I find it interesting that no matter how many of the projects I'm involved in end, I still find myself responding to 'How are you?' with 'Busy.'

But at the moment, it's good-busy. I've had some fantastic opportunities leap into my path recently, most of them coming from a friend of mine called Penelope. I met her through her now-boyfriend, while shooting a show she was in, and she's been one of the best things to happen to my career. Plus, she's awesome. She's the creative director of a theatre company called Barking Spider Visual Theatre, and it's through her and BSVT that I've recently photographed, researched and created dioramas for a theatre project in Wangaratta (paid), started a photographic relationship with a cool little classical music group (paid), become the company secretary for the company, got a gig teching a show in Feb (paid) and started remembering how to edit footage (paid). All of these things are awesome, because I have $12.50 in the bank account at the moment. And god, in this world, it's so fucking hard to get paid work in the arts industry, so the fact that I'm getting money for doing things that excite me is just wonderful.

I finish my undergraduate degree (Arts, majoring in International Studies...I dropped Law because I realised that I hated it. Best decision I've made in some time) this semester, and am thinking of going on to Honours. I'm going to be working on a show at La Mama for Midsumma ('Writing Angus', written and directed by Daniel Lammin). I've also applied for an artist's residency; hoping to hear back about that soon.

...All of which is a roundabout way of saying that I'll get back to shooting in the near future...once I've edited my current backlog of around 1500 images. Bloody theatre shows. Haha.

S

So, life.

I am watching 'Secretary' with ~lucyhotchin as I type this, which is distracting me, because Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader are the greatest thing ever.

As usual, life has been getting in the way of my shooting things. I've just come out of a fairly horrific 15 days of law exams. My extremely sustainable study technique tended to be to avoid going to classes during semester, and then madly cramming in the four/three/two days prior to each exam.

This was made rather more difficult by the fact that I joined the swine flu army three days before my Corporations Law exam, and so was entertainingly incapable of doing anything at all except shiver and be pathetic. Also, my asthma went nuts because of the flu, and I was berated by the uni nurse for taking pretty much 6 months' worth of Ventolin in one night, rather than going to the hospital. Rock and roll.

But fear not, I'm doing a shoot on Saturday with a whole group of actors from uni. It should be awesome - I've got the theatre on campus booked for the day, so I'll be able to set up a fairly intense lighting rig. I find that being close friends with the theatre technical manager can come in rather handy sometimes... Stay tuned for results.

Over and out.

(And the journal title is what is written on the Tamiflu boxes, which partly amused and partly concerned me...)

I had a very eventful Saturday last week.

I went out for dinner with my friend Penelope to a marvellous pizza place in Northcote called "Pizza Meine Liebe", which did the best pizza I've ever had. And we sat down, and at the table next to us was a bearded man, who smiled at me when I sat down.

And then he and his friends left, and I turned to Pen, and said 'I could have SWORN that was Bill Henson.' To which she replied 'Oh, it most likely was. He lives around the corner from here.'

Yes, kids. I sat next to Bill Fucking Henson and he smiled at me. It was pretty much the best.

And then I was driving her to the Malthouse, and there was an incident involving my car and another car and Hoddle Street...which was pretty much not the best at all. Everyone was fine, but as usual my car sustained pretty much no damage (it's a tank masquerading as a Volvo, and I broke an indicator casing and dinged the front bumper), while the entire right side of her car was fucked.

So then I had to pay the RACV $900 with the $11 I had in my bank account. I had to break my term deposit and lose interest, and the bank got angry at me. But then I had to open a new term deposit, so I got a showbag. Whoo.

Other things that cost too much money include rent, food and having to pay back friends.

In other news, the photos for the Melbourne Fashion Week are fucking awesome:



Be still, my beating heart.

Photo-wise, I did some promo images for a show in early 2008 which ended up at the Malthouse Theatre this year, so I had a photo blown up to around 2m wide in their foyer, which was tres exciting, although because I was shooting on *Halohid's camera at the time in v. low light, it's as grainy as fuck, and they wouldn't let me re-shoot it.

And that is that.

This weekend, are going on a secret trip. Don't ask, I don't want to have to hunt you down, break your kneecaps and feed your earlobes to a Doberman.

But the people we're taking are making me very excited:

1. . Natch.

2. .

3.

4. Luc Favre, who you may remember from our Aradale shoots (he's the boy in green here.

5. and 6. Jason Lehane and Penelope Bartlau. These two are making me very, very, very excited and a little bit scared. You may remember them from these photos. I've known Jason since 2006 - he's the Technical Manager at the Student Theatre at my uni, as well as being a fabulous director, actor, techie, and extremely wise, enigmatic person. I met Pen through him late last year, when I came to shoot those rehearsal shots. The two of them have been working together on that piece of theatre, called 'Match', which was performed as a ten minute piece in Short and Sweet (a short play festival in Melbourne) last year, and they're currently developing it into a full-length show. Penelope joins Jason in being fabulously intelligent, and is one of the most charismatic, fascinating and spontaneous people I've met. Both of them, and Pen in particular, have worked extensively with puppetry, and we'll be using some of that in the shoots this weekend, as well as working with some ephemeral, liminal concepts inspired by the works of Edward Gorey, Jan Svankmajer and the Brothers Quay. Expect creepy. Expect awesome.

