Moose | Gaylor | Film.

Last night was spent onsite at the Mance Design studio in Richmond filming the first half of a short documentary on a new collaborative project between Moose (Reverse graffiti artist) and Dean Gaylor (Head of Mance Design). Bernard Winter from thegraf and myself got a shit load of great footage and the project is looking amazing. Stay tuned for updates and the final edit.

Nick Found

Istanbul | Part One | Cats and Carpets.

As the "make peace with what ever God you barrack for" sign starts to flash the plane does a small barrel roll to the right and I end up with a second lap full of hot tea - perfectly steeped once again. You know when the cabin crew start to cry that everything bad is about to happen. I take the brace position - because I can reach the seat in front of me - this apparently will help as you hurtle into the ground at Mach 5. I am sure it is now all over. The captain comes onto the radio.

Captain: Gentlemen and Ladies, due to a slight technical problem we have been delayed a further fifteen minutes. Sorry for the inconvenience, we will have this bird in the air as soon as the First Class toilet can properly evacuate the rare and exotic caviar it will no doubt receive en-route (possibly exaggerated).
Guy Beside Me: eh man, can yous believe dis shit? I dinnt pay free pounds last minnet to be delayed fer en our.
Me: What the fuck, we are still on the ground. Why is there tea in my lap? Dammit.

Anyway, whilst in Istanbul I took some pictures. They are shown below. A bit more of a story and a few more shots from one of my favourite cities coming up soon.

































Nick Found.

London | Road Test | Canon S95.

Introduction.

This up-date is a little different to my usual travel posts. I have reached this weird half way point (well technically nearly two thirds) in the trip and due to a British Airways/Finnair logistic/flight path issue found myself in London for two days. As I am not treating this as part of my trip, it is more like being stuck in limbo, I decided I could not be fucked carrying around my dSLR and all its lenses and really wished I owned a Lieca M9. However, I then remembered blowing $7000 on another (any) camera body was a dream and not soon going to become a reality. So I did the next best thing, borrowed my sisters Canon S95 point & shoot.

Main Body.

So it felt a little weird walking around with a point & shoot, kind of like roaming the streets without pants and feeling very much like the tourists I hate. However, it really wasn't that bad (personal image aside). Now, this camera is bloody brilliant! As far as pocket cameras go the experts at B&H in New York tell me its the top end unit before getting into that weird mid ground between the 'throw it in your bag, lets go clubbing, OMG Myspace' size and 'holy shit this backpack is getting heavy, I really should have left the 70-200 at home' size. Back to the S95 though, I first started using it in Auto, but soon got bored of the simplicity - the shots were pretty decent, however, just a bit to flared and not what I knew this camera was capable of. Manual though came up trumps. One is able to play with the same settings available on a dSLR so total user control was no problem. I also loved the 'scene' settings which allow you to switch between things like Fish Eye, Vivid Colour, Tilt Shift, Nostalgic, Panorama, and more I can not remember. I had a play with most of them and the results were great. I would not sell up all me gear and rush to the nearest online store to get one, however, I would happily (on occasions) leave my kit at home and use this. I have never found a point & shoot that I liked, let alone one I would use to accompany my dSLR, so thanks Canon!

Tangent.

Sunflower seeds are not something I think about often. There was this dude who drove a trolley - well actually he was the brake man - in San Fran who ate them. Quiet guy, not very helpful, I bought a jacket just like his, it is brown, very warm. Whilst in London though, I took the yearly trip to Tate Modern (which one must do to stay up-to-date with contemporary art) and there was this exhibition there by a Chinese conceptual artist named Ai Weiwei. Standing on the overpass looking down the Turbine Hall one sees a field of sunflower seeds. I judge before reading of course, "what a lot of shit, art these days is rubbish, study design." I then read the board, it says: Sunflower Seeds is made up of millions of small works, each apparently identical, but actually unique. However realistic they may seem, these life-sized sunflower seed husks are in fact intricately hand-crafted in porcelain." One cannot begin to imagine how many hand made, hand painted seeds are down there, luckily there is a clever info graphic to tell you - Over 100 MILLION. Now standing down on the floor of the Turbine Hall, the size of this installation really hits me. One cannot actually begin to try to explain with words the size of this piece, see photos below (they don't really do it justice either).

