We’ve been so busy that it’s been some time since I’ve made an update. Paris is now 6 days behind us, but was an amazing experience, all the while made better by our intermediate level of traveller French.

It seems that nothing pleases the locals more than trying in French first. If at first you don’t succeed, they’ll often come back at you in English, or they’ll come back in English as they can easily discern your accent.

Not that we had a list and had to check the items off, but we visited The Louvre for the “three piece tour” and the Museum of Modern Art where I was lucky enough to see a large Bridget Reily exhibition. Also the Institut du Monde Arab is well worth a look, even for the façade alone.

One of the highlights of the visit was a day of cycling around Versailles - quite an amazing venue, both the grounds and the building itself and a wonderful place to have a picnic too. Don’t forget the great shopping in the Marais and Latin Quartier as well - as it happens, we happen to be travelling through Europe during sales times - which can be good and also bad.

Oh, and let’s not forget the George Pompidou Centre experience!

Pompidou Centre forecourt

You’ll notice that the forecourt above is devoid of people, with a few packages left behind.

I took a photo with no idea what was going on as there were no people about. As we walked on there was a massive boom which scared the **** out of us. Not knowing what had happened exactly and without asking the police (and after seeing a van with "Deminage" on the side of it), I guess that a suspicious package was found and was detonated.

The radius had to be at maximum 150m - I can only wonder if the package was actually an explosive device.

The Eiffel Tower - a must at night. It sparkles for ten minutes at the start of every hour.

Lots of great food to be had, and a couple of shockers as well. Citrus Etoile, Les Philosophes, Le P’tit Troquet, L’as Du Fallafel and Berthillon were all very good - ranging from fine dining to quick in-and-out lunch, and the bad - avoid Le Petit Dakar, and Le Petit Mâchon - one of the worst dining experiences ever. We walked out after 2 hours, in which time we had only had an entree!

Dinner by the Seine - another fab food experience, complete with Pierre Herme desserts!

Anyway, we’re in Gent right now and just gone midday and I can hear the first of the music from one of the stages close to our B&B. It’s a miserable 16C outside and raining! Today is the first day of the Gentse Feesen - so, it’s time to go outside and brave the weather and enjoy the action.

You can also check out some of the other holiday snaps on Flickr.

Inside Guildhall in the City of London

It’s been an action packed, almost frantic 4 days as we’ve been whizzing around London. Great to see the sights - you name it: St. Pauls, Westminster Abbey, Tate Modern, British Museum, Guildhall, Hampton Court Palace and so on. Also was good to catch up with a few old friends last night at The Westbourne.

I’ve been too busy to worry about photos and such! Dribs and drabs will come through as time allows - anyway, time to roll as we’re off to visit the family in Bromley today.

Last Saturday, Sydney gave us a sunny winters day for sailing on the harbour, even if it was a bit icy on the water with the wind chill. We ate. We drank, not too much mind you. There was a bit of work to be done, but not a great deal - of course.

Captain Tom and crew

Postcards from Sydney

View the photos from the day on Flickr.

Not Grace Jones, not Chicks on Speed, it’s Trent Reznor, Jeordie White and Peter Murphy.

An amazing amount of hype and fanboyism surrounded the opening of the new Apple store in Sydney this week. About three hours before the opening, with my new camera in hand I went down to take some photos, and to get a taste of the buzz.

The Apple store occupies the lower three floors of a new office tower at 77 King Street (however, Apple note the store as being on George Street as the entrance is there). The façade consists of sheets of plate glass — which according to Ron Johnson, Senior VP of Retail for Apple, are made in Munich and are the largest sheets of plate glass in the world at more than 15 meters in height. There’s no question, it’s an impressive building, and it’s great to see new development bringing some interest to George Street, a street quite bereft of any thing of interest — after all, isn’t World Square a fantastic destination!

I was also curious about the hype — I could understand the fuss, but not get “into it” I’ve never been a huge fan of Apple products themselves, in fact I’ve only owned an Apple iPod shuffle which was a gift, and I don’t use it - the main reason being that I loathe iTunes (oh… and I recently purchased Quicktime Pro - does that count?). However, I am a fan of everything Apple does from a marketing perspective, from advertising, the experience, the website (for its excellent usability).

View the photos on Flickr.

Spank Rock at Sydney Festival - January 2008

I gave FabricLive33 an absolute thrashing this week, so you’ll see a favouring of the tracks from the CD below in my chart of most listened to for the week. If you’ve seen them live, or even if you haven’t, and are just familiar with their playful Baltimore sound, then this CD might surprise, not for it’s lack of playfulness - far from it, but it’s a fusion of many styles, a genre-smash of techno, old school breaks, guitars, electro (not electro-house) and even some progressive rock!

