No it's not

When i posted this, some time back, i had a range of rather different and misguided convictions. Cleaning out my hard drive, i stumbled onto the image, saved in one of the backup folders. However, between then and now, we learned a valuable lesson. Never go against your better judgement.



If you do go against it, your mistakes and bad decisions will gang up on you. And ...



You won't be one of them.

Note to self

Master key - Lousy lock.

6 AM rants

image courtesy of... well Google because that's where i found it.

I couldn't sleep so i started checking my mail and facebook. In my FB inbox, there is a mail from someone i know saying "check this guy's website. his images are legendary". What's on there? HDRs and nudes. and HDR nudes sometimes. No, people. Pretty colors do not make a pretty picture. Deal with it.

HDRs are a photographer's way of being a fucking child and stopping himself from evolving. How come? That's easy - people like them, thus you'll think you're good and don't need to do any better. Well your images are probably shit and when you think you need not work harder, guess what? There's a big chance that's exactly the moment you should...

Hint: if you want to have perfect exposure why not ... mm ... try harder? Use lighting or maybe, just maybe, shoot film. Less stops of light means you have a bigger chance of being incredibly inaccurate exposure wise and still getting some "amazing images".

This blog post had no other use than to complain about HDRs. Just like nudes, more often then not, they are shit. There's not a fine line between good HDRs and bad HDRs. There's a goddamn wall of China, with armed guards every 20 meters. You can't miss it.

Presedinti si senzatii

In perioada alegerilor ziarele se vand ca painea calda. Si ce vinde mai bine in Romania decat senzationalul? Avand in vedere ca prin intermediul blog-ului am fost contactat de cativa jurnalisti de mare calibru, Ovidiu Zara si Madalina Prudea intre altii, va aduc la cunostinta faptul ca scandalurile cu Dl. Traian Basescu nu ma preocupa. Imaginile semnate de mine din campania 2004 nu arata presedintele lovind vreun personaj.

Pe de alta parte, cu doar foarte putina obiectivitate ati realiza ca este inadmisibil pentru un candidat la presedentie sa faca un asemenea gest, in special in public, in fata a zeci de camere si mii de oameni - si deci foarte probabil imposibil. Nu e o acoperire guvernamentala - pur si simplu evenimentul nu a avut loc. Nu gasiti ca este o coincidenta ciudata faptul ca a reaparut dupa 4 ani acest video, intr-un singur loc, la o calitate proasta si dintr-un singur unghi?

Domnule Zara - ce aveti de impartit cu presedintele nu este problema mea, cum nu este nimic din ce se intampla in politica. Inteleg ca vreti sa publicati articole senzationale, dar aparent articolele cu teme inteligente sunt mai bine vazute. Pentru o clarificare, va rog frumos sa lecturati motto-ul propriului Dumneavoastra blog. Poate ati uitat de ce sunteti jurnaist.

Doamna/Domnisoara Prundea - "nu vrei sa afle lumea adevarul? lasi un om ca el sa ne conduca?". Presa este, din ce stiu, o putere in stat. Daca ati aborda subiecte mai importante si/sau interesante, poate ati reusi sa faceti o schimbare adevarata.

Cand a fost ultima data cand ati publicat un articol despre proiectul de transport ecologic de la Londra, actiunile Greenpeace sau expozitia Titian de la Luvru?

Stiu, stiu, doriti sa aratati adevarata fata a tiranului care ne va conduce sau nu in urmatorii ani. Nu va faceti griji - daca la Facultatea de Drept se puteau cumpara voturi pro-Basescu la 50 de lei, la Gara daca nu ma insel se practica aceeasi metoda pro-Geoana.

Cred ca ar fi bine sa va revizuiti pozitia ca jurnalisti integri si obiectivi si sa va dati seama ca aceste stiri de senzatie ar trebui pastrate in gunoiul ce se intituleaza "Libertatea". Ultima data cand am verificat, EVZ avea niste oarecare standarde, dar observ ca se muleaza destul de bine pe segmentul de piata ocupat de publicatia mentionata anterior.

