Hey folks, long time no see. I have not posted for almost two weeks, but the reason is very simple: I’ve been super busy prepping for my first proper photo exhibition coming up in the first week of August. Some of you got the invites already, some of you are 15000 km away so getting here would be rather tricky, but never the less, so far it’s been a very exciting process.
Finding the right gallery, selecting what to put up from over 25’000 photos taken, deciding how to print (matte or gloss, border on no border) and how to frame (glass, wood, foam board, clip board, pegs, anything I could think of) etc.
2 months to go and I think I’m in a good place. TAP gallery has been booked, final 100 photos have been selected, will print majority as A4 and 20 best ones on A2, to really get the impact. Finish will be matte and presented on quality foam boards to allow for various framing options, quite happy with the decision, but if you believe I’m making a terrible mistake and you have a better suggestion, please let me know, as stuff has not been printed yet.
Forgot about the final teeny weeny thing, I finally have a hefty budget estimate of 2000 dollars, what it will cost me to put up this show, so any suggestions on potential sponsors and partners that could help cover the costs are very welcome! Have a few ideas lined up already, but the more the merrier, wish me luck and for those who will be in Sydney in August, please do come down to TAP Gallery and say Hi!
Archive for the 'Life' Category
Preparing for the exhibition
Published May 24, 2012 Photography , Life 1 CommentTags: Travel, Photography, photo, exhibition, sydney, tap gallery, 100 countries under 30
Campos experiment
Published May 11, 2012 Life 2 CommentsTags: campos, coffee, daily fix, love, mindshare, north, sydney
I am a sucker for a good cup of black gold, a.k.a. coffee, actually that was one of the three main reasons that made me decide to move to Sydney in a first place (other two being LAFHA – due to be cancelled in couple of months and the weather – got rainiest summer in decades). So one constant in my Sydney life for the last 12 months, that has not let me down, is a good cup of coffee, it has lived up to its promises to keep me alert and twitchy throughout the day.
Where I work in North Sydney, I have about 20 decent coffee places to choose from within five minute walk and I’ve tried most of them. The one I’ve zoned in recently for the last couple of months is Campos. Is it the branding, banter or the beans, not sure, but it draws me back every time. And what I’ve noticed is that I was not the only one, I can see on my floor alone there’d be around 20 people every day strolling around with the nicely branded green campos cups.
It was a shame seeing all those cups going in the bin every day, so couple of us (thanks Jo), decided to collect them and make something fun out of it. You may ask why collect empty coffee cups? But who needs why when you have caffeine. So off we went. In last couple of weeks I’ve collected around 40 or so Campos cups, mostly mine and Jo, but couple of other colleagues (thanks V, Ilana and others) pitched in as well. As my desk was starting to attract more and more confused looks I decided to create something fun out of it (to make a point) and then switch to more environmentally friendly reusable cups to get my daily fix (no worries, still with Campos).
Here are couple of the images, the title photo is just the Campos tower on my desk covering my laptop, then I did some more arty look here and finally asked my office gangster Dru to make some mess, so he did. What do you think?
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79
Published April 17, 2012 Life , Work 1 CommentTags: 1984, 50 years from now, 79. old age, future, life expectancy
As I was working on research for one of our clients, I came across a life expectancy calculator and that’s the number it came up with. Given my current lifestyle, social background, health, education, sex and income I can expect to live till tender age of 79, in other words, I have 50 years left.
Fifty years is a long time, and it made me think what I could do with all this time. And what the world will look like in 2061: how many people will live on earth (and outside), will the tigers and polar bears survive, would private cars still exist or everything will be linked up with uber efficient public transport systems, would there still be death sentences in US, will women in Saudi Arabia be able to drive cars, and most importantly, will there still be Facebook?
