A first experimental attempt at Astro-landscape photography.

One of the problems when carrying a DSLR, is that occasionally you might want to go somewhere with your camera, where you want to take the minimum amount of bag to protect it, but not have a second strap around your neck / shoulders when you take your camera out to shoot.

Another problem, is that you might go somewhere that doesn’t allow you to carry even a small bag into a venue (some art galleries, for example), but you still want your camera on a strap.

Here’s a solution that ads a Blackrapid connector, on a slider that runs along the small bag’s shoulder strap, and which, when you detach the strap from the bag and join its ends together, turns it into effectively a standalone Blackrapid camera strap.

The donor equipment

In this case, the bag is a Lowepro Toploader 70AW. This is a bag that can take a full size pro body, with a medium sized lens like a 24-70 still attached.

Two key features of this bag, the first is that the zipper that closes it – it’s one continuous length, even though there’s two zips and a buckle in the middle. That’ll be important later. The second, the shoulder strap clips on at both ends, so can be removed.

For the dropper to connect the Blackrapid connector, I’m using a Blackrapid Backpack Strap as the donor for all the parts.

This has the advantage that it comes with all the bits you need – the BR connector, the safety catch to cover the thumbscrew (not shown in this pic), and importantly, the webbing has a loop sewn on the end.

The Backpack strap has two plastic carabiners on it (the updated version only has one). One is connected to the full length of the strap, the other, to a short loop (left and right images above, respectively).

The other parts you’ll need, are a nice smooth stainless steel d-shackle, wide enough to fit the bag’s strap, but narrow enough that it won’t be able to slide over the clips, and off the end, and a safety splitring.

1. First Step, you need to cut through the eyelet of the plastic carabiner that’s connected to the long section of the strap. The sewn loop on the end of that strap is something we need to preserve.
2. You need to cut the pull tag (next to the blackrapid logo left pic) off the end of the strap, so you can unthread the full length of the strap from the cleat (right pic).
3. You need to cut the short strap and carabiner free of the cleat, so you have it as a separate piece.

Now, you’re ready to reassemble.

You’ll want to seal the cut end of the webbing with a bit of fire (I’ll leave it to you as to how to create that). The difficult part is getting it back through the cleat, which isn’t strictly designed for a double layer of webbing. It’s doable, just difficult. When you’re heat-sealing it, try to squash it flat, so it’ll feed through more easily. You could then double it over with glue / stitching so that it can’t possibly go back through.

Don’t forget to thread on the Blackrapid clip in the process.

The splitring is optional, but what it does, is prevent the pin in the shackle from turning, so that it can’t come loose.

Going back to the advantage of the Lowepro bag having a single zipper – once you connect your camera to the Blackrapid you can now put it in the bag while leaving it connected, and then close the bag behind it.

Not shown – The safety tether I use with any connection system. In this case, I attach it to the shackle, since the split ring means it isn’t capable of undoing.

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Met a friendly and photogenic adolescent duck while walking by the river.

An introduction to sculpting with digital clay in VR, using Kodon.

BØN541 v3.0 is the third in my BØN541 series, exploring the form of bonsai trees, using recycled & salvaged materials.

This work was created to be a setpiece for the 2018 staging of Rent, the musical, by Matt Ward Entertainment, at QPAC Brisbane. It is the largest work I’ve produced so far, and is constructed primarily from corrugated plastic water pipe, which is suspended using the truss and chain from my 2012 work Reconfigure.

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Demonstrating the ability to craft a narrative experience within a medium defined by the user’s ability to direct their attention wherever they like. In this case, the trail of signposts are used to build a pattern of attention capture, and the waterfall provides a controlled opportunity for user rebellion – for the viewer to not read the final sign straight away, but still have their attention directed away from the surprise.

An experiment in the potential of animation-based brushes in a VR painting application, in creating dynamic experiential locations, in which one can walk around.

