february - july 2015
36°50′26″S 174°44′24″E
i don’t wish for this to be self-indulgent, so i’ll keep it brief: while unspectacular in and of itself, this album has been pivotal to my development as a cameraperson. i made this as part of a semester abroad - a very exciting intermission to three years of theoretical studies.
Auckland was a hard nut to crack, visually speaking. sure, any photographer can easily put together a great little collection of photos just by following the tourists’ route, but that’s a well that ran dry for me over a few days. afterwards, it got tough.
photographing and curating the below has been an exercise in exploration. Auckland’s a beautiful city - there’s no challenging that. however, the orderliness and relative cleanliness do not lend themselves too well to creating what is traditionally understood as “interesting” photography. necessary in this case was a layer of abstraction, where i’d have to mix shape and colour into something brand new. i couldn’t do it then, i can’t do it consistently now either. but back then i decided i’d focus on a single set of pictures and really make it count.
probably the toughest lesson Auckland dished to me had to do with the gap between idea and product. the results, i came to understand, would undoubtedly be underwhelming, as the concepts i would imagine rarely translated into products. i would amuse myself by thinking all images had sort of a “shelf life” (or perhaps “card life”), where their qualities would have already “evaporated” by the time i had gotten back to my dorm.
it was also in Auckland where i had the honour of receiving tailored advice from an established professional photographer. as i got older, i was able to distil the advice into a single statement - “photographers are obsessed with lists.”
thanks teach. you’ve changed my life.
february - july 2015
36°50′26″S 174°44′24″E
i don’t wish for this to be self-indulgent, so i’ll keep it brief: while unspectacular in and of itself, this album has been pivotal to my development as a cameraperson. i made this as part of a semester abroad - a very exciting intermission to three years of theoretical studies.
Auckland was a hard nut to crack, visually speaking. sure, any photographer can easily put together a great little collection of photos just by following the tourists’ route, but that’s a well that ran dry for me over a few days. afterwards, it got tough.
photographing and curating the below has been an exercise in exploration. Auckland’s a beautiful city - there’s no challenging that. however, the orderliness and relative cleanliness do not lend themselves too well to creating what is traditionally understood as “interesting” photography. necessary in this case was a layer of abstraction, where i’d have to mix shape and colour into something brand new. i couldn’t do it then, i can’t do it consistently now either. but back then i decided i’d focus on a single set of pictures and really make it count.
probably the toughest lesson Auckland dished to me had to do with the gap between idea and product. the results, i came to understand, would undoubtedly be underwhelming, as the concepts i would imagine rarely translated into products. i would amuse myself by thinking all images had sort of a “shelf life” (or perhaps “card life”), where their qualities would have already “evaporated” by the time i had gotten back to my dorm.
it was also in Auckland where i had the honour of receiving tailored advice from an established professional photographer. as i got older, i was able to distil the advice into a single statement - “photographers are obsessed with lists.”
thanks teach. you’ve changed my life.
