I have had an account on Flickr since 2007 and have uploaded more than 3,100 photographs in that time that have been viewed by more than 107,000 people.

I have made many online friends as a result of Flickr and the website has been useful in attracting customers to my own photo website Photologium. I have always believed that Flickr is the best photo-sharing website and continue to believe this. But something disturbing has been settling in the back of my mind about Flickr for quite some time.

Recent posts by high-profile photographers have started to ask the haunting question: Is Flickr dead, or at least in decline?

Evidence for a decline in Flickr is scant and unreliable. But a number of anecdotal factors point to a shift within the photo-sharing community in the last 12 months. In particular, Google+ has been launched and Google has been working hard to gain a share for Google+ via Picasa in the photo-sharing market. Additionally, sites like 500px have slowly built a stronger following and even Facebook has improved its photo-handling capabilities, despite it still being an awful place to deposit photographs.

One of the more worrying indicators is the well-documented lack of innovation at Flickr.

Whilst Facebook, Google+ and Twitter are constantly tweaking their interface and making changes (with varying degrees of success), Flickr has remained relatively static for quite some time. In fact, Yahoo has been sacking staff including high-profile key staff at Flickr. This can’t be good for a company that desperately needs to be dynamic and innovative.

One of the most insightful articles came from Flickr designer Timoni West, who ratted on her employer out of frustration at the complete lack of attention paid to the “recent activity” page on Flickr. Ms. West made some salient points about the social aspects of Flickr which (I agree) are the most important part of the website, but haven’t received attention in years.

Yahoo has become so lazy and stagnant that Microsoft tried to buy it in 2010 and launched a hostile bid, only to be rebuffed by Yahoo. This would have made Microsoft the owners of Flickr. I cannot help but wonder if that would have been a good thing.

Just this week Yahoo appointed a new CEO in former PayPal boss Scott Thompson, who has already addressed the staff by saying that the company needs to get “back to innovation”. This is an encouraging development.

What’s wrong with Flickr?

Here are my main concerns with Flickr at present:

1. The front page doesn’t do its job. 

I fundamentally agree with Timoni West that the activities page is woefully deficient:

This page should be letting me know who’s posted photos since I last logged-in, but it almost doesn’t. An awful lot of contact’s photos ‘slip by’ unless I click on the latest uploads page or each person’s photostream. With 300+ contacts, the latter option isn’t viable. All I have is a thin static strip of thumbnails at the bottom of the activities page.

If it were up to me, the Flickr blog link would go to the bottom of the page along with “people you may know” and instead have comments and uploads more prominent at the top of the page. Like the latest tweets on Twitter, these could be delivered in real-time.

Perhaps the worst feature is the absolutely useless “replies to your comments” page. I often comment on other people’s photos, yet tracking their responses a few days later is near impossible. In this realm, Facebook wins hands-down with their “notifications” tab at the top of the page. Unlike Facebook, Flickr lists as a “response” any comment that any user has added to any photo that I have commented on at any time. Think about it: That’s an appallingly low signal to noise ratio. So basically I have to remember to manually ‘chase up’ any questions or comments that I may have asked a photographer. I honestly don’t remember most of the time.

2. Geotagging is a half-finished idea

One of the best innovations to emerge from Flickr (back in 2006) was geotagging, which is where an image can be added to a map to show where it was taken. This is brilliant, because it provides a map beside each photo that users can click on to see where the image was taken.

Or so it should. Unfortunately, I live in Australia.

The above is an image of Sydney Harbour Bridge that I shot back in 2007. As you can see, there is an unlabelled map and geographical information presented to the right. If I hover my mouse over the map and zoom in, this is what I get:

What a useless map! Yet if I do the same for this image of the Mall of Asia in Manila, Philippines, I get a detailed map with street names, which can be enlarged:

Similar applies for this photograph of the famous Ginza neon signs in Tokyo, Japan:

So why is it possible to provide detailed maps for Japan and the Philippines, but not Australia?

