CHANGE OF BLOG ADDRESS

This blog has now moved to

johnmcdermottphotography.tumblr.com/

A NORMAL CAR

Conversation overheard through the fence as a couple walk by.

Her "No! All I want is a normal car. Four doors and a boot. Just a normal car!"

PAPAMOA. NEW YEARS DAY

“A thunderstorm is God's way of saying you spend too much time in front of the computer”

      Storm front. Papamoa. New Zealand. 1.1. 2014

I do not know who wrote the quote above. I do however, see the irony, and will now leave the computer alone for a while.

NEITHER THEN NOR THERE

"Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. " 

Anna Quindlen

 

 No deadline, no client, no editor, no designer and no pressure to sell. Online publishing will change everything. The door or the floodgates are open to the personal and the eccentric.  As with digital photography and HDV there will suddenly be a sea of crap out there and in amongst it all will be some gems.

 Neither Then Nor There was photographed within approximately a mile of where I live. Often I was walking the dog. It is not particularly, or perhaps at all, about place in a geographical sense and is not intended to please anyone at all. It is what it is and a part of it is still ahead or apart from my thinking and some of it is totally clear. It is best viewed the way it was photographed and that was without any expectations, intentions or agendas.

neither then nor there by John McDermott |

From Neither Then Nor There

SPLIT SECONDS

"The little things? The little moments? They aren't little." - Jon Kabat-Zinn

Craig Bary and Sarah Foster-Sproull. The New Zealand Dance Company project.

My first project on the performing arts started around the mid 1990s and resulted in the book Truth by Illusion. Although neither a dancer nor an actor, I found myself immediately at home working among people who, like myself, were committed to work they loved. People who do what they do simply because they have to.

Truth by Illusion published in 1999.

And so here I am more than ten years later working with the newly formed New Zealand Dance Company, once again with people motivated primarily by their individual and collective need to do it and once again at home among the dedication to, and love for, the work.  

After five weeks of rehearsals and a short, stunning season The New Zealand Dance Company applied for and received a major grant from Creative New Zealand. This means there is now a basis for a full time contemporary dance company in New Zealand. A road for choreographers and dancers that does not lead out of New Zealand by necessity. 

(The New Zealand Dance Company has only had its grant application approved in the past few weeks and so does not as yet have a website I will include a link on this post as soon as it does).

1/500th second in the life of Alex Leonhartsberger rehearsing with the New Zealand Dance Company .

Michael Parmenter, Justin Haiu and Craig Bary. The New Zealand Dance Company project.

Sarah Foster-Sproull, Craig Bary. The New Zealand Dance Company project.

Justin Haiu. The New Zealand Dance Company project.

Justin Haiu and Craig Bary. The New Zealand Dance Company project.

• Ursula Robb. The New Zealand Dance Company project.

WARM BLACK ?

Carl Malany, East Coast from Heartland

If you are expecting words strung like coloured lights down a wet street at night there is little solace here. There are however some images and perhaps now and then a word or two from myself and others who say it better.
 And so why warm black? Because it is rich. Because it has substance. Because Bill Cosby said "It isn't a matter of black is beautiful as much as it is white is not all that's beautiful." Because it reminds me of the colour of a safe lit darkroom. Because "warm black blog" rolls off the tongue. Because I have colour photographs I like of warm black New Zealand skies. Because I have black and white photographs I like that have warm black shadows. Because warm black shadows create light as much as light creates warm black shadows.  Because Groucho Marx said "A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere." Because no one else has used this name for their blog.  Because it is as full as white is empty. Because it is not one thing.

Omarama from Heartland