Mr. Oizo – Nazis (Justice Mix)
Dominatrix – The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight
KW Griff – Good Man
Metro Area – Orange Alert (DFA remix)
The Romantics – Talking In Your Sleep
Uffie – Hot Chick (Feadz edit)
CSS – Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From Above (Spank Rock Remix)
Kurtis Blow – The Breaks
Simian Mobile Disco – Hustler
Rick Ross – Hustlin’
Matthew Dear – Fleece On Brain

Claude Young - Play.fm part at Flex, April 2008. Photo: Dentcys

Kenny Larkin - Without a Sound (Art of Dance)
Rhythim is Rhythim - Beyond the Dance (Transmat)
Carl Craig - Goodbye World (Planet E)
Symbols and Instruments - Cymbolic (KMS)
3MB - Jazz is the Teacher (Metroplex)
Rhythim is Rhythim - Nude Photo (Transmat)
Scorpions Dream - Aqua Dance (Fragile)
Vision - Touch Me (Incognito)
Yennek - Emperical Reality (Buzz)
Jeff Mills - Purpose Maker 001 (Axis)
Robert Hood - Minus (Tresor)
Rhythim is Rhythim - Icon (Transmat)
Kenny Larkin - Groove (R&S)
Fade To Black - In Sync (Reprise) (Fragile)
Claude Young - Dj Kicks (Studio !k7)
The Martian - Cosmic Movement (Red Planet)
The Martian - Ultraviolet Images (Red Planet)

Download. Now. Thanks again to Vince Watson for a delectable mix!

Related links:
Detroit Classics Volume 1
Detroit Classics Volume 2

You seriously have to say WTF. What on earth was this guy planning?!?

From smh.com.au:

A man allegedly found with a machine gun and ammunition in a laneway next to a nightclub on Oxford Street has appeared in Central Local Court today.

Police say they searched the 30-year-old man’s bag after he was spotted acting suspiciously just before 1am on Monday.

They said they found a black machine gun, 32 rounds of ammunition and a magazine.

This reminder me of Ubercoolische - a site that took great pride in playfully pisstaking Ricardo Villalobos, Richie Hawtin, Magda, and Sven Vath amongst others. Unfortunately, the guys have put it into retirement and now launched Cubercoolische as a play on Hawtin’s new box project.

Anyway, back to the point of this article - how to be a cool photographer.

1. The first rule of a cool photographer: Do NOT show your photographs.
2. The second rule of a cool photographer: Do not show your photographs! If somebody asks you to show them - make an excuse. Tell about terabytes of raw images on your computer, being busy, copy and other rights, agreements with “Harper’s Bazaar”, “Esquire”, and other fancy magazines and advertisement agencies.
3. If you have a blog, post there a few photos of renown photographers with moderately positive comments such as “That’s how one should do it!”. Theorise a lot!
4. As an exception, you can post 2-3 abstract-looking photos with a note “I am just fooling around” or “these are my juvenile experiments”. No more than that!
5. Register on all possible forums, mailing lists, websites devoted to photography. Post often, criticise moderately, without fanaticism. Use expressions like “so-so”, “boring shit”, “the horizon level is off”, “faded colours”, “is there an idea?” “is there a concept?”, etc. Really cool photographer can always find something to criticize. Never praise. Mock newbies until their full destruction.
6. Learn the terminology. The words “expocorrection”, “bracketing”, “crop”, “polarisation” should always be in your arsenal. Use them!
7. Learn the jargon and use it fearlessly.
8. Disdain the rules, but ridicule those who disregard them.
9. Learn names of 2-3 famous photographers, and know the Cliff’s notes description of their work. Use this when theorising and criticising.
10. Install the latest version of Photoshop. Master the “stamp” tool. Tell everybody that you don’t use Photoshop on principle. Ridicule all who uses it.
11. Photo filters are crouches for disabled. Universal lenses are suitable for handless and footless. A really cool photographer uses different lenses for each situation, and uses his feet and head for moving objects closer and farther away.
12. Buy a camera. Remember, Canon belongs to cheap pop-culture; Panasonic, Sony, Olympus and Konica are all garbage. In the worst case, buy Nikon or Pentax, but you’d be better off with Leica or Hasselblad. If you don’t have enough money, buy a wide-angle “Kiev”. You don’t need to put any expensive film in it - just carry the camera with you.
13. The more lenses, flashes, filters, exponometers are in your photobag, the cooler you are!
14. Cool pros use film or the most expensive digital SLR’s. If you don’t have enough money for 1D Mark, carry an old film camera, motivating it by the fact that digital is inferior to the film. Argue about wrong colour reproduction, low resolution, and the young age of the technology.
15. If you are using a DSLR, claim that you ignore the screen and even the built-in exponometer, setting everything based on your vision and expertise.
16. Get a friend with a photo-studio and drink with him regularly.
17. Every so often, disappear for a couple of days. Claim that you had a large-volume contract and you were stuck in the studio, or that you flew in the “National Geographic” helicopter to shoot geysers in Kamchatka.
18. Display on your desk a certificate of some photo-school, but don’t forget to mention that you have outgrown your teachers.
19. Memorise Ken Rockwell’s article. Disprove it or substantiate it depending on the situation.
20. Learn all the camera models back to the 40s. Read the new releases, and know all modern cameras, lenses, flashes.
21. Be aware of photo exhibitions. You don’t need to attend them, familiarising yourself with the reviews would suffice.

I’ve been on a bit of a TVC kick recently. The Gruen Transfer’s probably aided this! I do love this ad, just for the concept simplicity - even though the execution might not have been so simple. Released in 1996, it was an award winner for Y&R London.

Take a world class athlete - Carl Lewis, and get him running on all terrain, over water, steep inclines - you name it. Add Quoth by Polygon Window (aka Aphex Twin) for the abrasive soundtrack.

And you get and you get an advert that makes you stand up and take notice.