I guess if you’re reading this you will have noticed that the site has finally been redesigned (well except for the blog – that’s coming. Soon…) It’s something I have wanted to do for about five years but other sites kept getting in the way. I will continually be adding more photos from the archive so check back every now and then. I’ll also try and post a little bit more often in the blog :)

Regarding the redesign I used a few flash classes which really helped with the development. So I’d like to thank the developers who made these classes available:

Tweenlite: A great tweening class.
five3D: Matthieu Badimon’s lightweight 3D engine was used for the photo transition/loading effects for the photos.
SWFAddress: This javascript/AS3 class was used for the deep linking within flash.

This is something that I’ve been working on (and using at various festivals) that I’m making available – hopefully someone else finds it useful! The Interactive Festival Timetable (or IFT) is an application for your phone intended as a replacement for the traditional paper timetable. It has heaps of features including:

SEE WHAT BAND IS CURRENTLY PLAYING
The application uses the internal phone clock to highlight the bands currently playing. You can quickly change between stages to check out all the current bands performing.

SELECT YOUR FAVOURITES
You can highlight the bands you wish to see throughout the day much the same as using a highlighter on a traditional timetable. These bands are also added to “MY TIMETABLE” so you can quickly see a running order of your day. The application saves any selections you make so you can plan your day in advance.

SET REMINDERS
The phone will vibrate 5 minutes before any band added to “MY TIMETABLE” is about to hit the stage. This reminder means you’ll never miss a band again!

ONLINE FUNCTIONALITY:
Go online and select the timetable you need. If the festival doesn’t yet have a timetable – you can easily create your own timetable by modifying the xml file.

CONVENIENCE
Backlit mobile screen enables you to read the timetable when the sun goes down.

You’ll need Flash Lite 2.1 installed on your mobile device to use the application (You can check out supported devices here – most phones currently only have flash 1.1 installed – though you may be able to update the version here). I have only tested and used the IFT on a Nokia N80 – so there are no guarantees that it will work on anything else!

For more information check out the readme.txt file or just download the application and have a play.

Download IFT (ift.zip, 25KB)

The only current timetable I’ve included is for the Sydney Laneway festival this weekend – however I’ve included both the Soundwave and Good Vibrations timetables as extra examples if you want to build your own timetable (and email them to me to include in the online list ;)).

I’ve also quickly put together an flash 8 version of the IFT which you can check out below:
EXAMPLE IFT.

The other exhibition is in the Australian embassy in Berlin – this group show celebrates music in Australia and four of my photographs are featured. Awesome!

Here’s the blurb for the above photo (I’ll have to brush up on my High School German)

Benannt nach einem Neil Young Song und ausgezeichnet mit insgesamt 14
ARIA Awards (ARIA steht für die Australian Recording Industry Association),
gelten Powderfinger als eine der erfolgreichsten australischen Bands
überhaupt. Die 1989 in Brisbane gegründete Gruppe gehört neben Silverchair
und Savage Garden zu den drei großen Vertretern des neuen australischen
Rock der 1990er Jahre. Wie viele von Neil Young inspirierte Bands werden
Powderfinger dabei gerne der Unterkategorie Grunge-Rock zugeordnet.

Here are a few snaps from the exhibition kindly sent to me by Joerg Mueller.

The embassy courtyard.

On opening night a few more of my images were projected over the audience.

Exhibition Details:

Both are free to the general public.

The View From the Pit
Date:16 Jan – 26 Feb 2007
Address:ABC Building, 700 Harris St, Ultimo, Sydney 2001

A Continent of Music
Date: 30 Jan – 16 Feb 2007
Address: Australian Embassy Berlin, Wallstr. 76-79, D-10179 Berlin

Only one week to go and I’ll be in the photo pit at the Gold Coast Big Day Out directly in front of Tool! Tool sit alongside Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Floyd and Zeppelin as one of my all time favourite bands and so I’m pretty amped about shooting them. Back in the day everything about their first full length album Undertow blew my 15 year old mind. The videos, artwork and music were all exceptional. Their latest album, 10000 Days pretty much stayed in my CD player all of last year.

I’m sure there will be some crazy restriction on photographers but fingers crossed I get the opportunity for at least one good capture. Maynard’s current mo-hawked cowboy persona looks like it will definitely be a heap of fun to shoot. In any case I’m seeing (and hopefully shooting) Tool at not only the Gold Coast Big Day Out but also the Sydney Big Day Out and both the Sydney and Melbourne sideshows.

It actually looks like a great year for tours – Slayer, Mastodon, The Pixies, Mars Volta, Isis – the list goes on and on. And here I was hoping to take it a bit easier in ’07 :)

Daniel Johns has unique fashion sense – I call it dapper hobo…

I finally photograph flickr/blogger favourite Young and Restless.

Red Riders played on the Hopetoun stage.