VR Demo demonstrating the potential of roughing out the design for a functional space in three dimensions, at 1:1 scale.

Using Virtual Reality to design a large setpiece sculpture in three dimensions, at 1:1 scale.

If there was one thing I wish I could do with this review, it’s to show you what this gig looked like. From the back of the venue, a view over the silhouetted throng of fans, the band ripping it up in full flight amidst the colour and smoke, the giant spray-stencil banner in the background like an industrial-music altarpiece, and the repeated perpendicular structural ribs of the drum-vaulted corrugated iron roof, that formed a perfect semicircle over the crowd, catching and outlined by the light, creating such a precise repetition in linear-perspective from stage to circle, that Kubrick himself could have set the scene.

I’d LIKE to show you that.

However, after buying tickets to the gig, driving 2 hours down to Brisbane, paying for a hotel room and parking for the night, phoning the venue and leaving a message asking them to let me know if there were any problems with cameras, packing seven grand worth of pro DSLR and some of the finest wide-angle optics ever made into a compact “body & lens only” camerabag, so that I could show you this near-religious vision of industrial music performance, I discovered at the door, that despite their website’s FAQ having no mention of this rule, The Triffid is yet another venue that has fallen victim to this idiotic policy of banning “professional” cameras from entry.

So, I can’t show you that.

Half the audience can block people’s view by holding up a cellphone, to take mediocre pictures that offer greater potential pixel detail than a “pro” camera could achieve 10 years ago. They can shoot video that would have required a steadycam-harnessed cine-camera that cost more than a luxury car 5 years ago, but apparently a DSLR, which will only block the user’s own view, is such a big problem, it requires blanket bans.

Sorry Ashley, but we missed Caligula (and the beginning of Jim Bob) walking back to the hotel to leave the gear – because again, when a venue has an unadvertised “no cameras” policy, you’d think they’d have enough of a clue as to have a proper security check-in situation with lockers, not “leave your camera here at the ticket booth” – an idea from which they retreated, when I told them what it cost.

Anyway, on to the music.

Jim Bob. Hmm, how to put this… Carter USM is consistently one of my favourite bands. They hold a deep sentimental spot for me because they were a high rotation band when I first got into the goth scene, and were on a couple of the played-to-death mix tapes I had back then. They’re also one of those bands that through poor timing, I never managed to see live. What Carter did, along with other contemporaries like the Poppies, even The KLF in their stadium house monsterworks, is construct huge, rich sounds, from so many dissonant sources, that you could just be overwhelmed by the music.

Jim Bob on his own with an acoustic guitar is not that. I don’t know what I was expecting – maybe the JB doing Carter tracks with a backing band, maybe with the Poppies actually doing the backing band stuff, I’m not sure. Even Carter’s acoustic tracks, like “The Man Who Bought The World”, have more in them. He joked several times about people being disappointed by the “is that it?” of it all, so I suppose he’s heard that reaction before.

In the end, it was an interesting performance, and thinking about it from the perspective of a soloist, doing acoustic protest songs, I’d have enjoyed it more if I was better prepared for that reality. As a positive, Jim Bob’s voice is still in great form. His anecdotes and chatter had the audience, myself included, laughing, but for someone hoping to see the indoor-nuclear-detonation opening of Surfin’ USM… maybe next time?

On to PWEI, or “PWEI Mk 2.5” as Mary Byker described them.

Holy freaking hell, they’ve so got it. Epic – there’s no other way to describe them. A big band, six musicians on stage – two vocalists, live drums, everyone looking like proper rock stars… except Graham, who in his grey, short-sleeved, button up collared shirt, looks like someone’s dad got lost in the wings, and ended up on stage. It’s adorable, and he looks like he’s really enjoying performing, so madprops, because nothing could detract from just how goddamn good, and how real, crunchy and live the band sounds.

It’s hard to say much more about them – how many superlatives can you come up with? Poppies fans in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth, you’re in for a freaking treat.