStudio, it’s the site of successful young Australian painter and photographer Hazel Dooney. She’s been receiving quite a bit of press lately, due to the boldness and confrontational subject of her artworks. Anyway, I’ve enjoyed receiving her communications, check out here recent work here - it’s punk, meets feminist, meets graphic psychological self-discovery. She has a photography exhibition opening at MARS Gallery in Port Melbourne on the 29th July to 24th August, coinciding with the Melbourne Art Fair. Innocents And Demons will extrapolate on her paintings, with studies of young women in her first photographic exhibition.
What’s interesting to us, is some news that she has licenced six of her images to a niche Australian condom manufacturer, Legends Rubbers, to be printed onto tin packaging. Each tin package will have an image of Hazel’s, containing six rubbers. That’s a pretty unique image usage, which has prompted me to probe into our records to see what the most intriguing usage for a Wildlight image is. I’ll post it soon…
One of Hugh Brown’s images of the Melbourne skyline features as part of the set décor of the new ABC1 production, The Gruen Transfer. It’s a weekly show hosted by comedian, Will Anderson, about the ins and outs of the advertising industry. It’s a panel format show with four talking heads from different ad agencies. If you overlook some of the one-liners from Will, there’s actually some interesting, yet brief, analysis of the concepts and psychology behind TVC’s. The term, Gruen transfer refers to the effect on shoppers in a shopping mall environment, when rational and critical thinking makes way for a state of impulse buying. Read more about this psychological effect and how retailers use it to their advantage here.
The collaboration of three talented artist, brings to you a unique exhibition. With the very sparkling Gypsy Woods, dancer,performer,model muse,party girl….. as the subject, Photographer Louise Whelan and artist/animator Antoinette Starkiewicz have worked together with Gypsy to produce a set of pin up playing cards. Featuring herself in pin-up poses, Gypsy virtually visits 52 famous destinations around the world. In all of them, Gypsy our cheesecake darling is uniquely nude. On exhibition at the Art House Sydney will be a selection of these images as prints for you to enjoyable experience and purchase. Also on show will be paintings and sketch’s of Gypsy by Antoinette Starkiewicz and photographs and artwork of Gypsy by Photographer Louise Whelan. Its a Gypsy extravaganza!!! not to be missed.
ArtHouse Hotel 275 Pitt Street, Sydney
22 June until 13 July, 2008
LightVision is an exciting news feed straight from the photo editor's desk of Wildlight Photo Agency. Wildlight is an independent, Australian owned picture library featuring premium rights-managed images of places, people and lifestyle in Australia, captured by award-winning photographers from all over OZ. The LightVision name builds upon the original printed Australian photography magazines of the same name, produced by Jean-Marc Le Péchoux in 1970's Melbourne.
[Masthead Credit: Image WL330024482, by Andrew Stephenson. St Peters lane way graffiti, inner city Sydney, New South Wales, Australia]