Clint from the Butterfly Effect confused his military periods – wearing this colonial style jacket with modern army fatigues.

Despite the weather I managed to shoot 32 bands (+ Youth Group from the crowd) – so I have plenty of sorting to do…

In celebration of me coughing up the big bucks to see an overated hack my favourite muso – I present my top Pink Floyd albums (at the moment)

1. Animals
2. Wish You Were Here
3. Dark Side of the Moon
4. Piper at the Gates of Dawn
5. Obscured By Clouds

Last Sunday I took photos for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation at their annual
Walk to Cure Diabetes. It was held in Centennial Park which was a great spot to be in on a Sunday morning – although getting up before 8am on the weekend is a bit rough!

My job was to record the event which involved taking photos of all the sponsors, signage and anything “cute”. Luckily there were heaps of the latter – my favourite place to shoot on the day was the Mobile Taronga Zoo. I got some great shots of kids interacting with all types of Australian animals including baby crocodiles, echidnas and even stick insects.

Here’s a future handbag.

This little fella was just wandering around the crowd completely unfazed by all the attention.

You can find out more about the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation at http://www.jdrf.org.au/. There’s a few more pics from the day over on my flickr page.

OMG I MUST BUY TEH XBOX 360 AND PLAY THE PHANTASY STAR UNIVERSE. IT WILL REMIND ME WHEN I WAS UNEMPLOYED AND PLAYED DREAMCAST ALL DAY. ME AND MY MATE ADAM WOULD PLAY CRAZY TAXI AND THEN WE GOT BORED WE’D FIRE UP THE 33.6KB MODEM AND PLAY PSO WITH OUR EUROPEAN COUSINS THROUGH THE POWER OF THE INTERWEB. THEN ONE DAY AT ABOUT 3AM SOME GERMAN HAXOR WHO’S AVATAR LOOKED LIKE THE EVIL GUY IN THE CRAPPY NEW PRETEND STAR WARS TRILOGY WROTE NASTY STUFF AND STOLE ALL OUR RARES AND MY NiGHTS MAG USING SOME 3L33T HAx0r14G SKILLZ. WE GOT SCARED AND NEVER PLAYED AGAIN. BUT IT WAS COOL WHEN SONIC AND KNUCKLES APPEARED IN THE LOBBY.

In order to cleanse myself I switched off the tv and pressed play on the CD player (how old skool am I?), sat back and listened to two of my favourite albums of the last few weeks – Amputechture by The Mars Volta and Blood Mountain by Mastodon. Both albums could be described as progressive (which I know is still a dirty word – although even Pitchfork is beginning to see the light) however both offer completely different listening experiences.

On Amputechture Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s guitar work really reminds me of Jimmy Page in a ‘tight but loose’ sense however the soundscapes created owe more to Pink Floyd (Animals era), Santana (Woodstock era) and even Robert Wyatt (check out Rock Bottom – one of my all time favourite albums). Despite these influences The Mars Volta are one of the few current bands that have genuinely forged a signature sound – you can immediately tell that Amputechture is a Mars Volta record.

Mastodon are quickly gaining a reputation as the new saviours of metal. Their previous release Leviathan, a concept album based loosely on Moby Dick, was my favourite album last year. Such was the quality of that release that I approached Blood Mountain with some trepidation. I needn’t have worried – the album is brutal – within the first 10 seconds of listening I was grinning ear to ear. The musicianship is top-notch – the only real downer is that the lyrics can get a little too dungeons and dragons for my liking. I’d definitely recommend the album – they put on a great live show as well – so hopefully they make it to Australia soon.

Well that’s my recommendations for this week – you’ll have to excuse me now – I just discovered the Blood and Thunder tab on the Mastodon website. Time for guitar practise!

Sunday was Parklife. I only stayed a few hours because I wanted to watch the Rugby League Grand Final.

Andy of the Midnight Juggernauts playing at Parklife. See a few more pics of bands and even more of the smashed punters here.

Monday night I took photos at a dinner for retired English football star Alan Shearer. Alan – as they say in the business – is a genuinely nice person. I don’t envy him though as it seems his entire days are now spent signing autographs and posing for photos.

As part of this job I coded a new flash gallery application as a way to easily distribute the photos taken on the night to the guests. It might be worth a look if you’re into that sort of thing (spot Les Murray!)

On a side note, each of the guests at the dinner received a copy of the new book “One Love” by photographer Levon Biss. It has many amazing football related photos taken across 6 continents. It’s also interspersed with some great football quotes from both literary luminaries and soccer legends including Albert Camus, Anthony Burgess, George Best and Pele. I think many Australians would agree with Pele’s statement that “A penalty is a cowardly way to score” after our controversial exit from this year’s World Cup!

And finally I also took photos of the Foo Fighters gig at the Sydney Opera house. Unfortunately because of those silly photo contracts I can’t post a pic here (go to triple j to see them) so instead here’s a pic I took on their last visit.