*Halohid and I speak a lot about how working with actors is far superior to working with models, because they're totally happy to express themselves totally, and to improvise around a concept - we do a lot of work where we say 'Okay, so you guys meet in a tunnel, have a break-up and then you stab her. Okay, go', which will end up being a 20 minute scene. I like the voyeur-istic nature of that way of working (I think that's also why I really like shooting theatre). And where a model is aware of how to pose their body (well, good ones, anyway), actors have a way of expressing emotion with less embarrassment than your normal person, which makes them wonderful to work with. And Jason and Penelope are two of the most fabulously riveting people I know, and are wonderful performers, so I'm going to spend a lot of time squeaking with excitement this weekend, methinks.

We had a meeting yesterday about the shoot, and now I'm a bit terrified - Pen especially is very professional and hates time wasting, and I'm one of the most vague people around, so I'm going to be pretty hard pressed to make sure people are occupied all the time. But *Halohid will be shooting as well, which'll be awesome. She's got some bitchin' concepts.

So. Keep an eye on here, *Halohid's DA and the *TeamHyphenPants one early in the week. Get excited, kids. I know I am.

So last week, I had a break from Facebook.

...because I got banned.

I uploaded four photos from a performance art piece in the city organised by Darren Valentine and performed by the very, very pregnant Sandra D'Urso. These photos are here:


A few days later, I attempted to log into Facebook, only to find a note saying 'Your account has been disabled.'

What an odd coincidence, I thought. I then proceeded to get pretty grumpy.

Now, being a law student (albeit a fairly slack one), I went straight to the rules, to see what I had apparently violated.

The Facebook Terms of Use state that you're not allowed to ''upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available any content that we deem to be harmful, threatening, unlawful, defamatory, infringing, abusive, inflammatory, harassing, vulgar, obscene, fraudulent, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.'

The Facebook Code of Conduct more specifically prohibits 'obscene, pornographic, or sexually
explicit photos, as well as any photos that depict graphic violence.'

Okay. So. The fact that I was kicked off means that:

a) Someone reported me (let's not remain on that point for too long, but seriously, what possibly motivated someone to be so affronted by those photos to report me?)

b) Facebook sussed out the situation, and decided that those photos were obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit.

Let's think about that for a moment. I have had reason to consider the art/porn debate before - after all, I shoot nudes occasionally, and half the people I watch on DeviantArt shoot nudes pretty much exclusively. I understand that some people aren't much of a fan of nudity. That's totally fine.

To me, porn is a photo where your first response is 'Oh hey. Sex', rather than 'Oh my god, that lighting is amazing/that set-up is so evocative/whatever.' Art, to me, is something that evokes an emotion, which is the great thing about nudity in photos - it's so inherently evocative. Porn photos are the ones that make me roll my eyes and say 'Oh, look, a naked chick touching herself lit with shit flash. Well done you.' And believe me, once someone has favourited a picture of you on Flickr, and you've clicked through to their profile to find reams of photos of their penis over a printed photo of a naked women, which is now covered in semen, you start differentiating.

So back to Sandra and the balloons. She's not doing anything even faintly sexual. You can't see any genitals. And not to self-aggrandise, but they're not terrible photos. I'm not saying that good photographers can't shoot porn, but spending five grand on equipment tends to make you want to do something worthwhile with it.

The idea, then, that those photos are pornographic, sexually explicit or obscene is one that I find pretty damn offensive. The inference seems to be that nudity, and notably pregnancy, is prima facie pornography. Perhaps I've been at uni for too long, but I really can't see how anyone can justify that viewpoint.

Another issue. To be kicked off without a warning, you need not only have violated the Facebook terms, you need to have done so in a "particularly egregious" manner. I mean, what? So not only are those photos porn, they're SERIOUS PORN, yo.

Sigh.

Anyway, I wrote a Strongly Worded Letter to Facebook (I do enjoy a good strongly worded letter), stating pretty much the above, demanding to know how they could justify banning my work on grounds of obscenity, and as of yesterday, they reinstated my account.

The Facebook support team sent me an email saying:

'Hi Sarah,

A photo that you uploaded has been removed for violating Facebook's Terms of Use. Photos containing drug use, nudity, or other graphic or sexually suggestive content are not allowed, nor are photos that depict violence or that attack an individual or group. Unfortunately, for technical reasons, we are unable to provide further information about the removed photo.

In order to prevent this from happening in the future, please refrain from posting photos of this kind and remove any that still exist on the site. For more information on conduct prohibited by Facebook, please read our Terms of Use, which can be accessed by clicking on the "terms" link at the bottom of any Facebook page.

Thanks for your understanding,

Roy
User Operations
Facebook'

I wish to point out that the part about nudity and drug things, etc, being not allowed isn't in their Terms, and hence I'm pretty sure they can't prima facie ban them, because obscenity, etc are subjective criteria.

And yes, I know I was dumb for posting them in the first place, but I honestly never gave it a second thought. They removed photos 1, 2 and 4 (interestingly leaving 3...I guess nipples are okay, but shadowed pelvic regions aren't...), and I've taken down 3. So yes. In future, if you want n00ds, you'll have to get em here.

And that is that. Anyhoo, I'm back now, after my brief stint as a censored pornographer. I'm so, like, hardcore.

S