photography - Neal Romanek

Shepperton 3D!!!

January 28th, 2008

It really is a long walk from Shepperton rail station to the Shepperton studio lot. And a dangerous one too, apparently (see above street sign).

I went out there on Saturday morning to see Axis Films’ 3D production / post / exhibition demonstrations.

What I learned about 3D:

- If you want to sound like the Smartest Guy In The Room, you say “stereoscopic”, not “3D”.

- 8% of the population, for various reasons, are unable to properly apprehend stereoscopic movies.

- Stereoscopic movies are really neat.

- Stereoscopic movies give me a headache.

100 Strangers

January 21st, 2008

Despite heaps of obligations, I have embarked upon …

I think this may be the Signature Phrase of my 2008.

“Despite heaps of obligations, I have embarked upon” … the 100 Strangers Project.

100 Strangers is a photography challenge in which one is tasked to photograph 100 people one has never met before. The key bit is that the photographer must interact with the subject, speak to them, interact with them, and – horrors! – actually ask the subject if they are willing to be photographed.

I enjoy taking candid shots, my subjects blissfully unaware that their providing scraps for my creative meat grinder. Greeting someone, explaining that you’re a photographer, and then asking if you can take – and post – their picture … much, much harder than I would have thought. You see, they might say “no”. And when people say “no” to me, I take it much, much harder than any mature adult ought to.

But I do love people. I don’t like them all the time, but I do find them strange and marvellous and fascinating.

Check back over the next year and see my stranger roster grow at my Flickr page.

And go to 100Strangers.com to see / learn more.

Blue Triptych

January 19th, 2008

Lander

January 6th, 2008

Happy New Year

January 1st, 2008

This old, old man in Walpole Park, here in Ealing, London, is one of my favorite trees. I shot the pic with a wide lens, so the length of his whale-long limb, supported by a steel crutch, is exaggerated – but only slightly.

While Europe and Europeans burned in the last century, this tree was well into middle age, quietly alive in this very spot, lifting tons of water out of the earth, exhaling tons of oxygen into the air.

Trees are meant to grow old.

Desperately Seeking Kent

December 6th, 2007

Last month I took a trip to Canterbury to haunt the University of Kent with some friends – fellow alumni of that windswept institution. From the train, at Rochester and Faversham, and Sittingbourne and Gillingham, many sights can be seen.

We spend a lot of time waiting, we spend a lot of time between here and there.

Dark Waters

December 3rd, 2007

Victoria Pan

November 23rd, 2007

Victoria Pan, the luxury city-fortress in “Carnival Earth”, was originally imagined to be somewhere in the middle of the North American continent – near the Great Lakes region perhaps.

But why not here – at Zero Longitude?