« May 2009 »
S M T W T F S
1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31
Entries by Topic
All topics  «
100 people
365 days
aradale
art
artists wanted: exposure
bars
blogged
book covers
books
brisbane
budapest
calendars
collaborations
commissions
death
digital post-processing
divine diptychs
dreams
eastbourne
edinburgh
england
events
exhibitions
f-stop magazine
fashion
film
gig photography
greeting cards
holga
hospitalfield
jpg magazine
life
london
melbourne
minutiae
mixed bag
mooncruise* magazine
paris
phirebrush
photographers
photography
photography books
portraits
portraiture sessions
prints
road trip 2009
road trip 2010
rosebank, nsw
saatchi showdown
self-portraiture
sepulchre
shots magazine
the big issue
the bubble
toyota travel award
travel
travels with kyle 2012
twohundredby200
vignette press
visible ink
workshops
You are not logged in. Log in
scrawl
30 May 2009
part of the furniture
Now Playing: catatonia - equally cursed and blessed
Topic: self-portraiture

untitled #12

untitled #11

untitled #21

untitled #3

untitled #2


I've been a bit frustrated of late.

I have been very inspired with self-portraiture and non-self-portraiture ideas, but for various reasons have not been happy with the shoots that have come out of my self-portraiture attempts of late.

In some instances I've chickened out of doing shoots. For example, I have a specific idea for a (respectful) shoot in the burnt out bush around St Andrews and Kinglake but was aware of how conspicuous I would have been to folk driving by the perfect location I found, and how, despite my intentions, my actions may have seemed disrespectful.

In some instances I've not found a location that suited for what I was after and decided I'd rather just have a relaxed day enjoying chilling out on the beach (Lorne and Mooloolabah).

And in other instances I've gone ahead with the shoot but not been happy with the results, despite feeling quite positive about the shoot at the time. And then I'm not sure whether this is now me expecting much more from myself, not being as easily pleased as I perhaps used to be. Case in point, the above shots aren't bad per se, they just don't rock my socks like some of the work I've done in the past 12 months, though previously perhaps I'd have been quite pleased with them. I didn't even think enough of them at the time of the shoot to bother to edit any of them until two months later, and I've now edited a few more and am posting them almost a further month later...

I think I've also become more critical of my body in the past 6 months, since losing so much weight last year, then putting a little bit of it back on in the past few months.

It's a phase, I'm sure, so I'm not letting myself become too disillusioned. And I'm trying not to push it and become further frustrated. Just focusing on other things that have looming deadlines anyway and I will come back to it later.

One of the things that has been thwarting my attempts I can at least change a little though. My "new" abode (I say "new" though I've now been in here about 6 months) is lacking in the natural light department, and even in the artificial light situation it's not ideal. Being a former commercial property the lighting is predominantly harsh fluorescent lights, which is obviously not suitable for many of the shoots I want to do. Even the light in my bedroom is one fluorescent tube and one household tungsten bulb, both running from the same switch.

So I've decided I will (with the aid of a friend with a ladder) remove the fluorescent tube and the yellow paper lampshade on the hanging bulb and seek out a suitable secondhand shade (possibly just a simple one along the lines of the ones in my last place) and increase the wattage of bulb in that socket, if necessary. At least then I will have one room in the house where I'm not forced to work with shaded lamplight or ugly fluorescent lights.

I so wish I had a proper studio though. Something with natural light, as well as the option for studio lighting, a reasonable amount of room, privacy, 24 hour access. Le sigh... Anyone know of anything available for peanuts? Cos that's about all I've got right now.

Posted by Bronwen Hyde at 14:24 BST
Updated: 3 June 2009 12:31 BST
Post Comment | View Comments (6) | Permalink | Share This Post
24 May 2009
100 people - #6: Victoria
Now Playing: mazzy star - so tonight that i might see
Topic: 100 people

victoria and ed


I met Victoria a while back on Myspace, I can't remember now how long ago.

But I guess it was long enough ago that when we finally met up in person whilst I was visiting my parents in Queensland we talked as though we'd known each other for years.

Despite having worked a hectic weekend at Wasabi Restaurant as part of the Noosa Food & Wine Festival, Victoria drove down to Mooloolaba to meet me, where I was visiting friends from England who were in the area for a wedding.

Victoria, Julie, Jason* and myself had an enjoyable afternoon talking, laughing and drinking at a cafe on the Esplanade, then relocated to the Surf Club to have a few more drinks with friends of Julie and Jason's as the sun went down.

