Work blast

My experience of working life is that it comes in waves. So I've just had a big wave passing through - a number of development programmes running in close succession, involving lots of people, catering for lots of people. This started last week and ended on Thursday with a conference that the development team was running. The point of this long winded explanation is to account for the graphic above. The conference was about a particular part of the IBO curriculum that our schools are starting to offer - and I needed a big print of this thing, called the Learner Profile - so I built this graphic to print vertically hanging vinyl banners from - and printed super big - 6m long (2 and a bit storey's high) and two meters wide. I made five different ones, and hung them as a backdrop to the stage and podium. If you click the picture to open it (it's big - 4mb) you will see that it's made up of a number of different layers blended together: a street market in Sham Shui Po, a frangipani tree, text - the Learner Profile bit - and a big ESF logo. So if you look through the blue layer, by looking through the frangipani shape you will see the market at the back. I felt a bit anxious about this whole thing, this is not what I'm trained to do as a living - nor is it my role to make things like this, and then to go and do it really big as well - but they turned out really well - very groovy and detailed - and I was asked by people at the lunch break to have a lucky draw and let five of the attending schools win one. So all in all worth the risk, and it was cool to see them up in this conference centre, I think its my first ever publically hanging art work - even if its a pretty commercial one.

Similar thing to the first one

This is essentially the same photo that I first posted, and not necessarily fascinating to anyone other than me - but I really think it's a lovely lovely portrait of Aiden. Hope you like it.

Planet McGillivray

Very cool photo this one, taken by Jens, of our flat and patio. He did it using a very wide angle lens, a camera mount bracket which enables you to rotate the camera around its nodal point - this is the actual point of axis around which a 360 degree panorama rotates. Then he used some software that he downloaded to stitch it all together. Watch this space for a really groovy Quicktime video version of this - hopefully this weekend.

Sailing practice

Jens and I are sailing in a 24 hour charity regatta on the 6th of October, though its the boat that has to keep sailing, the crew can change. I think we will get a horror 3 to 6am slot. Jens, my mate in the sunnies, is a super-experienced sailor; I am super-inexperienced. Good balance that. On Saturday last we had to go and try the boat out - its a 2 to 4 person size thing, quite fast though - the middle of the night not being a good learning time. To get to the boat we were sailing meant hitching a ride on Rob and Emma's junk - and it was a beaut day. Rob's son Hamish had this really cool RC boat - which regrettably I did not get to see in action - aparently its genuinely fast. Behind the zapcat being towed by the junk you can see our village in the distance.

Ev doing a bed raid

Ev really likes playing on Aiden's bed - but has to do so when Aiden's not around. Big Boetie doesn't fancy sharing this space.

Lantern Festival

Last night was the Latern Festival, time to hit the beach with lanterns and light sticks - tricky to take pics of though, not enough light, and the only one I have is this one of Christian Overton doing a top decoration job in the boot of the O's car.

Aiden gets it; Evan does not get it yet

Aiden really gets the whole photo thing. Ev doesn't - so you have to strategise, see below. Aiden gets it to such an extent that you can point out a whole improvised film set looking contraption of lights, and he'll just saunter into the middle of it and crack it on. Facial expressions, body contortion - Aiden delivers big in these departments.

Aiden gets it to the extent that he will do as you ask him for a couple of minutes at least. So you can set up shots like this super backlit hair on fire sort of thing on your way to the tub.

First option with Ev

The first option with Ev is to sneak up on him in the dark and let rip with a big flash. He quite likes this - gets him fired up and zooming around.

The only other option with Ev is to try and find something that he likes doing that also has an appealing shape - like climbing the stairs, which have an appealing shape.

Evan is a super little guy. The plan goes something like this - get together a workflow that makes efficient the job of putting out photos. Emails are very time consuming when one feels that you have to put together a decent narrative of the past couple of middle class weeks. So this is my choice for keeping divergent circumstances emotionally convergent at the moment.

Working out public life

Not sure how this will turn out as an undertaking - it has the look of needing a maintained momentum difficult outside working-life. What a pity to have snipped off a bit of Aiden's foot - I really like this as a portrait.