Flickr: Wellington is more than just a Group

Huh? “Flickr … Group” … what are you blither­ing about man!?!? It’s okay, you’re not alone as I had to have the whip­per-snap­pers sit me down in my bath-chair and explain what the jolly Moses they were talk­ing about. It seems that using this newly fan­dangled Inter­net we don’t have to store all our pho­tos in a card­board box under the spare bed any more. No, we can “post” them up to the Web and let the world* see our hol­i­day snaps.

Flickr is one such place that lets you post your pho­tos.

And, you can tell the world where the pic­tures came from by either pop­ping them onto a map or adding the place name as a tag/label.

You can even join up with like minded folks and share your pho­tos in “com­munity photo albums” (groups) on any sub­ject you care to dream up.

Aha, you prob­ably saw where this was going a lot quick­er than I did when the young uns were explain­ing it to me with the use of short words, dia­grams and plenty of naps in the sun to recov­er.

read on after the break …

Jo Russ’ photo diary

On a recent vis­it ex-Wel­ling­to­ni­an pho­to­graph­er Jo Russ used her artist’s eye to snap a set of images which share a cer­tain group char­ac­ter­ist­ic; I’m not sure exactly what it is, but I feel like I’m look­ing at the mundane and the famil­i­ar from an out­sider­’s fresh per­spect­ive.

More after the jump.

A sharp intake of breath

A new pho­to­graphy group, “gasp!”, has an exhib­i­tion entitled “a sharp intake of breath” at Finc Café from now until 10 June.

[Photo © Ger­aldine Downey, 2007]

The group (Ger­aldine Downey, Andrew Eccle­stone, Stella Ramage, Paul Hol­ley and Jor­dyn O’Keeffe) gave them­selves the wide brief for the exhib­i­tion of cre­at­ing images inspired by the word ‘enigma’. The brief exhib­i­tion cata­logue explains that they were “Aim­ing to make space for a slower, deep­er vis­ion amongst the tor­rent of visu­al inform­a­tion that swamps us every­day. We wanted to pro­duce images which asked more ques­tions than they answered, to arouse a flick­er of intrigue, a shiver of unease, or cre­ate a pause for thought.”

Rusticity

rusticity

Fol­low­ing the suc­cess of the recent Wel­ling­ton Flickr Group’s exhib­i­tion at the Para­mount, cames yet more pho­to­graph­ic good­ness from a Wel­ling­ton flickr-ite legend A Dif­fer­ent Per­spect­ive (aka Jim Hende­r­son).

He’s put­ting on an exhib­i­tion of his work down at Island Bay’s The Bach café, from the 1st to the 30th of April.

To get a feel for what you might be see­ing, check out his awe­some flickr pho­to­stream here.

Online to On the Wall

We all know that Wel­ling­ton is a great place to take pho­tos: its nat­ur­al beauty, pub­lic art, lively street life and eclect­ic archi­tec­ture all con­trib­ute to a visu­ally stim­u­lat­ing city. The busy Flickr-ers of the Wel­ling­ton Flickr group know this, and they’ve decided to take their best pho­tos into the real world.

Online to On the Wall poster

“Online to On the Wall” opens at the Para­mount Theatre tomor­row night at 6pm, and runs until the 28th of March.

Photo Credits

Thanks to the pho­to­graph­ers respons­ible for allow­ing us to use their work as the back­ground image at the top of each page. If you wer­en’t aware, the image rotates for each indi­vidu­al browser every 24 hours.

The images are…

  1. Inside of the Embassy Pic­ture theatre: ???
  2. Mephisto Jones grafitti col­lage: ???
  3. Flat White and a Cheese Scone: cof­fee photo by Tani­wha. Not sure about the scone, to tell the truth.
  4. Wel­ling­ton from the Tur­bine: noizy­boy.
  5. Wel­ling­ton City­scape at Night photo by ???
  6. The City-to-Sea Bridge Icons: Tani­wha.

Eclectic Electric

Here are a few things to keep your mind off the weath­er this week­end.

The World Press Photo ’06 exhib­i­tion kicks off at Shed 11 today. It’s been inter­est­ing to see that the pub­li­city around town has taken a very polit­ic­al angle this year.

Just along the water­front at the Museum of Wel­ling­ton City and Sea (I wish they’d find a short­er name!), they’re already two weeks into the month-long Wel­ling­to­nia LIVE event. The word “eclect­ic” does­n’t even begin to describe the range of things going on there: there’s a per­form­ances from the Tinakori Hand­bell Asso­ci­ation, a Matariki cel­eb­ra­tion with Toni Huata, hurdy-gur­dies, shanty sing­ers, ghost tours, kete weav­ing and a debate on the con­tro­ver­sial Mar­ine Edu­ca­tion Centre. My main interest will be in the series of talks organ­ised by the Archi­tec­tur­al Centre entitled “Why I do archi­tec­ture”. These kick off at 1pm tomor­row with Anna Kemble-Walsh and Mar­tin Han­ley of Red Design and John Mills of John Mills Archi­tects.

Poster for debut gig by The Blush ResponseFrom eclect­ic to elec­tric: new synth-pop band The Blush Response have their debut gig at Sand­wiches tomor­row night. The band may be new, but the musi­cians will be very famil­i­ar to Wel­ling­to­ni­ans: Jerami­ah Ross (aka Mod­ule), Rhi­an Shee­han, Raashi Malik (of Rhom­bus, among oth­ers) and Paul McLaney of Gram­sci.

Finally, you could always try to fig­ure out the loc­a­tion of the cur­rent Mys­tery Bar. If you do, you’d bet­ter get look­ing tonight because it’s closed on Sat­urday nights (that’s a clue). It also has some­thing in com­mon with Sand­wiches.

Shed in Transition

Just quietly, there’s an intriguing little exhib­i­tion on at Shed 11 until Sunday: “Trans­itions” is a col­lec­tion of images by pho­to­graphy stu­dents at Mas­sey Uni­ver­sity. All the pho­to­graphs are of the water­front, cov­er­ing diverse sub­jects such as the vis­it­ing “Big Lift” ship, the inner work­ings of the Brew­ery and the way that mar­ine life man­ages to col­on­ise even rub­bish and pol­lut­ants.

Shed 11 seen from One Red Dog

It’s all a little bit self-ref­er­en­tial, since many of the images invest­ig­ate the ever-chan­ging nature of the water­front, and the ven­ue itself looks likely to see a sig­ni­fic­ant change soon. There are plans afoot to make it the per­man­ent home of the New Zea­l­and Por­trait Gal­lery and the New Zea­l­and Centre for Pho­to­graphy. The pho­to­graphy theme con­tin­ues next week with the start of the World Press Photo 06 exhib­i­tion.

Happy 2006

Wel­ling­to­ni­an flickr-ites Feli­city and Philip were nar­rowly pipped at the post for first pic­ture of 2006 to hit the Amer­­ic­an-based mega-site Flickr and the 2006firstpix pool (with their snap [above] of New Years rev­el­ries in Civic Square), by Mas­ter­ton’s curi­ouskiwi (who has taken enough fine pic­tures of Wel­ling­ton to qual­i­fy as a loc­al any­way), who […]

Lee “Scratch” Perry at the Wellington Town Hall

Photo © karimsahai.com. Used with per­mis­sion. Lee “Scratch” Perry and The Mad Pro­fess­or per­formed At The Town Hall last night – Karim Sahai was there with cam­era in hand, and got some fant­ast­ic pix. Enjoy.