Wednesday, 18 June 2014

More than just a click

I'm obviously not getting the best out of my attempts at photography.
Here are just a few examples of photographers (or visual engineers as one refers to themselves) exploring the limits and extending those boundaries with artistic interpretation and technological innovation.

 

Firstly two images by Canadian Benjamin Von Wong, One on the left in a literary mode and below his underwater wreck shoot in Bali.
See more at his website http://www.vonwong.com/ There's also a viral YouTube video of the shoot

 
Martin De Pasquale is a photographer and digital artist based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, best known online for his incredible photo manipulations and surreal digital artworks.
With a great deal of planning and using programs like Photoshop, Poser and 3DS Max, he creates amazing images that distort the lines between reality and fantasy.
 Yes, another one in the literary theme.
 More of Martin's work via Twisted Sifter

Erik Johansson states that he is a photographer and retouch artist from Sweden, who uses his "photography as a way of collecting material to realise the ideas in my mind" see http://erikjohanssonphoto.com/

'Go your own road'
'Drifting away'
And finally to say good-night, this is from French photographer Laurent Laveder.

'Moon games'

Wednesday, 4 June 2014

Ghosts of Irish times

Time for another installment from WebUrbanist, this one is Ghost Estates of Ireland: Symbols of an EconomicCollapse
While they look like miniatures, it's a real estate
Built with visions of suburban prosperity in more optimistic times, the empty shells of former dream homes dot the countryside among piles of construction rubble and fallen-down fences. Economic highs and lows have led to abandonments of entire villages all over the world, from China to the Mediterranean, but Ireland is among the nations that was particularly hard-hit.

The ghost estates in Ireland, is well over 10,000 mostly-empty neighbourhoods in a relatively small nation (and just a small percentage of Ireland’s 350,000-some-odd abandoned houses.)
Most of the ghost estates are found in the rural areas of the northern and western parts of the country. These empty shells are eyesores for the locals in these small towns. The crisis is affecting the country – unemployment, debts, budget cuts, capital investments – but it is also shaping its landscape.
Yes, the words 'little boxes on the hillside..all the same' comes to mind
Why did I immediately think of the Clearances of the 19th century, when many families suffering poverty and the potato famine were evicted from their homes by bailiffs, and watched their buildings being demolished so they couldn’t move back in.
I found it all very evocative, while I love abandonments more than most, at a time of housing shortages and homelessness, can't we place someone in these buildings/towns/cities around the world?