Worse still, Flickr actually fabricates Australian locations. For instance, if I try to add something to the northern part of Melbourne’s CBD, Flickr will call it “Melbourne Heliport”, of which there is no such location. This image of Mill Park library is actually in the fictional location of “Nillumbik” rather than “Mill Park”. Whilst Flickr has added a facility to choose a location should they get it wrong, it’s not much use if the correct suburb name isn’t even on the list!

Flickr have been hearing complaints about this for years and done nothing.

3. Flickr needs ‘Circles’

One of the common criticisms of Facebook was that there was no way to segregate your content. Everyone from ones’ mother to a preschool classmate or a neighbour had to be a “friend” and therefore saw all the same content.

When Google+ launched, they introduced “circles”. A user can have as many circles as they like consisting of whomever they wish. They can then serve content selectively to their various circles.

In Flickr’s case, we are stuck with “Contact”, “Friend” or “Family”. Back in the day, this made Flickr look a whole lot more innovative than Facebook but now it is Flickr who is lagging behind. I would desperately like to divide my “Friends” up into sub-groups, but can’t. This means that I have to make some tough choices when uploading private photos, the sort of choices that Google+ users don’t need to think about.

Is Flickr in decline?

This is a hotly-debated topic.

According to Alexa, Flickr is losing a lot of traffic and even anecdotally, I sense the same thing. People who used to be active on Flickr are dropping-off. Comments on my photos have been in a steady decline for ages now and images that would have easily gained me 20+ comments a couple of years ago are now earning me less.

Photographer Thomas Hawk, who has written extensively about Flickr, seems to believe that people are leaving Flickr in droves for Google+. I am less convinced. I do agree that people are leaving but it seems to me that Facebook is winning the ‘social photography’ battle, despite it’s appalling treatment of photos. Whether Google+ will overtake Facebook as the first choice for ‘social photographers’, time will tell.

My view is that there is an effective ‘schism’ emerging in the vast world of online photography.

Back in 2006/7, Facebook was in its infancy as a social medium, although growing. MySpace was still dominant but really didn’t handle photos well. Both Flickr and digital photography were mature and so for most people, Flickr was the obvious place to upload and share photos. This applied as much to serious photographers (who enjoy the art) as the ‘social photographers’ who were just interested in documenting their weekend parties and the like.

Fast forward to 2012 and the landscape is vastly altered. Facebook is in the ascendency and continues to evolve rapidly. Google has launched Google+ to compete and is rapidly growing. Both social media websites make the sharing of private photos very easy, because users have a network of friends who will log-on to these networks regardless of whether they are sharing photos of themselves or not. They are there to share news and gossip and the photography is merely an add-on.

From my experience, if I want to share my private ‘social’ photos on Flickr, I have to prompt people because for the most part, my friends will not log onto Flickr unless they want to upload some of their own pictures or inspect mine. They are not interested in photography per se.

I think what might be happening is that the social photographers are probably leaving Flickr and taking up residence at Facebook or Google+.

The people who remain are the serious photographers who enjoy the art of photography and occasionally have some ‘social’ photos to share privately with family or friends. Under this scenario, it would seem logical to believe that Flickr will continue to decline until the majority of its users are the people who enjoy photographic art.

The future of Flickr

It doesn’t help that the aforementioned problems aren’t addressed by Yahoo.

Facebook and Google+ are working tirelessly to innovate and make sharing easier, whilst Flickr stagnates. One could say that the loss of ‘social photographers’ from Flickr is inevitable simply because Flickr is a photo-sharing site and Facebook and Google+ are all-encompassing social media. Perhaps YouTube will suffer a similar fate in coming years when videography becomes cheaper and video-hosting on Facebook and Google+ improves?

A bigger problem is faced by Flickr if the photographic enthusiasts leave the site.

Thomas Hawk claims that this is what is happening and cites the departure of Ingo Meckmann as an example. I don’t know either of these people and cannot say what agendas they may have or how influential they really are. I hope Hawk is wrong, but it’s possible that he’d know more than I.

