Panoptikal*: Reading Room (March 10, 2008)

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Reading Room (March 10, 2008)

This picture reminds me of a phone call I got the other day from a telemarketer, trying to sell me a membership to the Royal Ontario Museum. First, actually, he tried to convince me to see the new exhibit coming to the ROM, a Chinese sculpted Terracotta Army. Thinking quickly, I replied that I'd already seen the exhibit back in 2008, at the British Museum. He was thrown off by that, but continued his sales spiel (as I expected) with the membership pitch. I told him it was far beyond my budget (the reason they called is that they probably found out I am a member of the Art Gallery of Ontario, which only cost me $40 for the year).

What I didn't add was how much of a colossal rip-off I believe it to be, especially considering the horrible hash-job they did on hiring a famous architect to create an ugly appendage for the ROM building. Not only is the collection not worth the price, but the architecture is practically offensive and already looks like something designed to look "futuristic" in 1983.

For the record, while I was indeed at the British Museum (where entry is free) in March 2008, I didn't go in to see the exhibit--it wasn't my interest in seeing the Reading Room. I wanted to see where Marx had worked, and when I found it would cost an extra ten pounds to go in, I decided not to (I was on a limited budget). Plenty of time to go back and see it, now that the Chinese pottery army has moved on.

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More about...

The pictures I post here were taken between 1994 and today. There are some breaks during that period, generally because I had no working camera, or because I processed many negatives and made few prints (generally this is the case for 1994 to 2000 or so). I also have many prints from that time that have not yet been digitised.

The reason I call this a "photojournal" is that I tend to document my life with images, where possible, rather than words. I find it much easier to remember moments, and then events, when I have some kind of picture with which I can associate them. This is probably why I've always taken pictures when I could--even when there was "nothing" to photograph--and why I have such a difficult time keeping up a written diary or journal of any sort.

Technicalities

I've used a number of cameras over the past 15 years or so. The bulk of these were SLR, manual or semi-automatic, and of course non-digital (35mm film) cameras (photos shot from 1994 to 2004, roughly), though for a period I used both (low-quality) digital and film (around 2002-2003).

I first used a fully manual camera when I was 14, which was borrowed; the first SLR that I owned was a Vivitar, which rapidly deteriorated. It was followed by a Pentax, and after that, the Minolta XD-11 that I have used for film ever since. I use it with a 35mm or a 28-70mm lens with telephoto and macro. In addition to these, I also used Mamiya 220 and 330 medium-format (120 film) cameras while at NSCAD in 1997-8, and very occasionally, I used an old Agfa range-finder (from roughly the 1940s) which produced 6x9cm negatives on 120 film.

The first digital camera I used would probably have been in 2002, and I used it periodically over about a year (it was borrowed). In 2004-05 I again used a digital camera (also borrowed; specs not available); I stopped shooting on film beyond 2004 because of the expense. Finally in October 2006 I bought a Sony CyberShot, 7.2 megapixels, a very small camera (not an SLR) that I used for almost 4 years before replacing it with a CyberShot DSC-TX5, in July 2010. This camera now travels with me almost everywhere and is the only camera I use regularly.