083-New year, new band

083-New year, new band, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Having had no success in locating a copy of any version of Guitar Hero for the PC, we decided to create our own band.

Where would we be without the aluminium-vase-and-Hoover-tube guitar or, come to that, the chrome brush handle. Seriously, though, when the weather warms up we plan on taking this band on tour, photographing it in many different situations!

Anyway, here's to the New Year, and me kissing my microphone with those raucous tones.

072: Playing for my baby!

Playing for my baby!, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Music and Sugar

This shot is more important for me than my other, more humorous or naughty ones, the doing of something that makes Ania happy, the continual reaffirming of our love.

I have noticed that many people producing series of what they call self-portraits are really producing self-images. What do I mean? Well, a self image uses only that person as the image, supported by a series of props - objects found or purchased with the intent on producing an image of how that person imagines him or herself.

A self portrait, on the other hand, attempts to show how that person really is, and because the emphasis is less on using props to support this vision of self, the use real objects, real dreams and real people.

Meet up with a bunch of self-imagers and you may make the mistake of believing you have joined a group of single people. meet a group of self-portraiters and you can see who is single and who is in a relationship. Reality, of course is much more complex than this, and there is nothing wrong with either form of production - but it is something worth bearing in mind when you interact with people producing what they call self-portraits.

I can see that my preference is mainly for self-portraiture, and as a consequence I aim to show my life and dreams in my images, even if any one particular image shows a situation I have never directly expereienced.

When I view work by self-imagers I am left wandering what is it that they are leaving out, what is not being shown. These images are often high-craft and popular, but they are also empty of real emotion, perhaps because they are only ghost images of a real person and their life?

032: Make it Funk

Funkin Down That Groove, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Funk? Been on nodding terms with it a long time ago in the past, but how to create me in the image of Funk? Inspiration hit in the bathroom, as it often does as you cut yourself off from all the activities you are involved in and can concentrate on your worries and planning. Or, at least, that is how it is for me. I had had some thought of mocking up a trumpet, but then, sitting there, I saw one of my wife's perfume bottles, and it almost resembled the mouthpiece of a trumpet.

From that point on it was a downhill slide as the the rest of the props fell into place: a jacket from Kazakhstan, presented to my wife by her students, and her new pair of sunglasses; one of my hats and a piece of tube that had been lying around as part of a door mechanism. Colour was thanks to an accident on Gimp, the nightclub style lights were a straight photograph of one of our halogen room lights.

The result is nothing quite like I have done before, which is pleasing, as is the fact that it both resembles funk and somethiong else at the same time.