For professionals and photographic enthusiasts like myself, Flickr is still the better service. There are plenty more features that Flickr has that Google+ doesn’t, but I am sure that won’t last forever unless something changes at Yahoo.

Historically, Flickr has always had a good community. This community is shrinking and it’s time that Flickr does something to stop the decline. It’s not too late but Flickr (like Yahoo) has to get back into the business of innovation. Yahoo needs to make Flickr as dynamic and interactive and easy-to-used as the technology of 2012 will allow.

Flickr will also probably need to look at their pricing structure as Google+ grows and expands. For now, I still believe US$25 per annum is a good price to pay for unlimited uploads, but I suspect that Google will eventually try to undercut Flickr.

Back on 13 April 2006 when I joined Flickr, it was like a revelation. As Flickr developed through 2007 and 2008, it only became more exciting. It won’t be hard for Yahoo to rejuvenate Flickr, but the resources and the will need to be there.

With the hiring of Scott Thompson as CEO, let’s hope there’s some positive change in the air for Flickr in 2012.

Update:

11:10am, 14 January 2012: Flickr have published a blog post pledging that the company is “starting 2012 with a renewed sense of focus” and that users can expect “significant updates to Flickr’s user experience, new features and offerings across devices”. You can read more on the Flickr Blog.

After 6 month’s hard work, Adam Dimech’s photographic gallery and sales website has a brand-new interface and many exciting new features.

Photologium was launched in 2007 and has since experienced massive growth.

Just as before, home users can purchase copies of my photographs to decorate their homes or offices, or to keep as a memento. Commerical users and website owners can access to my digital collection for use in books, periodicals, advertising and on websites. In addition, new ways of interacting with the website with popular social media (Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter) and new galleries have been added as well as a better experience for organisations wishing to licence images.

To have a look, simply head over to http://www.photologium.com. Sales information can be found at http://www.photologium.com/sales/.

No, I have not been focussing on those lovely old Victorian-era school houses, nor the modern constructions arising from Building the Education Revolution. Rather, I am photographing specimens built between 1952 and 1977 in the Light Timber Construction (LTC) style.

Most Victorians will recognise LTC’s, even if they don’t realise that they have a specific name.

LTC’s are those school buildings characterised by long corridors flanked with classrooms on either side. Small courtyards are formed by occasional gaps in the rows of classrooms which are illuminated by rows and rows of white-painted, wooden-framed rectangular windows. A distinctive profile of the building is formed by rising classroom roof-lines, supported by zig-zag rafters that give way to a low-set corridor in the centre.

Many people will associate LTC’s with bitumen. Lots of bitumen bordered by narrow garden beds.

Be it in the city or the country, a primary school or a high school, this design from the Public Works Department was used extensively across the state in a one-size-fits-all approach to educational architecture. In fact, if you’ve been educated within Victoria’s state school system you’ve almost certainly spent some of your time inside one.

Despite their name, LTC’s weren’t usually clad in wood. Prefabricated cement tiles of an uninspiring shade of grey or encrusted with variously-coloured pebbles were the material of choice.

It’s fair to say that LTC’s aren’t too popular with the teaching profession these days, nor with school principles or even students. After a long period of savage budget cuts in the 1980′s and 1990′s and the normal wear-and-tear that would be expected over many years, a lot of LTC schools are looking quite shabby and have come to symbolise government neglect. Approaches to learning have changed too and the buildings have proven ill-suited to many modern educational methods.

With the Global Financial Crisis and the subsequent stimulus funding as well as generous State Government budget announcements, money has suddenly become available to do something about the state of these buildings. As a result, LTCs are being demolished or substantially altered at a rapid rate and what was ubiquitous only a few years ago is now suddenly becoming much rarer.

Good riddance, many will say.

