I promised myself that I’d go back to my old blogging ways.. I started to then I sorta stopped. Not that I didn’t want to but I just got crazy. In addition to my usual work load (weddings, portraits, albums, wrangling a 2 1/2 year old who hasn’t grasped the concept of “quiet self play time” and the other jobs associated with being the primary carer “wash, hunt, gather”) I delivered a talk for the AIPP Vic Division and decided to do a little project, turned into little project that took me away for many nights to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
The talk was great. It’s been a while since I’ve stood up in front of people and told them things that I think they would find interesting. It was in a Decathlon format. 10 photographers, 10 slides, 10 minutes. At the 10 minute mark you are cut off. So delivering 10 points in 10 minutes is a little harder than you would think. I prepared a great talk, then cut It down, then cut it down, then changed it completely, then cut it down and then presented it.
I decided to theme my talk around Dumb things. It was inspired by Paul Kelly’s song, just to try get some more Melbourne street cred. I’m really good at doing dumb things and thought I’d share them. Some good dumb things and some bad dumb things. So the talk was great, it was being recorded and will be released sometime on the AIPP education library. Tune into see how many times I nearly swear!
Being such a short talk I ended up only talking for about a quarter of the info on each of the slides, so I’m working on a little e-book, or series of articles that go into depth of my points. I’ve included my slides below so you can see the basics, I’m really happy with my slides. I’ve come a long way since the standard Uni presentation of yellow type on blue background (we were highly recommended to do it that way.. yuck)
On the Comedy Festival project side I can hear you saying now “Wow, did you see heaps of shows? Was it awesome?” And I can safely say that I saw a total of 2 shows and heard another one. One show was planned, one was right place right time and I was hiding backstage at the one I heard, trapped by an audience but I could peek through the curtain to see a foot on the stage… so I probably way 10% of that one.
The basic premise of the project is “what lies behind the curtain”. When you see a live show there is often a curtain or set that people stand in front of from experience I know that there are some great backstage rooms and also some really really crappy ones. I documented performers pre or post show in these spaces. I had a great amount of support from comedians I’ve known for years and also ones I met this year. In total there are 32 (or 33) performers/groups that I documented in 7 nights. Stay Tuned for more about this project, I’m excited about the images and am looking for the best way to present them.
Thanks again for hanging in for a rambling blog post, there will be more!
Bat
Ps, I’m tweeting my daddy life as @homedadbat if you want to follow… there will be mentions of snot and poo guaranteed!
PPs, I did get your email and I’ll be onto it very soon, did I mention you are awesome?
