These photos by Dustin Humphrey combining underwater art installations with surf actions shots are incredible. More here.

Posted in Shutterbug on Thursday July 10, 2008. Shoutouts.

If you use Flickr for your photos, Photojojo’s Time Capsule is a pretty neat way to revisit shots from a year ago. They email you every couple of weeks, the layout is great, and the photos successfully capture that special “blast from the past” feeling. I’m digging it.

Posted in Shutterbug on Monday May 5, 2008. Shoutouts.

But, still, I can’t believe he’s here. Stooped as he ducks through the door, beside those three concrete walls swathed with thick stripes of green. Modern art for the mediocre. Through nerve, or habit, or sheer bloody-minded stubbornness, he’s here and I’m here and I’m not sure that’s what I want. Not now. I feel my heart flutter, and race, and pick up its legs and run, jack-hammering against my ribcage as it pirouettes in frantic sweaty escape.

“Let’s go, come on, it’s time to leave – do it for me, if for nothing else. Fuck. No. No, it’s not like that at all. You’re misunderstanding and that’s not what I meant.”

I don’t think he understands what’s going on.

Posted in Shutterbug on Saturday May 3, 2008. Shoutouts.

Posted in Shutterbug on Monday April 14, 2008. Shoutouts.

The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney has become the first museum in the world to release publicly-held historical photographs for access as part of Flickr’s Commons Project.

The Commons is an attempt to share with the world’s public photography archives, while at the same time allowing users to add tags to these photos. The first photos the Powerhouse have put up form part of the Tyrrell Collection, a series of glass plate negatives by Charles Kerry (1857-1928) and Henry King (1855-1923), two of Sydney’s principal photographic studios at the time.

There’s some great photos in there, like this one of the GPO or the modern Australian shearer.

Posted in Oz on Tuesday April 8, 2008. Shoutouts.

Posted in Shutterbug on Tuesday April 1, 2008. Shoutouts.

Posted in Shutterbug on Saturday March 29, 2008. Shoutouts.

Posted in Shutterbug on Tuesday March 25, 2008. Shoutouts.

You get mistaken for strangers by your own friends
when you pass them at night under the silvery, silvery citibank lights
arm in arm in arm and eyes and eyes glazing under
oh you wouldn’t want an angel watching over
surprise, surprise they wouldn’t wannna watch
another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults

-The National

Posted in Shutterbug on Thursday February 14, 2008. Shoutouts.

It all started as we admired the moss covered walls and trails of browning ivy on the walls of a typically spectacular church near the Rathaus in Berlin. Near the entrance to the church we noticed a statue of a snarling bear and elected to take a photo with said bear.

Common themes in German stone-craft encountered thus far consist of “animal clawing at viewer,” the ever popular “man on horse kicking the shit out of lion” and not forgetting the equally likeable, “man with sword stabbing the shit out of lion.” Small variations on the above theme also exist and, while they may or may not involve spears, largely end with the lion getting fucked.

Anyway, two elderly German women indicated with much vigour that they would take our photo with the bear. After much shouted instruction that we were to far to the left, or the right, they apparently neglected to hit the button at all. Bearless, we were forced to improvise. From then on, a rapidly devised game ensured the non-observant traveller was obliged to pose with any bear spotted along the way.

I present the Berlin Bears, part of a rapidly growing collection of retarded travel snaps:

Posted in Shutterbug on Monday January 28, 2008. Shoutouts.