Panoptikal*: Sidetracked: Cards!

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Sidetracked: Cards!

Recently I ordered some business cards from Moo.com, on the recommendation of fellow York Education PhD student and Tweeter Kelly Bergstrom. Academic "conference season" is coming up and I was getting tired of my old cards, which didn't show my blog or Twitter information. Each these cards will also have a photograph of mine on one side. I thought I'd share the images I chose for the new cards, just for fun (and possibly some feedback--I wasn't sure which pictures to use!).

I was seduced into ordering from this company for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they allow one to choose many different photos instead of just a single image. Normally at local copy shops, you can only choose one picture file that is used for the whole order (if you're making greeting cards, for example). Another reason was that I've found you can't easily order funky, full-colour business cards from a regular copy shop either. Since I tend not to hand out many of these cards anyway, I opted for a very simple text on the back (with email, blog and Twitter information), and space to write in other details if necessary. Then I chose ten different photos, so there will be five of each in my order of 50. I can't wait to see what they look like (they've been shipped so I'm checking the mailbox)!

As I mentioned, I had a hard time deciding which images to use, and I had to cut my selection time short, because that's the kind of activity with which I could enjoy procrastinating for many hours. I just tried to make them diverse and interesting (and as broadly appealing as possible).

Via Moscova. Milan, Italy. May 13, 2007.

Blackboard with Einstein's handwriting. Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, England. July 11, 2009.

View from the Tararua Wind Farm. Manawatu, New Zealand. February 9, 2010.

Union Station, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. November 26, 2010.

Te Rerenga Wairua (Cape Reinga). Northland, New Zealand. January 19, 2010.

Cafe, Victoria & Albert Museum. London, England. March 7, 2008.

Potato plant, window & sunset. Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. August 6, 2007.

Highway, clouds & sunlight. Near Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. April 10, 2007.

Queen Elizabeth High School. Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. 1996.

Watchers. Roof of the Duomo, Milan, Italy. May 27, 2007.

No comments:

Post a Comment

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.