As someone who’s interested in architecture and photography (and who spent his entire school life being educated in LTC classrooms), it seemed worthwhile photographing them before they’ve disappeared. And disappear they will, because the State Government has promised to rebuild or refurbish every state school by 2014.

The project

When I started this project in January 2010, I wanted to be very specific about what I photographed. My aims were:

• To photograph LTC school buildings that were unmodified, with as many original fittings as possible.
• To photograph a representative selection of primary and secondary schools that were built in the style and have been maintained in good condition.
• To generate a collection of images that show the various adaptive uses of the style.
• To photograph evocative images that capture some of the atmosphere and aesthetic that the buildings convey.
• To show the beauty and the blandness that can be seen from LTC school buildings and their landscapes.

Trying to find schools that hadn’t had their central corridors raised, been painted in unusual colours, had their external cladding replaced or otherwise been significantly altered proved to be rather difficult. Google Maps and Nearmap saved me from a lot of fruitless travel as well as helped me to identify candidate sites.

Nevertheless, I still ran into problems. There was more than one occasion when I turned up only to find a recently-installed secure fence out the front or worse still, a rather large patch of freshly levelled earth!

I have chosen to take the vast majority of my photographs on black-and-white film. Aside from the superior qualities of film, I felt that B&W photography would show the schools in their best light and focus the eye on the aesthetics and design of the architecture.

Already, I have posted a large selection of photos on Flickr and the response from people has been terrific. Perhaps because of the ubiquity of these buildings, they speak to the many of us who were educated within their walls. Regardless of whether the memories are good or bad, I have discovered that these photographs evoke many strong feelings in people and I have been encouraged to continue with this ‘project’.

Now that my photographic project has come to near completion, my long-term plan is to create a website with a more detailed analysis of the architecture.

Until then, please have a look at my “State School Architecture” set on Flickr. If you’ve been educated in Victoria, something is bound to look familiar!

A combination of heavy clouds overhead and a setting sun in the west after rain created a golden peak-hour light followed by a rich purple hue. I was lucky to have my camera on hand to capture the beauty before it disappeared.

These shots were taken on Blyth Street, looking west:

Purple tones emerged as I turned to look down Lygon Street whilst trams travelled past and work-weary passengers disembarked.

Was this the secret of the lovely light? Hardly! The Abruzzo Club clock suggests that the temperature was 85°C (185°F) which was far from the truth…

Have a lovely weekend, all!

I have been convinced for quite some time that film is making a resurgence, and for very good reason. I have no hard data, but the woman who processes my films at the camera shop had told me that film sales are “definitely up, almost booming” and Kodak have also said that there’s a resurgence in film sales.  Even anecdotally on Flickr, there seem to be more and more people turning back to film photography.

People are coming to realise that film has definite advantages over digital photography.

Approximately 75% of my photography these days is shot on film. Some of my reasons for returning to film are technical and some of them are emotional but regardless, I generally find that film delivers a superior result for me.

Here are some of my reasons for choosing film:

1. Film has a Broader Dynamic Range

If I use a 100ISO film in an analogue camera, and set my digital to ISO100 and shoot a room with a bright window, or a neon sign lit at dusk, or a garden filled with dappled light, I am almost inevitably happier with the film version. Why? Because if I choose the correct film (there are many types), I will be able to see detail in the dark parts of the room which appear as black in the digital version. This is called latitude, which digital photography tends to lack.

If I am shooting something bright but coloured like a smokey sunset or a vivid neon sign, a digital camera will render the brightest light sources as white, regardless of their proper colour. Film will reproduce those bright points in their true colours, so a red light will be red. Not red grading to pink with a white centre.

Here’s an example:  The images below are of a church in Millicent, South Australia. The top image is digital (Canon EOS 350D) and the bottom image was shot on Fujifilm Superia Reala 100 film, using a Canon EOS 500N . I wanted to capture the warmth and the ambience of the building, but this was a tricky location because the church was a dark yet the windows and skylight were very bright.

In the film version, I can see more detail in the dark places without the bright parts being blown out. If I look at the pews and the ceiling of the digital version, then compare to the film version, the difference is immediately apparent.

