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Munro Bagging – Stob Binnein

There is always a strange mix of trepidation and excitement before attempting to bag a munro. Unlike in some other countries, there is usually no ski lift to take you to near the top. Although, it must be said, the mountains are a little lower than, say, the Swiss Alps. Still, for a middle aged, unfit male, the thought of ascending 2000 metres can be a little daunting.

Stob Binnein is a mountain in the southern Highlands of Scotland. It is attached to Ben More, and so often, hikers will ascend both peaks. However, we were approaching from the South, a steeper, and more difficult ascent, but chosen as we could ignore Ben More. One peak was going to be enough I thought, and I was right. 

I made the ascent with a fitter, more sprightly friend, and 15 mins in, he was already waiting for me. This was going to be tough. I don’t remember much for the next hour, hour and a half, as it was all up steep incline. But finally the trail flattened out a bit, and my legs took on a renewed vigour. The landscape also changed at this point, with the grass taking on a red to mauve colouration. It was quite beautiful, and also motivating. Eventually we were taken to a crest where over the side, we could see the splendour of Loch Voil. A rewarding sight, and we stopped for a number of photos. This is what munro bagging was all about.

Further on, and we were treated to an intimidating view. The mountain began to rise once more, disappearing into billowing mist. The weather was turning up here, and I felt privileged to experience a moment that only the mountain can bring; a feeling of isolation; transportation to a more primitive time; vulnerability mixed with awe. Truly, there is nothing else like it. 

The next passage across the ridge was so pleasurable that I forgot about the incline. We peered down into valleys below, where the height was so great that rivulets and lochans formed abstract patterns on the landscape.

It was then time for the peak. The mist was great, so much so that it was impossible to see more than 5-10 metres into the distance. Mysterious shapes appeared in front, revealing themselves to be hard rock formations, springing out from the mountain. This last stretch was almost too much for me. My energy supply was depleted. However, I managed to wearily summit. Due to the mist, there was no view to speak of, but I was satisfied. I ate my lunch in silence, drained of speech as well.

The drama did not finish there though. Returning back the way we came, we lost the trail. An argument arose, probably due to our fragile states, and we made the mistake of choosing to split up. I went my way, my friend, his. My path eventually took me to a fantastic spectacle that we hadn’t seen on the way in, a tiny lochan on the mountain, with red reeds sprouting out of the surface. It was truly beautiful, hidden away off the trail, and I felt that I was seeing something that perhaps most missed, whether due to the trail being elsewhere, or indeed due to the season being wrong and missing those red reeds. It was a special moment.

My friend and I eventually reconvened, and we made our way to the car park, ready to head home, our need for high vistas satiated, until another day.

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Searching for God in the Machine

“We’re creating God,” an AI engineer working on large language models told Vanity Fair in September. “We’re creating conscious machines.”

This isn’t a quote in isolation. Elon Musk has also has referred to his belief that Larry Page seeks to create a digital god. In fact, the words AI and God are being used increasingly together, so much so that we may ask, “Do engineers really believe they are building God in the Machine?”

Certainly, AI seems to be surpassing our wildest imagination in terms of what it can do. It is a technological leap of astronomical proportions. Proponents say that we are on an upward trajectory of exponential proportions.

But why do we have to equate it to God? If AI tells us anything, it is the unimaginable  distance from God to humans. If a tool can surpass a human so thoroughly in the facet of processing, then how far beyond is God himself?  Infinitely so…

Facets, though, are important. The Christian God is deemed to be perfect in all facets, such that he is infinite and One, rather than a representation of finite sets. What other facets does AI really possess other than processing power? Is it even capable of the limited love that a pet gives?

We need, then, to guard against a shallow search for God. God has already, or is in the process of, giving us what we need to approach him.

So what is the shallow search? 

We should not be searching for a different god because we don’t want to, or are afraid of, committing to a pre-defined set of moral requirements. Is this what is causing the search for a god in AI? The truth is, we all find rules and behavioral adaptations hard, but follow and adapt we must! The path to God is narrow, and we are the ones who need to change. The wish to create a god that reflects humanity, rather than humanity adapting to reflect God, is an inversion.

What, then, can one do regarding this? Well, from my perspective, don’t get too drawn into the digital, virtual world that is being created. Prize physical relationships with physical people, and work on building this up instead.

Life is not about creating distance between each other, but about drawing closer whilst we model ourselves on the Christian God who has already revealed himself to us through the Son, Jesus Christ.

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Swiss Post Free Postcard

I applied for the SwissPost free postcard using their app. I wanted to see what this service could do, so I sent one to myself.

As you can see, the service is pretty good. Okay, so the image doesn’t appear to have been adjusted for print (although, obviously, I can’t confirm this), so the image is a little dark for an indoor setting (although the postman might have got a better view!). But overall, I am super impressed. My message is written on the back too (to myself).

