Coconuts
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
North Efate Coconut plantation with the main road, a typical driving experience around VanuatuPictures of Vanuatu’s largest town by photograpers Michael Blamey, Terry Moloney and Glen Craig
Archive for March, 2009
Wharf
Monday, March 30th, 2009
Ferry preparing to load items to be shipped to the Northern Islands like Santo.Pictures of Vanuatu’s largest town by photograpers Michael Blamey, Terry Moloney and Glen Craig
Beautiful Trickery
Sunday, March 29th, 2009
In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been on a bit of a black and white kick lately on my photo site. Part of the reason is that the house I’m living in right now is owned by a talented photographer who has a treasure trove of photography-related books in his office downstairs.
For the last month or so, I’ve been plundering it, reading mostly (auto)biographical books by and about some of the great war photographers of the last century. The purity of expression that black and white gives, the way it focuses on the subject, is something I find really fascinating. I especially like dark compositions, where the play of light and shadow is smooth across a high dynamic range.
I’m particularly partial to monochrome composition; I always have been. Back when I was working as a lighting designer and director in the theatre, I was taken to task more than once for dropping the light levels below what people were used to, and for not taking advantage of a full palette.
I know my counselors meant well. But to hell with them.
I love shape, silhouette and the play of light and shadow. I love it especially on the screen. Print is touchier and vastly more difficult in technical terms. At least, that’s my experience. I suspect this derives from the fact that the transition between additive colour mixing (i.e. lighting pixels on a screen) and subtractive colour mixing (printing ink on paper) is not intuitive and runs counter to where physics wants to take you. In short, you need to play tricks on the eye to get what you want. You want to make the page appear luminous, whereas the screen already is.
With black and white digital photography, you send only a tiny fraction of available visual information to the screen. In practice, it’s a simple matter of turning on all the pixels (i.e. starting with a white palette) and then removing information until the shadows tell you what you want them to. I love that process, both as metaphor and craft.
Now, all photography is trickery. Beautiful trickery, when it works. But when I look at a lot of recent photography, what I see is a layering of cleverness and craft so thick that one can no longer see the canvas.
I’ve always preferred minimalist design, a few sharp strokes that go straight to the essential. Rather than trying to fit everything in, I want to get everything else out.
I don’t want to construct a case against lush, detailed photography. I quite enjoy some of it. But these days I can’t seem to bring myself to do it. Frankly, I don’t think I want to learn so much about photography that I’m ever capable of the visual backflips and pyrotechnics that characterise much of the move from film to digital.
Perversely, it’s precisely because I can do more that I choose to do less.
Originally published at the Scriptorum. You can comment here or there.
Enlightenment is his window manager
Sunday, March 29th, 2009
The Dalai Lama is one of the most wired spiritual leaders in the world. His only problem is that none of his emails have attachments.
Advice for the day
Sunday, March 29th, 2009
If you’re going to be a fool, do it with your eyes open, and gladly.
Elephants
Saturday, March 28th, 2009
[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.]
“Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”
Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau offered this wry description of relations between Canada and the US at the Washington Press Club back in 1969. Had he been a ni-Vanuatu politician addressing the press in Canberra, he might have used an aquatic simile, but the message would have been the same.
In recent years, Vanuatu has been learning to manoeuvre in this demanding and rather tricky role. To further complicate things, there is more than one elephant in this particular bed. Between the EU, the WTO, China and our other regional neighbours, trade and aid negotiators in Vanuatu have had their hands full.
Happily, 3000 years of practice in patient negotiation and peace-making have so far paid off. To mix metaphors, Vanuatu has of late consistently punched well above its weight when it comes to negotiating this sometimes parlous state of affairs.
But our work isn’t finished yet, and if anything, the stakes are higher now than they’ve been in years. Time is not on our side and the elephants are encroaching once again.
Originally published at the Scriptorum. You can comment here or there.
Little to gain from Vanuatu WTO bid: trade group
Saturday, March 28th, 2009
(ABC) Pacific trade watch group says Vanuatu has little to gain from becoming a member of the World Trade Organisation.The statement follows Vanuatu’s decision to re-start the process to join, saying its essential it becomes a WTO member, as many of it…
Pele island
Saturday, March 28th, 2009
Preparing for a Fish off the beach at Pele IslandPictures of Vanuatu’s largest town by photograpers Michael Blamey, Terry Moloney and Glen Craig
Appropriate Technology – Take Two
Friday, March 27th, 2009
[This week's Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]
I got some really good feedback from last week’s proposal to create incentives for those kinds of computer equipment that are most suited to creating opportunity and improving access to information for ni-Vanuatu.
Not all of the news was necessarily good, but all of it was useful. Daryl Moon, who runs the local Datec store, responded that he’d done a little math on the issue, and he found that computer vendors would certainly be able to sell computers for less if they were constructed locally from tariff-exempt components.
But he went on to explain that in order to justify hiring extra staff for that purpose, he would have to sell 20 computers per week – a number which, he suspected, exceeds the weekly sales of all local computer retailers combined.
I also had discussion with a few local economists and trade experts. One of the issues raised was the difficulty of actually measuring the outcome of such tariff exemptions. Generally speaking, government is willing to accept a drop in revenues in one area provided that it sees an increase elsewhere (VAT income from increased sales, for example) or that the social benefit is sufficient to merit the cost.
As I reflect on these conversations, I’m beginning to realise that, ultimately, the most compelling argument for Appropriate Technology incentives is not economic in nature. The capstone on this discussion is a moral one.
Originally published at the Scriptorum. You can comment here or there.
Visite au Vanuatu de M. Frogier, Président du Congrès de la Nouvelle-Calédonie)
Thursday, March 26th, 2009
Monsieur Pierre FROGIER, Député, Président du Congrès de la Nouvelle-Calédonie et Monsieur Georges WELLS, Président du Parlement du Vanuatu, ont procédé, lundi 23 mars 2009, à l’inauguration du nouveau système de sonorisation et d’interprétariat du Parlement du Vanuatu.)