Arhiva de articole si imagini publicate de mine pe care o detine (ilegal de altfel - conform contractului au dreptul sa imi foloseasca materialele pe o perioada de 3 ani, dupa care intervine dreptul de autor - alt mit urban in spatiul mioritic din ce imi dau eu seama) nu va face obiectul nici unor discutii sau dezbateri pro sau contra Traian Basescu. Va rog frumos sa nu ma mai contactati pentru detalii sau marturisiri senzationale pentru ca ele nu vor avea loc. Apucati-va sa scrieti articole mai cu cap, lasand la o parte vedetele de carton, stirile bomba si masinile de lux. Romania merita jurnalisti mai buni decat voi.

Cu stima,
Radu Tudoroiu

More fashion shoots

for some reason i started enjoying studio work and messing around with lights. It's a tad bleak, concept wise but so is my tutor's work and he's still teaching. I decided i was going to try to work with fashion people and see how that went - and shoot my Canon exclusively.



I tried to use my Ds Mark 2 as little as possible because it's more practical to wear out a uni Hasselblad than my own equipment. Sadly, i have to shoot my camera because it's the only way to start to understand and feel it properly. So most of the stuff here, if not everything was shot on an 85 mm lens or the 70-200. For light i used Bron packs as well as Bowens.




Practice is the best way to understand light and lighting techniques and it always comes as a surprise when i see the final images and figure just how it went. There's still bits and bobs to be sorted out, like proper sync and stuff, but those are details. One of the things i have about my process is that i always do a hit and miss thing before shooting. The intelligent thing would be to use what is otherwise known as an exposure meter rather than fire away 10 useless frames to test the light. I would go so far as to say that it also gets your brain going as well, measuring and imagining. But these are the downsides of digital - commodity.

Photography, terrorists and idiots

Here's something Denisa sent me today. It's apparently becoming more and more annoying and police are just as useless as ever. We've had some pretty suspicious encounters with police where we were asked about cameras but seeing that we're photography students, we got of easier.

Still, who the hell do you think would take a medium format film camera to a surveillance shoot? What kind of Ansel Adams - infatuated terrorist do you really think exist in that country?

Important note to the police: THE TERRORISTS USE SILVER SONY CAMERAS AND ARE DISGUISED AS CHINESE TOURISTS. I SAW ONE PUT HIS MASK ON.

Now, the article:


Brit photographer who shot demolition of flyover arrested for terrorism



Alex took his camera out to photograph the demolition of a flyover (overpass) in Chatham, England. After refusing to give his identification to two plainclothes people who refused to identify themselves, he was arrested under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act (he did explain to the police and the mystery plainclothes people why he was there and what he had photographed, which is more than I would have done). The police officer put him in cuffs and led him down his town's main road and locked him in a police van. Once in the van, he was questioned about his views on terrorism. Later, a policewoman who said that he had caught her in one of his shots felt "intimidated" by him because he was tall (implying, I suppose, that he wouldn't have been arrested if he was shorter -- terrorists take note). Alex has complained to the police Professional Standards Department:


I believe the way I was treated was unjustified and wholly disproportionate. I assert that officer xxxxx misused her powers of arrest and demonstrated a poor understanding of the law in relation to arrest, the use of force, the use of detention, photography in public places, obstruction and the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2000. Furthermore I assert that officer xxxxx is unsuitable to act as a police officer or at the very least requires further training if she is intimidated by a male of an unremarkable stature taking a single picture with a camera pointed in her direction. I assert that officer xxxxx failed to follow the correct procedures when conducting his search of me and perpetuated the use of unreasonable force by refusing to release me from handcuffs. I assert that PCSO xxxxx demonstrated an unacceptable attitude by making a veiled threat towards me in relation to my future activities as an amateur photographer. I seek for these matters to be fully investigated, the process and outcomes of which I request to be shared with me. With regards to redress I seek a written apology in relation to any shortfalls identified with regards to the involved officer's conduct and consideration of compensation to be made to me for the upset, embarrassment and psychological trauma caused. I would also like Kent and Medway Police to liaise with Medway Council in order to identify the two unidentified men that initially stopped and questioned me. I seek for their conduct to also be fully investigated, the process and outcomes of which I request to be shared with me.