For a free post card, of which you get one per week, you really can’t go wrong. Of course, you can also choose to pay to send postcards too, including internationally. So, there is really is no excuse for not sending that postcard to your mum, now!

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Limited Edition ACEO cards

I have received my limited edition ACEO cards from Printolino in Switzerland (I hear that they are the best). I ordered single copies of nine of my images, and I am now thinking about selling the prints.

Initially, I felt that 100 would be a good edition number, but now I am coming to the realization that an signed limited edition of 1 is more applicable to the space of cards. ACEO cards are highly collectable, and have evolved from the unique Artist Trading Cards (ATCs). As such, it feels more right that these prints become true originals.

The history of photography limited editions really started in the mid 1970s. Prior to the seventies, there were not many galleries dedicated to photography.

Now, however, photography is a valued art form, with many extremely high sales. By example, Le Violin d’Ingre by Man Ray, fetched 12,400,000 at Christie’s New York.

ACEOs are a relatively new concept, but they can still fetch some very high prices. However, making an ACEO a limited edition of 1 is a little scary. They are so small, that you have to hope that they are going to a home that will care deeply for them and store them properly. But it is really nice for collectors to have only one in existence.

Despite the rarity of limited edition ACEO cards, it doesn’t necessarily mean that larger prints cannot be done in similar limited edition print runs. But the size sets must be limited in nature. Normally, there would be a maximum of three sets, but I feel that with an ACEO limited edition of 1 only, we can add it as the fourth set. That leaves 3 sets of larger sizes, which are meant to be seen on a wall. I think this is quite fair, as more detail can be seen on larger prints.

I will be listing these items on my ebay shop.

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Artist Trading Cards Photography

In a deep dive on how artists were sharing work in small format, I came across Artist Trading Cards, and also Art Cards, Editions, and Originals, but nothing much for Artist Trading Cards for Photography, which was disappointing.

Artist Trading Cards (ACTs) started in 1997 in Switzerland. They were the brainchild of M Vänçi Stirnemann, who created 1200 of the cards for an exhibition. Other artists then began to create their own cards, and a new movement was formed.

Strictly speaking, ATCs are meant to only be swapped. ACEOs on the other hand can be sold, and so are a different category, one that is frowned upon by ATC purists. ATCs are meant to be one of a kind, and hand-drawn, with the purpose to inspire other artists.

So where do Artist Trading Cards for Photography come into this? Well, if truth be told, there is not currently much information on this. We know that they are collected, but rules surrounding how to trade are sparse.  We know, though, that there is a market on Ebay and Etsy.

I feel that these cards are great for the #AbandonDigital movement, but how would one go about getting into this collection hobby? Well, being realistic, we are so far into the Digital Age, that physical events and groups have diminished almost completely. There are now only a few such ATC events dotted around, as seen here, and so it is in the online space that many of these cards are being traded. On a personal level, I’m still very much against uploading my full images to the internet, and so I am experimenting for now with including “Blind” in big letters across my images. I’m also refraining from giving specific location information out online, apart from the wider area (eg. Switzerland).. Instead, people will have to purchase a card to find out the handwritten location. Also, it is important to release these as signed editions I think. 100 seems like a fair edition amount for these small format prints. If there is interest later, then larger format limited editions can be offered.

Look at my Limited Edition Photography Artist Trading Cards here

 

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Concealed Postcard Art

A postcard with a qr code

Concealment. Certainly, as a child, I really enjoyed the thrill of opening football stickers and seeing what I had. The nature of trading for what I still needed was also a pleasure. And the thrill didn’t stop there for me. I soon passed into the land of Magic the Gathering cards, which was a whole new level of excitement with its rares, uncommons, and commons.

So it is with this in mind that I look at the art world and think perhaps it is missing a trick. Should artists, instead of freely supplying the internet with their hard-gained work, all for a few likes, instead be looking to produce physical, concealed packs of art for people’s enjoyment? Would this not, in fact, be a fun endeavor? There is certainly enough of us to fulfill everyone’s collection needs.

What medium would suit such a project? Well, the humble postcard certainly seems to be well suited to collection on mass. Cheap enough to be accessible to all, and also small enough for storage. There are already collectors, certainly of vintage cards , and, of course, if this was done on masse, then a contemporary market would also develop. There is already the growing trend of a form of snail mail, PostCrossing, where people agree to send postcards to each other, and collections and collectors are already forming.

Should we, then, leave the digital world completely alone? That seems quite drastic, at least at this stage. Perhaps instead we could open up both spaces at once. For instance, what about interactive postcards? They might come with a QR code to unlock hidden content. A video blog post on how the picture was captured; a link to an interesting news source; artist offers – I’m sure others could think of more interesting ideas.

However, I would add a proviso: never, ever, upload that image to the internet, unless it’s a print house. Your images are currently filling the pockets of a very small number of people. Why do that for the hollowness of some “likes” on social media? Why supply the AI algorithm with all of your images?

