Peter Currie

PHOT_398

[peterdcurrie]

A few from Big World, Small Screens that didn’t make the sequence. Looking back, I regret not adding all three. 

[peterdcurrie]

I rarely set out and actually find exactly what I want in an image (not to mention in the oversaturated image wasteland of Google Street View), but I’m not certain this will fit in the final sequence. This reminds me of a quote from a podcast on photography called, A Small Voice, featuring Mark Power. Power comments on what he describes as the, “Mount Everest Picture”, in regard to sequencing and your most difficult image to make. “You’ve had to scale Mount Everest to get this picture with one leg, and so on. And you cling this image, it was difficult, but no one cares about it. It doesn’t fit and you have to get rid of it.” - This may be a harsh reality, but I think that sort of criticism is key to develop a body of work and sometimes you need to “kill off” your “Mount Everest Picture” and keep moving. Here we find ourselves on the Oakland side of The Bay Area, with a “strong image” in regard to my theme and I had on my list (family takes selfie), and likely it doesn’t work. Time to move on...

[peterdcurrie]

Confusion in Vatican City.  Repetitive subjects and broken timelines populate Google Street View and user submitted 360 degree panorama images pretty often, naturally I’ve encountered it frequently while clicking around, as seen here.

[peterdcurrie]

Investigating tourist locations have had me thinking about perspective. My narrow perspective VIA Google Street View and the overall perspective of how we view these “famous” destinations. Here is the Taj Mahal two times. The first image is a crowded view from the Darwaza-i-rauza, or the “Great Gate” at the entrance of the Taj Mahal. The second image is the Taj Mahal from the Mehtab Bagh, or the “Moonlight Garden”, located north of the Yamuna River. This shift in perspective allows us as viewers or tourist to experience a place in a totally different mode. Exploring these perspectives doesn’t exactly have a lot to do with my theme, but is important in finding the optimal vantage point in the restricted, virtual world of Google Street View/tourist destinations. 

[peterdcurrie]

Tourism at Stonehenge. Unedited selections. I’m curious how all these ideas relate. Surveillance technology like Google Street View and the rapid increase of cellphone technology paired with social media and its ultimate impact on the real world. This term I want to investigate how tourism and photography can relate in the age of the iPhone. I’ll be using Google Street View to access these tourist locations, then using Google Earth to download high res. files to work with in Photoshop. Hopefully the work will build out as a collection of images or even collage’s depicting the way we view and behave at these “famous” destinations. Also in the presence of Google Street View, there seems to be an overwhelming urge to perform for its camera, so that may also be introduced to the work.

[peterdcurrie]

Here’s a selection of cellphone images from roughly January 2010 to February 2011. I chose this phone because I liked the idea of having a physical button (seen in the lower right hand corner of the iPhone and Samsung Instinct image) when taking photos (also I will admit, I couldn’t afford the iPhone 2G). It never occurred to me at the time to keep the camera vertical, because the button was on the side. The idea of a “story” didn't exist. These images were originally uploaded to Facebook around the same time, then later removed, as I moved on from the Facebook platform.

It’s interesting to look back on these very low resolution, often blurry images and try to compare them to todays technology and also think about how social media platforms impact the way we make images on a cellphone. The introduction of a vertical “story” in a virtual world like Instagram, forces a real world reaction when making cellphone images.

[peterdcurrie]

I’m pictured here on Google Street View in June of 2009 - red backpack and skateboard. At the time, I had a hand-me-down, red Motorola KRZR cell phone in my right pocket. That was over 11 years ago and this image can still be seen today. I’m curious how surveillance technology has slowly creeped into our lives (and pockets) over roughly the last 10 years, especially with the introduction of the iPhone. How does all of this relate to photography, and how photography functions on and off the internet.

[peterdcurrie]

On the internet, clickbait is king. Here is a single screenshot, unedited of the clickbait nonsense living at the bottom of an article. The savoury, irresistible click through - what do they look like now, what are those foods “to avoid in my late 20′s”, what is the “one trick Montreal casinos hate” - the list goes on and on...

[peterdcurrie]

A chaotic scene. I managed to navigate getting images within my webcam feed using a program called, ManyCams. In the bottom left, I will have looped video (hopefully) playing through my stream, as well as a scroll bar on the top with text. It’s a serious work in progress. Much more to come very, very soon...