When you start to think in terms of decades, relevance of things changes dramatically. Will anything that you do at the moment still matter 50 years down the line, will it define who you are and where you end up in 2061. At the end I’m pretty sure whatever I can think up now, the future will prove me wrong, even Orwell’s 1984 (written in 1948) was nothing like the real 1984. Sometimes work in advertising can rise some deep philosophical questions:)
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Peek-a-boo
Published April 11, 2012 Life , Travel 1 CommentTags: byron bay, easter, gold coast, kangaroos, koalas, long weekend, Peek-a-boo, surfers paradise, Travel
Finally I got a chance to get close and personal with the most Aussie of all Aussie animals – koalas. We spent Easter weekend on the Gold Coast and Byron Bay, catching up on some beach time, family time and wildlife. Among the fun and games was a visit to wildlife sanctuary. It made me 49 dollars poorer, but it was well worth it, so much better than the zoos. I got to hang out with plenty of koalas (who were not too entertaining as they mostly sleep during daytime) and also lots of roos who were doing all kinds of weird stuff. Being used to visitors and no fences, they were blocking pretty much most of the walkways, just laying on their backs with legs up (like cats do, but just imagine 60 kg kangaroo doing it), eating from hands (like this dude), doing yoga (and this dude) etc. In short, plenty of fun.
Got some pretty sick aerial shots of Surfers Paradise beach, too. From the top of tallest building in the area – Q1. 21 dollars well spent,especially if you have a sunny day and zoom lens with you.
There’s nothing like a nice old long weekend away to recharge your batteries, hope you had a good one, too.
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Jurrah @ Redfern
Published February 16, 2012 Life , Photography 1 CommentTags: 52 suburbs, Jurrah, photo project, sydney
Meet Jurrah, my latest model and participant in the 52 suburbs project. Jurrah is badass angel if there is such a thing. Judging from tattoos covering her body I assumed she’s as mean as my uncle, but once I met her in person (ok, actually as soon as I started to discuss the shoot details) it was clear that she’s anything but my uncle.
Jurrah loves to laugh and nibble so it was really hard to get a moment when she’s not doing at least one of those, but in the end we did get couple of the serious ones as well. We were shooting in her ‘office’, well more like uber-cool pad where people come together to co-create and have fun, play ping pong, sleep in hammocks, drive around bicycles and other random things, not your typical cubicle space. Thanks Jurrah for waking up nice and early on Sunday morning and keep rocking.
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Will Samoa be the One?
Published February 8, 2012 Life , Travel Leave a CommentTags: 100 countries, last one, samoa
I still have few months to go till my 28th July 2012 deadline for the 100 countries, but given that my next trip in march will take me to 99, I only have one country/trip left to plan. So far pacific island archipelago of Samoa seems to be the one with most brownie points.
It is independent country and member of United Nations (unlike New Caledonia, Cook Islands and other pacific bad boys); it has direct flights from Sydney that take 6h each way (do not need to take lots of holidays) and do not cost a fortune (600d return), plus it actually seems like a pretty interesting destination, both culturally (Samoans are curious bunch) as well as geographically (i.e. beautiful beaches).
I’ve spent quite a few hours researching the most exiting destination for the final country, but so far nothing beats Samoa. My ideal destination for the 100th country would have been one of the many special spots I’ve not seen yet, such as hiking in Nepal, playing with Gorillas in Rwanda or getting lost in Canadian wilderness, but those all are big trips that deserve special planning and attention, not something that is worth compromising for over few holidays left before July. Have a look at my country list, and may be you have better ideas, any suggestions welcome. Over and out.
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Is there such a thing as too much kangaroo?
Published February 1, 2012 Life Leave a CommentTags: away, kangaroo, skippy, valley, weekend
No there is no dancing kangaroo pic, but i did spend last weekend in Kangaroo Valley, eating kangaroo sausages, and seeing those lazy buggers on the sides of the road. Ok, I only really saw one live, 3 ‘watch out’ signs and couple of road kills, but I was told there are plenty of them around in the valley.