Remember, #NoMoreFreeArt

Find signed limited edition postcards here

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The Pushback against the Digital Age

A spherical blob of faces and arms amalgamated together

The pushback against the Digital Age has started. Or at least, I hope so. I was reminiscing yesterday about a piece of packaging I found in a shop around 15 years ago. It was loose, and I think it would have made its way into a bin, so I took it. Perhaps I shouldn’t have, but rather than being swept up and put into landfill, it found a place on my wall. It was, by today’s standards, rather tame, depicting an artistic, deco styled image of a woman’s head with long flowing hair. In subtle orange and muddy reds, I thought at the time it was beautiful. Yet I had a disturbing thought yesterday: Would I pick up or even glance at the picture today? You see, The Great Image Saturation Event has occurred in the world today. We are pummeled by the beautiful left, right, and center. There is no escape for our eyes as we peruse a new centralized internet, where the best images from every single corner in the  world now sits before us on social media and news sources. This globalized ball of beauty hurtles ever onwards, giving artists snippets of fame before the ball turns, and a new name is in the limelight. FIrst it was digital photography that was adding to this ball, and now AI, which can produce images at fantastic speed. How much more can the internet be saturated? A whole lot more is the strikingly obvious answer.

Or is it? For myself, I want to pick up someone else’s garbage again.  I want that thrill of finding something beautiful amongst the mundane. I want to decorate my house, and for people to come in and appreciate seeing what I have put up. But is this really still possible?

The only way to achieve this is surely by rejecting the digital age. Reject social media, reject the centralized news sources. Go back to local information. Information that is well suited to its environment. Because, surely, globalized news can’t really be applicable to every environment on Earth. We’re not all ready to conform to one set of universal values, and we shouldn’t either. There is beauty in variety, and variety occurs when we are closed off from each other into disparate groups.

Another problem, thinking about art specifically, as my story of the garbage art shows, people don’t always need the absolute best to be happy. Relatively speaking, people are happy with what they have unless they see something better. In my opinion, more art would be sold, and the distribution would be more even, if people only had access to their local markets. I am not an economist, so I can’t really talk about globalization in any depth, but if art is anything to go by, it seems that it is not necessarily always the answer.

There are of course many other problems arising from the digital age.  As we become consumed by our phones, our relationships suffer. We don’t know how to talk at a dinner table any more. The addiction to new, bitty information is strong. Is this even affecting our brain structures, IQ, etc?  It is not currently clear what the long term effects are, but certainly on a personal level, I find the reading of books to be laboursome now. If this is true across the board, then how exactly are children currently being educated for in depth learning? What is the effect on critical thinking. Furthermore, how does it affect our expectations of the world? Why have there been so many sensationalist leaders recently? Why is politics a personality contest? We seem to be becoming adapted for bitty expectations as we consume more and more bitty information.

Does it need to be this way? Is it possible to fight back?

Certainly, the first thing that needs to go is the app driven smart phone, and re-inventions like the Boring Phone aim to displace the new with the old. It begins to beg the question: Are we in a technology retract?

When electricity first came to the consumer, there were all manner of inventions that utilized it. But people eventually grew tired of the meaningless inventions. Are we today beginning to tire of our information addictions? I certainly hope so (as I write another blog post to upload to the internet).

Buy yourself some physical art here in the form of limited edition signed postcard prints.

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Limited Edition Collectable Postcards

A mosaic of landscape photos

I have cleared all record of my images from the internet, and have decided to instead start selling limited edition collectable postcards.

With prices for vintage postcards going up to thousands of dollars, postcards are very collectable indeed. But there are other reasons for going the collectable postcard route. The internet has seen the photo market become saturated with content. The truly unbelievable thing is that people are giving away their photos for free. People are viewing, appreciating, and then forgetting within seconds. And now AI is harvesting that content, and producing on mass. Truly, the online photography space has lost all value.  

To remedy this situation, there needs to be a move back to the physical, and a rejection of online photography galleries. By buying a limited edition collectable postcard, you get to hold a piece of art in your hands that can’t be found on the internet, and this is truly remarkable. Collectable postcards are a way to recapture the physical. To hold, to admire, and to store. And of course, to make an extravagant gift.

Perhaps this rejection of the online space is already occurring. The Guardian says that young people are moving away from smartphones, and delving into the physical. Vinyl records, analogue photography, and something called Postcrossing is becoming popular.  Indeed, the Postcrossing website enables people around the world to exchange postcards, driving a new movement of collecting, and potentially trading. It is a great time to get into postcards.


There have also been a growing number of Secret Artist Postcard events, with one such event taking place in Bristol at RWA. They are extremely popular, and really add to the collectable postcard movement.

So why are collectable postcards so popular? Well, they are an accessible pathway to art collecting. Not everyone can afford to spend thousands on a print, and so collectable postcards, especially those that are of limited editions, enable collectors to build up their collections quickly and cheaply, especially if collecting contemporary art and photography.

Limited Edition Collectable Postcards from Kalimetric