Here’s another example: A photograph taken from the Rialto Towers Observation Deck of the city of Melbourne at dusk.

Look at how the film version – shot on Fujifilm Velvia 100 – has richer colours, clearer tones and sharper resolution. The bright spots on Flinders Street station (centre right) are blown out in the digital version so that the pixels are either white or tending to orange, whereas in the film version they retain their true (and accurate) yellow colour. The subtle tones of the buildings are clearer and even the haze in the sky is captured on film, whereas the digital photo shows the sky as an almost single shade of blue.

2. Film is more challenging, but more rewarding

Film demands that thought be put into the composition of each image before the shutter button is pressed. Therefore I find film to be more challenging, but consequently more rewarding when one strikes photographic gold. For me at least, there’s more to celebrate in a ‘brilliant’ film photograph than a digital one.

One doesn’t always want a challenge. Sometimes if I really need a shot, such as when composition an action shot, I won’t use film. But if I am in a situation where time permits, film will usually be my first choice.

3. Film is “authentic”

It strikes me as peculiar that the latest iPhone cameras come with applications that make their digital photos appear to be shot on film or as Polaroids. It begs the very obvious question: If you want the look of film, why not use film?

It is hard to quantify, but film has an authenticity that digital photography lacks.

Perhaps it is the natural vignetting that is a product of a lens rather than a Photoshop effect? Or maybe the softer colours or gentle grain that puts soul into the image?

^{The vignetting in this image is a natural effect from the lens mounted on the camera. (Shot on Fujifilm Superia Reala 100 film)}

4. Black-and-white & high-ISO look better on film

Black-and-white photography has a quality that colour lacks. Photographers may use black-and-white to provide an evocative element in an image or to add drama. Yet there’s really something lacking in digital black-and-white photography. Photographer Ken Rockwell puts it down to digital’s inability to capture tone and shade as well as film, in part because of the failings of colour digital sensors.

Whatever the differences may be, I know that nothing compares to a decent film-based black-and-white photo. Likewise, if I want grain, a high-ISO film will always look better than a crude Photoshop effect or high-ISO setting on a digital.

^{St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne. (Shot on Ilford PANF Plus 50 film)}

5. Film has resolution

On his website, photographer Ken Rockwell writes that “A frame of 35mm film, scanned cheaply at a good photo lab to a CD, is about equal to the resolution of a 25-megapixel DSLR”. Ask yourself: How many people have 25-megapixel cameras?

Of course, this resolution is possible because of scanning technology as much as the film itself. As scanners become increasingly better, higher resolution scans from slide or colour-reversal films are possible. But the other half of the equation is the very detail (ie information) captured on the film in the first place.

Film is an old technology which on a technical level, hasn’t been matched in resolution by digital photography ever. For a whole range of technical reasons, film can capture considerably more detail without converting your images to pixels, adding noise reductions and the like which all reduce image clarity.

In thirty years time, most people’s digital JPG images are going to look fairly poor by the standards of the day, and there will be no way to increase the resolution of those digital images to extract more information. However, in thirty years time it will be possible to re-scan an old negative or slide and the digital image will be of a quality that the technology of the time will permit.

6. Film is fun!

In an era when we can so easily get instant gratification, I actually like waiting for my photos to be processed. I genuinely look forward to collecting my prints or slides to see how my images turned out after a big shoot. I relish the joy of discovering that what I imagined would be “photographic gold” actually turned out better than I imagined.

And yes, sometimes I am disappointed. (Tony Abbott has a phrase to describe this phenomenon).

Conclusion

Everyone will have their own reasons for preferring film over digital, or vice versa. It will depend on what one wants from their photos, and their photography. If you still have an old film camera lying around at home, why don’t you buy some film give it another go? You might be pleasantly surprised.

In the peak of the digital craze, I almost sold my film camera. I am ever so grateful now that I was talked out of that silly idea.