The waterfall in picture above was pretty spectacular, but my highlight of the weekend away definitely was mega carp I caught with rod by the dam, it was at least 5kg. My rod could only handle 2-4kg so I was very surprised that my mega fish was calm enough to stay on the hook, go figure. Thanks to team effort from Tasha, Ben and CJ, we managed to pull it off shore and even take some snaps, will upload the evidence soon. Ough what a day during weekend away.
If the road is not challenging, it’s not worth going
Published January 24, 2012 Life , Travel 4 CommentsTags: Travel, middle east, challange, 100 countries, big trip
I’m preparing for my last big trip of 100 country challenge coming up in March, a trip that will cover 7 countries and take me to the total of 99, I can smell the finish line, but I’m not there yet.
I knew it will not be easy or cheap when approaching the end, what I did not know was that I’ll be living in Australia, upss.
In march I plan to go to Sri Lanka, several Middle East countries, such as Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and on the way back finish up in Maldives. This trip will be by far the most expensive short term (less than a month) trip I’ve ever taken, not only flights are ridiculously expensive, I have no close by countries left, and those who are left are not only far but also require visas, which unfortunately are needed for Latvians in most Middle Eastern countries, even UAE (Dubai). There was a point when I regretted not getting UK citizenship and staying proud Latvian, after having that opportunity living 5 years in London. But that weakness is over, you’ve got work with what you got.
So now my focus for next month is to get 4 tourist visas via quite complex requirements to ensure the trip runs smoothly. Wish me luck, I will definitely need it. Will keep you posted how my preparation goes. And keep traveling, world is such a beautiful place.
Can you close that tap off for God’s sake
Published November 18, 2011 Life 1 CommentTags: art exhibit, free, living in Sydney, sculptures by the sea, sydney
It’s not that easy, you see this tap is a big bugger. That’s just one of the amazing artworks exhibited as part of annual hoopla in Bondi – Sculptures by the Sea.
Went there last friday, actually this post should have gone up a week ago, but as I was writing it, I dozed off. Waking up later that night I forgot that I was mid way before shutting down and happily thought that it’s been posted, only realized it now its been sitting in the drafts for a week. And week is a long time in this real time update world of ours. Nevertheless, the sculptures are still there this week, if Sydney local go see them while you can, if far away, just look at the cute pic and have a warm feeling in the left upper arm, at least I do when I see something l like. Have a great weekend.
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Why I hate lock-in contracts?
Published September 13, 2011 Life Leave a CommentTags: contracts, de-clutter, evil, freedom, Life, lock-in
Because they’re evil. Be it 12 month gym membership, 24 month mobile phone ‘deals’ or 40 year mortgage. They play on the most basic human nature of being over-optimistic in short term, and over-pessimistic in the longer term. What it means in practical terms is that, we overestimate how often we’ll go to gym at the beginning of the year, the truth is that you will lose 6-8 weeks of gym time just due to holidays/away days or sickness, here’s your savings gone. Not even talking about giving up in three months as you’ve decided to run or swim instead. The same goes for mobile phones and other tech deals, companies want to lock you in for 24 months because they know that 3 or 6 months down the line there will be way cooler stuff on the market, and there’s no way you’d buy that phone or gadget again. It’s a great deal, but for them, not you.
I choose not to choose contracts, I choose something else. I’m never further than 30 days away for showing them (any service/product I use on a regular basis) a finger if they don’t deliver, and they can show me one as well, it’s a fair game.
You should hate them contracts, too. Not just hate them, but actually act on that, and refuse to sign another lock-in contract, ever. You say, there is no alternative, I say there’s always an alternative. There are plenty of monthly mobile or gym contracts in the market, big companies just don’t want you to know about them (e.g. have you heard about Amaysim), and that mortgage, well if it takes 40 years to pay for the house/flat, you probably can not afford it and should not get it in the first place. Buu, I’m such a party pooper.
P.S. Full disclosure – I was just reminded that another way of avoiding contracts, is to have awesome friends, who give you stuff for free, like an IPhone, you know who you are, thank you very much indeed!