A little while later Julie & Jason headed off for a curry dinner and Victoria whisked me off in the dark to her place in Noosa for a lovely mushroom risotto, and to meet her cheeky cockatiels, Ed and Freud.

Originally from Birmingham, Victoria came to Australia for love, but has stuck around long after that love ended. When not fulfilling the role of a charming waitress at a local Japanese restaurant, Victoria is a philosophy student and has also recently taken to creating a series of daily photographic mementos.

*unfortunately i was too busy nattering with julie & jason to grab my camera out and immortalise them in pixels for this project. must rectify that when next i'm in england!

Posted by Bronwen Hyde at 10:06 BST
Post Comment | View Comments (1) | Permalink | Share This Post
14 May 2009
a summer wasting
Now Playing: nina simone - i put a spell on you
Topic: mixed bag

title or description


I'm back in Melbourne now, after 3.5 weeks of "holidays" at my parents' in Brisbane. I use quotation marks because I was still doing things like putting together submissions, taking photos (though barely any self-portraits), working on grant and award applications, researching, etc., etc., etc.

I also took the time to answer some questions about my art for Brian Sherwin at Myartspace which you can read here.

Whilst in Brisbane I visited the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art to see The China Project, Breaking Boundaries, Creative Generation and the Spencer Finch exhibition. I also dropped in to see the Josephine Ulrick & Win Schubert Photography Award 2009 at the Gold Coast City Art Gallery. I'll post more about The China Project soon: I was really impressed by a couple of the artists included in the exhibition.

As it was a year since the end of my 365 days project on 16 April, I set that as the last day I would have my book darkness & light available, but I am working on a couple of new books at the moment. All will be revealed soon enough.

In the meantime, as always, prints are available in my store.

If you're in Melbourne you can see one of my prints "in the flesh" until the 23rd of May in the Kodak Salon 2009 at the Centre for Contemporary Photography.

I'll also have a print in the Melbourne Silver Mine's annual exhibition of analogue photography, Unsensored09 opening on 7th August at the Collingwood gallery.

I hope you've all been behaving yourselves in my absence and I will be posting more regularly again now that I'm home.

Posted by Bronwen Hyde at 14:36 BST
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
1 May 2009
100 people - #4: Graeme and #5: Margaret
Now Playing: laptop hum
Topic: 100 people

Graeme

Margaret


AKA Dad and Mum ;o)

Whilst some people talk of how much they dreaded and were bored by the traditional family slide night, I was always a fan of those evenings spent in a darkened lounge room, the curtains closed, watching colourful images from my parents' and our collective family's trips away.

Whether photographs from the trip to the USA my parents took when my brothers and I were in early primary school; a trip that brought us each various souvenirs including t-shirts, before souvenir t-shirts became all post-modernist and declared themselves uncool (mine was from San Francisco and said "Go climb a street"). Or photographs from Antarctica and other strange far away places my Uncle John traveled to. Or even the photographs from the travels we three children ventured on with my parents around the Northern Territory when we lived in Darwin.

Slide nights are up there in my list of favourite memories, along with nights spent lying rugged up on banana lounges in the backyard of my maternal grandparents' house in Northbourne Avenue in Canberra whilst my Granddad pointed out constellations and my Grandma brought us out warm cups of Milo. The hum of the projector, the clacking of the slide tray turning or sliding as the corded remote was pressed, the delays when a slide got stuck or the attempt to go back to the previous slide caused a technical malfunction, and the dust particles floating around in the projector's light.

The projected images contained amusing memories of places we'd been, or acted as portals into intriguing places we hoped one day to go. And, of course, played an important part in inspiring my love of photography.

For a couple of decades slide nights in our family died off. My parents, like most folk, started taking their holiday and family snaps with negative film instead of as transparencies; and the act of reliving our family holidays or experiencing each others' was relegated to sitting around a table, possibly as a group, and passing around 6"x4" prints; or in the case of my photographs from the UK, viewed by my parents online long distance on my website. Perhaps, given that by this time there were five of us recording our holidays in photographic form, this was a good thing.

However, with the advent of digital photography, "slide nights" are back with a vengeance in my parents' house. Now they can be enjoyed in the morning and afternoon, not just the evening as they don't require darkness; and there is (somewhat) less pfaffing with the cycle of images played through the DVD player.