I first attended this intriguing event in 2009, and was suitably impressed to make a return visit in 2010. The free festival, which runs for a week every July, provides an opportunity for artists to utilise the shops and buildings in Gertrude Street as a ‘projection screen’ upon which their electronic artworks can be presented for all to enjoy.

It works like this: An artist sets-up a projector or projectors from which emanates a light show. Projections range from those presented on a small screen in a shop window to small projections on trees or footpaths right up to elaborate patters over entire buildings. They can be animated, or static. It seems that the traders get right behind the festival each year, which adds to its charm.

There are so many impressive works which in 2010 have been contributed by 23 artists. The enjoyable part of the Gertrude Street Projection festival is that projections can be found in the most obscure of places, so the visitor has to be really observant so as not to miss anything.

Street projection is a democratic art form; projections can be enjoyed by children, parents and grandparents alike. The varied presentations can be appreciated for their simple luminescent beauty or the complex but subtle metaphors hidden in some of the more complicated pieces.

One of my favourite works in this year’s Festival was Ménage à Trois, by Nick Azidis. His work involved projecting a series of patterns over the Builders’ Arms Hotel from an upstairs shop window on the opposite side of the street which had the effect of draping the entire pub in luminescent patterns that were changed each day. His work is simple, but bold and eye-catching and it is his style of wallpapering whole buildings with light that I appreciate the most at the Festival. Fellow artist Kit Webster also illustrated an entire building with animated projections that rearranged like a deck of cards thrown across a table top. The effect was stunning, and it’s a pity that this treatment isn’t applied to more buildings.

I happened to be photographing Ménage à Trois when Nick Azidis introduced himself to me. He’d been setting up his display when he saw me set-up my tripod outside the Builders’ Arms Hotel and was curious to see what I was up to. After a friendly chat about the various aspects of projection art Nick Azidis kindly agreed to answer some of my questions for The Grapevine.

How long have you been projecting images onto buildings?
It all started when I lived in the city of Melbourne in 1992. Constant temptation, being surrounded by colossal buildings, set the inner spark.

What is the creative process from inspiration to execution?
Responding to the projection site and transforming it into an object of beauty that will inspire or provoke a new and different way of thinking, for a short moment in time.

How did you come across the Gertrude Street festival and how long  have you been participating?
This is the second year I’ve been involved with the Gertrude Street Projection Festival. In 2009, I was introduced to the co-founders of the festival, by a good friend of mine that I have worked on many show with over years, Olaf Myer (Technical Director for the GSPF).

Are you a full-time artist, or do you have a ‘day job’?
Always a struggle to find that balance from week to week. I do have a casual job in the television industry and most of my spare time is spent doing pre-production for commissioned projection work.

Is there a projectionist ‘community’ in Melbourne, or is it an individualistic pursuit?
Yes! The Projection art community has been growing every year in Melbourne, especially now with the Gertrude Street Projection festival on the calendar.
I find it interesting and always exciting working and collaborating with other projection artists. It can often lead to mysterious and unknown outcomes, which I like.

Do you  have artistic influences?
Yes. With projections, some of the things that inspire and influence me include architecture, photography and repetitive background patterns and motifs. I’m also influenced by symbols; logos; trademarks; geometrical and optical art; Chinese lattice designs; traditional Japanese stencils; silk fabric designs; textures; traditional Islamic designs and Aboriginal art.

You mentioned that you have some commissioned works? Where can we  see those?
Alumbra (Shed 14, Docklands) : 14 Kodak slide projection installation
The Lounge (Swanston Street, Melbourne) :11 Kodak slide and moving projection installation
La Di Da (Little Bourke Street, Melbourne) : 8  Kodak slide projection installation
Red Bennies (Chapel Street, South Yarra): 5 Kodak slide projection installation

^{Image: Nick Azidis}

I am sorry to see the loss of this marvellous local attraction. Aside from its spectacular views and excellent facilities, I also enjoyed the peace and tranquillity that could be found on the breezy Melbourne 360° viewing platform.