Conclusion.

This was a long post I know, however one would assume that if you made it this far you are probably part of a minority (I would have skimmed it at best!) so well done! The beauty of it is there is now not much to say. Below are a series of photos from the Canon S95, these are as they came from the camera, no editing (bar cropping and straightening - I had a cross-eyed day) so see what you think compared to the previous posts. Regards.


** Standard Manual Shot.


** Standard Manual Shot.


**Nostalgic Setting.


**Faux Tilt Shift Setting.


** Standard Manual Shot.


** Standard Manual Shot.


** Standard Manual Shot.

| Sun Flower Seeds |


** Standard Manual Shot.


** Faux Tilt Shift Setting.


** Nostalgic Setting.


** Nostalgic Setting.


** Nostalgic Setting.


** Standard Manual Shot.


** Standard Manual Shot.

***Here is a link to ARTCARDS Review of Sunflower Seeds by Ai Weiwei.

Nick Found

Finland | Part Two | Bear is a Mans meat.

Heading north into the Arctic Circle in a less than impressed Volvo. Racing at 80 kilometers per hour along frozen lakes on a high powered Ski-doo. Having the juice in your eyes freeze in sub -20 temperatures. Shooting behind a pack of 12 overly energetic Huskies. Finland just never stopped impressing the pants off me.

The last day was obviously when the weather became perfect - one has never seen colours so clean, crisp and fresh - with all the right signs to see the Northern Lights racing through the sky. However, the flight back to Helsinki saw the old Canon race south, away from that one shot that I have dreamed about for so many years.

I am glad that I missed these Northern Lights (which I will only believe exist when I get to see them!) It really makes for the best reason (not that one is even needed) to return to one of the most beautiful countries I have ever seen.

Please enjoy some more of the remarkable Finnish landscape.


























Nick Found

Hello Australia | I am home.

After three months of sleeping on starch drenched bed linen and enjoying life with no commitments, I am back in Melbourne and preparing to face the world of full time employment. This I see as a good thing - aside from missing the hell out of Europe (Berlin)!

On the plane (somewhere over India) I made a list of shoots I want to do, these will slowly make there way up here as well as the remaining posts from the trip. There will be a bit of Finland, England, Turkey, Germany and Scotland as well as heaps of additional posts, as I slowly trawl through the 80 odd gig of captured memories!

Here are some necessities. Xo



Nick Found

Finalnd | Part One | Sorry Rudolf.

Traveling Europe through winter generally means that one will experience cold weather. Therefore, the hunt for the coldest weather becomes an exciting challenge. I like challenges and after the last few months freezing my extremities off (slowly you learn to wear woolen layers), I now like cold weather. Wikipedia says the following about Finland:

The country tops continuously the international comparisons of national performance. Finland ranks the best country in the world in the 2010 Newsweek survey based on health, economic dynamism, education, political environment and quality of life.

The Finns eat Bear; they also eat Reindeer, why would one not want to go there! As a person that is trying to be a photographer, Finland is like a playground, everywhere you look there is something to take a picture of. The only problem is when it gets to between -20 and -30, taking a picture becomes a much harder task. You eventually get used to the pain in your eyes, temple, hands and trigger finger - these can be put aside whilst thinking about framing - unfortunately though, my camera does not have the ability to do this (it does not even have a name!) At these temperatures I lost the connection between the lens and the body, there was no ability to white balance, servo focusing did not respond, live view locked up, play back took ages and eventually it just shut down. One could imagine that if this nameless camera could talk it would say something like: "Seriously nick, do you not think of my feelings?" Followed by: "Fuck off."

Here though are some shots from the minutes before several camera freeze ups!


























Nick Found