How to fake a war

Get a tub of plastic soldiers. Set up a war zone with dirt from your vege patch and a few bits of leaves, lichen and sticks etc. Choose the unlucky man to get hit and stand him in front of the guy with the rifle. Add a few coloured sprinkles, stick them on to your soldiers with a bit of spit (hey these guys are at war, they can handle a bit of spit). Get down and low with the camera. Shoot at f16 to get some depth. Bit of tweaking in photoshop with hue/saturation to give it that old time feel. Then spend hours with the spatter filter making those sprinkles look like runny paint. Wacko, you have yourself a fake paint ball war. Throw away the sprinkles. 

You old bag

Here's an idea given to me by Gill Carlsson, constructing a book out of old paper bags. On the day I made this I could only find 4 paper bags, so I filled the pages with greeting cards, tissue paper all the way from Las Vegas, transparencies and a multitude of other found papers. There's even a leaf skeleton in there to discover amongst the pages. A bit of a challenge to line the papers up for stitching, one night at the kitchen table with a glass of wine, but it came together and took on a life of it's own. I called it 'Old Bag', mean't to be a term of endearment.

Old Bag: paper bags, assorted found papers, dried leaf, transparency. Coptic bound. Unique.

Busy making books...

I am really enjoying creating books lately, using lots of ideas (some plagarised) and trying out different techniques. I will take some time over the next few days to show some of my latest creations. Some are for sale, and will be at the Kowhai Festival in Warkworth, at the Masonic hall. 

Charm it crazy: handmade paste paper, caterpillar stitch, coptic bound. Unique.

This notebook is dedicated to Sam Hunt, my fave poet of all time. This is one of his quotes. I attempted the caterpillar stitch for the first time and am happy with the outcome. I think I might keep this book for myself, so many of my books get given away which is OK but I'm kinda attached to this one.

Feel the steam

It's a buzz standing by the edge of this pool, feeling the steam on your face and knowing that just a metre in front of you is a cauldron with 50,000 cubic metres of boiling geothermal water. Magic!

Just like Arnie says...I'm Back

A whole month going cold-turkey without a camera is pretty hard, I felt deprived not only of the equipment but the ability to shoot... dreadful. But hey, I have a new baby and nothing can stop me now.