The Rialto Observation Deck was opened in 1994. Back then, Jeff Kennett was Premier, Victoria was recovering from a terrible recession and the Rialto was the nation’s tallest building.

After it’s opening, the Observation Deck immediately became a hit with locals and visitors alike. From the 55th floor of the Rialto Tower, one could see right across Melbourne’s metropolitan area as far as Mount Dandenong and across Port Phillip Bay.

However, in 2006 the Rialto was superseded in height by the Eureka Tower, which  opened an observation deck on their 88th floor; 33 floors above the Rialto’s. And whilst I felt the Eureka Skydeck was a much poorer facility, it seems many people disagreed with me.

In some ways, it came as no surprise when the Rialto’s owners announced that the facility would be closed down. They gave no particular reason for closure, but I am guessing it may have been in part because of competition from the Eureka Tower. A classy restaurant will replace the observation deck when the building is redeveloped in 2010.

ABC1′s Stateline programme has a nice video tribute to the Rialto Observation Deck, which you can view here.

This week, I visited the Rialto Observation Deck for one last time. Here are some photos of the occasion:

The book is of particular interest not only for the subject matter, but because it features one of my photographs on the cover!

Mine is a preview copy, as the book is still yet to be released. Having purchased a previous edition of this same text many years ago, I am quite confident that it will be well-received by academics and students alike. I certainly found the book to be very engaging and informative at a time when I was seeking to understand Australia’s system of parliamentary democracy.

The cover shot is one that I took on a holiday to Canberra in 2006. The photo has been one of my most successful on Flickr, with 41 comments and 37 favourites. Pearson sought to purchase a licence for the image via Photologium, and I was only too happy to supply it to them.  The image is not only featured on the cover, but the chapter pages and related marketing material.

Government, Politics, Power and Policy in Australia (ISBN 9781442508736) will soon be available at most bookshops, and is published by Pearson Education Australia. More info from the publishers here.

Inspired by the multitude of users on Flickr and a desire to try something different in photography, I decided it was time to give film a go.  I’d used film before, but stopped in 2004 when I purchased my first digital camera. In those days, film was the only option for photography and since I’d been a child I’d persisted with Kodak Gold 100. Only once did I try another film, and that was in 1996 when I sampled a roll of Ilford FP4 Plus (ISO 125).

Things have changed since the film era. Not only has digital photography revolutionised the art of photography, but the internet has come along too and for some reason there’s not half as much satisfaction in placing my photos in an album as sharing them online.

A few months ago I purchased an Epson Perfection V500 slide-scanner. The V500 functions both as a normal flatbed document scanner and photographic scanner for slides and negatives. I wanted a slide scanner so I could upload my analogue photos.

I then had to choose some film. After shopping around, I decided to settle on Fujifilm Velvia 50. Designed for vivid daylight photos, this low-speed film is apparently popular for the rich photographs it produces.

With a roll of film in hand, I pulled my Canon EOS 500N out of the cupboard, dusted it off, loaded a roll of film and went shooting.

The first realisation was that I was unable to review my photos. Sure, I knew this already, but the habit of consulting the rear of the camera to review the shot is hard to break! The second realisation was that I’d be waiting weeks to get my photos back. I took my time finishing my roll of 36 exposures on account of the cost. Because I had no real idea of how many photos would even expose properly, I wanted to use the roll of film as best I could. I finally finished the film last week and had the slides mounted at Vanbar in Carlton. When I received my box of slides, I was pleasantly surprised.

My favourite shot was one that I took in the Cowan Gallery at the State Library of Victoria. The Velvia 50 brought out the rich red of the walls and the mounting of my Tamron 11-22mm lens on the EOS 500N body caused a complimentary vignetting which framed the photo beautifully. The Epson slide-scanner reproduced the colours from the slide accurately.