After viewing my parents' photographs from their trip to Africa last year and from their travels around the Eastern Rockies, USA, in 2006, I persuaded them to set up a RedBubble account for their travel photography. You should check it out.

Posted by Bronwen Hyde at 16:30 BST
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
10 April 2009
saturnine
Now Playing: fever ray - fever ray
Topic: self-portraiture

saturnine

view larger


Feeling a bit like this at the moment, though this was taken back in February.

My birthday is next Friday. If you want to make me happy you can buy me a 17" MacBook Pro or a Nikon D700. Or you could make a donation to the "Send Bronwen to NY, LA & London Fund". Either / or. Or all. I'm not picky. Just sayin'...

Or you could do yourself a favour and pick up a copy of darkness & light.

Posted by Bronwen Hyde at 16:26 BST
Post Comment | View Comments (1) | Permalink | Share This Post
9 April 2009
incline
Now Playing: esthero - breath from another
Topic: self-portraiture

untitled #74

Less than a week to get yourself a copy of darkness & light!

And if you're looking for a way to spend your stimulus package, here's a suggestion.

Posted by Bronwen Hyde at 16:23 BST
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
100 people - #3: Chris
Now Playing: the puppini sisters - betcha bottom dollar
Topic: 100 people

chris


I can't remember the exact circumstances under which I "met" Chris, affectionately known as Ziz. I believe I came to his notice through the Melbourne and / or Melbourne Silver Mine groups on Flickr sometime in 2007, and we started exchanging comments and messages and finally met in person at Unsensored 07 at Kerala Gallery.

Since then we've met up for various exhibition openings and viewings, various Flickrmeets, and well, any excuse for eating and / or drinking that can be made.

Chris primarily works in film photography, taking beautiful urban abstracts and capturing reflected light, and from time to time some beautiful portraiture. His love for photography (and his quirky sense of humour) has carried over to the naming of his kitten, Eighteen, with her 18% grey colouring.

I took this portrait of Chris on Wednesday as we sat in the front window of Bar Open on Brunswick Street drinking pinot grigio and Mercury sweet cider, people-watching, discussing photography and other things, whilst digesting the Kodak Salon and a large meal from Joe's Garage.

Posted by Bronwen Hyde at 15:55 BST
Updated: 10 April 2009 03:27 BST
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
3 April 2009
i was always your girl
Now Playing: the reindeer section - son of evil reindeer
Topic: photography

i was always your girl


About a week ago, I received an email about what I would consider to be pretty much my dream workshop.

Aaron Hobson is running a 3-day workshop in his local area, the Adirondacks in upstate New York, primarily based around narrative, cinematic-influenced photography, to culminate in an exhibition on the final night.

Not only am I an admirer of Aaron's work, I share a passion for cinematic imagery and self-portraiture with him. He is one of the many folk I would love to share a pint with and discuss photography, inspiration and self-portraiture, and the landscapes and abandoned structures, whether houses or places of industry, in his photographs regularly invoke my jealousy at what is at his proverbial fingertips.

Currently I don't know that I will be able to scrape together the funds for a trip to the US in August this year, but failing that I hope he will be able to continue to run workshops like this in 2010 which would be more likely for me to be able to participate in.

If you're able to participate in this and you think it looks good (I think it looks awesome!), I encourage you to contact Aaron through the workshop site.

And to all photographers reading this in New York, Los Angeles and maybe San Francisco (or even non-photographers!), if I were to come over to the US in August this year, or in June or September next year, would you be interested in catching up to show me around, take photos, or even just for a pint or a coffee?

Posted by Bronwen Hyde at 08:33 BST
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
2 April 2009
the persistence of memory
Now Playing: pink - funhouse
Topic: f-stop magazine

playing with fire

The collaboration I recently completed with Los Angeles photographer Aline Smithson
is included in the latest issue of F-Stop Magazine.

And if you're in Melbourne, come on down to the opening of the Kodak Salon 2009
at the Centre for Contemporary Photography,
corner George & Kerr Streets, Fitzroy, from 6-8pm tonight.

Posted by Bronwen Hyde at 05:26 BST
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
1 April 2009
starstruck
Now Playing: paul kelly & the coloured girls - gossip
Topic: photography books

starstruck

darkness & light only available until 16 April 2009!

untitled #53

untitled #55

untitled #24

untitled #26


*images in this post are not included in the book, they are "out-takes" from my 365 Days shoots.

Posted by Bronwen Hyde at 07:30 BST
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post

Newer | Latest | Older