What are you shooting?….
Early hours, I stumbled bleary eyed through the beaded curtain to my office as “groundhog” day began.
Its my routine to get dressed there, as my computer boots up and my brain does the same.
A few small chores and then a quiet Sunday morning gestures me to leave home and wander the town with my camera. Taking photos is my job and like any commitment, at times it can be all too consuming.
“Freeshooting” is when my tools and I go “walkies” and I disappear further into my own part of the planet, away from the race to the bottom.
Yes, you may have noticed from my tone that I was a bit flat and the first few photos I shot were just me going through the motions.
Soon after, I saw the hands and the curtains in the reflection and then thought of bank and the synergy that became my burst of inspiration.
It came together on many levels.
Perhaps it was my mood, perhaps the universe was steering me gently toward a goal unknown, but my energy lifted as the set came together.
I stopped briefly to chat with two greyhounds who were waiting patiently for their owner to get up from the café seating and mid pat the woman asked me what I was shooting.
Good question thinks me.
A moment later, it came to me. “Irony”, I am shooting irony.
We both laughed and I kept on my way digging for that irony that is all around us.
Yes I guess Launie CBD in the early hours of Sunday morning is almost a definition of irony. I like to stand in Brisbane Street at 5:30 PM on weekdays and listen to the shop doors slamming in unison. Melbourne was like that in the 1950s when Kodak was the largest supplier of photographic equipment in the world thanks to World War 1 and World War 2. Unfortunately the arrogant Yanks who ran the company could not imagine that companies in a devastated country like Japan could make a success of single lens reflex cameras for the masses. Kodak was still trying to sell Retinaflexes with vastly inferior specs to the growing Nikon and Canon equivalents at prices that no one on an average wage could afford. it was A KODAK so naturally you just had to pay more – didn’t you???? And then Sony introduced the Mavica prototype – the first digital camera around 1985 and still Kodak didn’t see ‘IT’ coming. Sucking all the while on the US military tit, making bigger and bigger digital image sensors for the CIA, Kodak’s top people failed to see how quickly digital image sensors would replace film. ‘We have an R&D Division so we will be in business in 20 years time!’ was the catch cry of George Eastman in 1930. But when the ‘bean counters’ who replaced George shut down the R&D Division in the 1980s because ‘it cost too much’, that was the death knell. A lot like the Tassie forest products industry really! There is irony for you.
Thanks for checking my blog Warwick.
The doors are closing earlier now cabin fever is running rampant, but I find it amazing, your endless fountain of knowledge.
I’m glad it is used for the forces of good;)
Your expression of irony is not wasted on me.
We are large on irony in Tasmania and as the cargo cult dream dwindles we have a new saviour on route to hoover the ocean floor of lazy fish which only serve to mess our prisitne waters…..
Bless the genius.
Perhaps we are run by Kodak R&D retirees?
Now that would be glossy irony on 300 gsm.