I also had some nice exposures of Rupertswood Mansion in Sunbury, which I took on my visit in September:

Whilst Velvia 50 is very good outdoors, it tends to colour distort at long exposures or under fluoresent lighting, developing a green tinge. This photo of the Baillieu Library at the University of Melbourne highlights this perfectly.

Perhaps one of the more challenging parts of the whole process was not the photography, but the scanning. The Perfection V500 is a powerful piece of equipment and indeed the scanning resolution is phenomenal. Using a series of customised templates that rest on the flatbed scanner, every slide is in focus. However, I had considerable trouble preventing the software from automatically cropping my slides.

Unfortunately the scanner doesn’t come with any manual and their electronic guide was initially confusing. Each time I would specify the size of the image I wanted to scan (by selecting the area) then would set the resolution and the slide size, but it would simply revert back to its preferred size and crop it anyway.

I eventually figured out the source of the problem. For anyone using the Epson Scan software programme, here’s the simple resolution:

(1) Using the drop-down menu, choose “Professional Mode” (if you haven’t alread)

(2) Under the “Preview” button, untick the “Thumbnail” checkbox. This way, full control is maintained over the scanned images.

Now that I have the scanning sorted out, it’s now time to try out all the different films:

What I have in my camera currently: Fujifilm Velvia 100

What I have sitting in my fridge: Ilford PANF+50, Ilford Delta 3200

What I am keen to try: Fujifilm Velvia 100F, Fujifilm Provia 400F, Ilford SFX 200, Fujifilm T64, Fujifilm Sensia 100, Kodak Ektachrome E100VS and more…. there are just so many to try!

Ten months later I can report that the site has met all expectations, with several of my photos having been published since the site’s launch! I thought I’d document just some of the photos that I’d had published this year.

My first major sale since the launch of Photologium.com was to the Japanese-language edition of the Singapore Airlines inflight magazine SilverKris. The magazine’s editors were compiling a piece about Melbourne, one of Singapore Airlines’ key destinations, when the publishers sought an image that I’d taken of the “bubble” skybridge at the Melbourne Central Shopping Centre. My photo was published in the September/October 2007 edition of SilverKris which was distributed free to Singapore Airlines’ passengers in Japan.

Following SilverKris came a request from the International Dark Sky Association in the USA, who wanted a photo that I’d taken of the neon signs in Tokyo for an article about LED billboard advertising. My photo of the Ginza Neon signs was published in the Spring 2008 edition of Nightscape, which you can download for free from the IDSA website.

A few weeks later, I was approached by the National Trust of Australia (Victoria) to provide a copy of my photo of the Block Arcade in Melbourne for their publication Walking Melbourne: A Guide to the Historic and Architectural Landmarks of Central Melbourne. This book has just been published and is available from the National Trust. This is a lovely book that documents the historic buildings around Melbourne, with a photo and description about the history of each.

With the publication of Walking Melbourne came another request, this time from the Anglican Church’s media wing. The Melbourne Anglican were writing an article on the deliberations from the 2020 Summit in Canberra, which required an image of Parliament House for accompaniment. My Parliament House photo featured prominently on page 4 of the May 2008 edition of the newspaper.

Aside from publications, my work has also been used for advertising. My photograph of the Chadstone Shopping Centre recently appeared in the Emma Page Jewellery “High Achievers Programme” catalogue and another advertising commission is on the way.

Despite all these, perhaps the most significant publication is a new book from the National Museum of Australia‘s publications unit, titled Making Sense of Place (ISBN 9781 87694 451 3). The book is jointly edited by Frank Vanclay, Matthew Higgins and Adam Blackshaw and my photo appears on page 246 beside the introduction to a chapter on “affordable places”. The book contains a selection of papers presented at the Senses of Place conference held in Hobart in 2006.

It really is so rewarding to find my work published in such prominent places, and very humbling at the same time to receive payment for my work.

Photography is such an enjoyable hobby for me. With The Photologium website and my photography both flourishing at the moment, I look forward to producing more photographs that others can enjoy as much as I do.