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↳ lighting design & theatre projects by neil e. hobbs

2 Today!

Wednesday, 22 February, 2006 — filed under: phonecam / web

It was two years ago that I posted the first image to my moblog, Light & Dark. I’m stupidly sentimental, particularly with numerical significance, so when I noticed that I was on nine hundred and ninety-eight pictures, I knew that I’d have to wait until this second aniversary before I could post #1000.

I started off with a Sony Ericsson T610 – lovely phone with a really rugged feel – and switched a year ago to a SE K700i, with a camera resolution of 640×480 pixels! Hopefully I’ll upgrade to a K750 sometime in the next week, and those 2MP should prove satisfactory for use as a basic, but capable, camera. It almost worries me that phonecam’ery will become too much like ‘normal’ photography, and lose something of its rustic, blurry charm.

Anyway, here’s to the next two years of low-res snapping!

A scone sits on a plate with a lit candle stuck in it

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Commute

Tuesday, 1 November, 2005 — filed under: phonecam / tech

I’ve made another short film: Commute.

Filmed entirely using my Sony Ericsson K700i cameraphone (hence the fuzz-0-vision), I shot this over several weeks of commuting – duh – into Leeds, a journey which usually involved a prolonged series of buses, trains and walking. It gave me something to do.

Commute is the second of three films that I originally planned to release before the summer, of which Landscape was the first. I finally got ’round to editing it together, just before my Mac died, as an exercise to familiarise myself with iMovie 5: now that Tranquility is back (and that’s a whole other story) I’ve redux‘d it into Final Cut, mainly for better control over the titles. Anyhew, there it is.

I once again turned to CC Mixter for a soundtrack, something a little more upbeat this time: Hit It by Jim Purbrick (which also uses samples from deutscheunschuld‘s track religion) weathered the long selection procedure to provide a suitable beat to cut to.

So Commute is also released under a non-commercial sampling plus Creative Commons licence. Mash away, play by the rules, and please drop me a line if you do.

Downloaderify: Commute.mov [8MB .mov - QuickTime required]

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On Reflection

Thursday, 7 April, 2005 — filed under: phonecam / photo / web

One of my phonecam images has been selected for exhibition at the Capture show in Sydney, Australia!

Raspberry Reflection:
A deep red sunset over the Bretton campus is captured in a curtained window, the aqua blue-green of the material lending an odd tint to the scene

As well as being displayed as the Week 7 image on Capture’s site (click on the } to switch pictures), Raspberry Reflection will be physically displayed at the blank_space gallery in Sydney and is up for the People’s Choice award along with nineteen others.

A few of us from moblogUK have been selected – Joe’s has wonderful colour, texture and an otherworldlyness to it; Beth’s is a stunning piece of nonchalant self-portraiture; but I think Rich deserves to bag the prize with his lovely shot.

[detour] Actually, it makes me think about the direction my phonecam work’s been taking over the last year: my ‘serious’ work never has people in it. Trees? Yes. Sculpture? You betcha. The sky? Yep. People? Nope.

The reason I like Rich’s Shopping Is Boring is because it’s a spontaneous random moment born from a very human sense of fun, and I think other people would react to it in the same way. My landscape stuff may be quite interesting, and it’s allowed me to concentrate on framing, exposure, etc, but it lacks any feedback from the subject – a two-way interaction, really.

Snapping people with a cameraphone – even with their knowledge and permission – comes with its own baggage. And it just doesn’t seem to be my ‘thing’: I phonecam instances of interest that either quickly occur or are suddenly noticed, and the interaction with a responsive person on the other side of the lens doesn’t enthuse me so much, really. Just a different sort of approach. [/detour]

The Capture exhibition runs from April 14th to the 24th, at the blank_space gallery, Surry Hills, Sydney. Unfortunately I can’t attend, but I’ll be watching the website for coverage and the announcement of the People’s Choice result. If you happen to be in the Australia area with some time to kill, why not check it out and let me know how it went – you could even moblog it!

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Moblog Meet-Up

Saturday, 5 March, 2005 — filed under: news / phonecam / web

I’m about to bus and train over to Leeds to watch Sean dance like a pixie. It’s all in a good cause, and the perfect opportunity for a moblogUK meet-up.

Hopefully the rain will stop, but it’s going to be a fun evening whatever the weather!

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Phoenix From The Flames

Tuesday, 14 December, 2004 — filed under: news / phonecam / photo / tech / web

Sometime last night moblogUK, the thinking person’s phonecam site, unexpectedly went all wrong when the server containing photos started to eat itself. World-class good eggs Mat and Alfie have apparently been sweating buckets to get it back on its feet, but it looks like most if not all pics from Sept 22nd onwards have probably been lost.

This is a great shame, and I can certainly understand people being upset to have lost stuff, but I really think this is one of those times when the community aspect of the site will help everyone to pull together and get through it.

Hence my first post of this new dawn:

Woo and Yay! moblogUK! Back and better

Somewhat surprised to see this popping up on BoingBoing, too.

Still, looks like we’re back in business.

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Happy Ever After

Friday, 29 October, 2004 — filed under: mac / news / phonecam

I’m off dahn saaff for the weekend, to see Becks and Steve gettin’ hitched. I’m really looking forward to the next couple of days, partly because it’s my first real wedding – in a real church! – and also since I’ll get to see lots of old friends and have a lovely party.

So I’ll be gone from here, but watch my moblog for exciting updates.

Once I get back Top Girls will be only one week away, so I guess I’ll be busy. And Tranquility should be arriving, too…

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Enjoying With Mobile

Monday, 11 October, 2004 — filed under: news / phonecam / web

I’m tired from nine hours there-and-back on a coach, but spending the weekend in London was a lot of fun, and I really needed the break.

As previously reported, it was moblogUK‘s first birthday party last night, and a great time was had by all.
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Point And Shoot

Monday, 6 September, 2004 — filed under: news / phonecam / tech / tv / web

moblog.co.uk, the thinking person’s phonecam site, is running a competition which I think presents some rather interesting points about the nature of the artform.
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