The trains of David Lynch

This weekend we went to Deva to do some tracks for the race. It was a great weekend where i can honestly say i learned a lot of stuff starting with accurate roadbooks to changing the sensor on the trip master and driving a car without any transmission whatsoever.

Coming on the train, i didn't get a sleeping coach so almost nine hours, the trip from Deva to Bucharest with a huge frigging delay i had an upright seat. Who in their right mind would do that? Well, i shared the compartment with two truck drivers, a fat lady with a twisted ankle - the know-it-all kind of person - a confused girl that first lost her ticket then her glasses then her water bottle then her...whatever and ... surprise surprise... an eighty year old guy who was an ex Security (Ro. KGB) operative. So pretty much a useless waste of space.

Around three nobody could sleep - you'd need heavy horse tranquilizers to sleep there, really. The truck driver and me started talking about religion, Hegel and Kant - which was beyond the expected intellectual peak of the trip. Anyways, the train control people were selling beer and vodka and gypsies were drumming in the window pains in the background of us debating, later on the existence of God and the fact that i think if he exists, he does a lousy job. Odd, very very odd trip.

About Men, with Charlie Brooker

Found this article in The Guardian today. Worth reading. Very true:

"Women - why aren't you running the world yet? Frankly I'm disappointed in you. Men are still far too dominant for their own good, and consequently we've made a testosterone-sodden pig's ear of just about everything: politics, the economy, religion, the environment ... you name it, it's in a gigantic man-wrought mess. The world's been one big dick-swinging contest, and we've caught our collective glans in a nearby desk fan. By rights we should be squealing for your help, but we're not, because we're too damn stupid and too damn proud. We swagger convincingly, and that's about it. And swaggering's fine for scraping by in primitive times, but the world we've built is altogether more complex now. We've got stock exchanges and nuclear warheads. It's too easy to swagger your way into big trouble without even realising. Well, we've had our turn. It's time for the Rise of the Ladies.

We don't need a few women in conspicuous positions of power scattered here and there - we need a 10-year prohibition on all forms of male power. Seriously: a decade in which men don't get to control anything, from the remote control upwards. Imagine the consequences. For one thing, there would be an instant and massive reduction in armed conflict around the globe. Sure, nations would routinely bitch about each other in secret (and with a new, hair-curling viciousness), but there'd be fewer intercontinental punch-ups and a far smaller bodycount.

The economy should clearly be run by women. City boys are dicks, plain and simple. Look at them. Listen to them. Consider the carnage of the past 10 years. What the hell were these idiots thinking? Even now they're still at it. In any sane world they'd all be herded into a shed and blasted with hoses until they promised to stop. Everything they say, think, do, watch, read and fill up their iPods with is awful. Even their girlfriends are awful. Straight women, reading this: if your partner is a city boy, leave him. Leave him now. Dump him with a text message, right this very second. It'll hurt for about six days, then your life will improve beyond measure. Sod that little number-swapping dick who dares call himself a man. Lob him in the shed with the other squeaking fakes and train the cold jets on the bastards. Shut the door and let them shiver.

Men love machines, because machines remind them of themselves. As a result, men quickly became very very good at building machines and then driving them round rather too quickly, shouting "Toot toot! Look at me in my brilliant car!" This was cute for a while, but the novelty's worn off now that the planet's teetering on the brink of becoming an inhospitable cinder. Please, women, for all our sakes: just lock us in a room with some Lego or something. I'm sorry, but we're just too bloody stupid to save the planet. Looks like you'll have to clean up our mess once again. Mankind's depending on you.

"This is all very well, but none too realistic," thinks the female reader. "Men aren't just going to hand over the reins that easily. I know what men are like. They're self-righteous and stubborn - just like women, but worse."

Oh, you. Pretty, silly you. We've got you brainwashed. See, that's what our incessant, ruinous swaggering was all about: pretending to be more complex and dangerous than we actually are. In truth your suspicions are correct: we're very, very simple. We're lazy and we like blowjobs. That's all there is to us. Literally: that's it. From Sir John Betjeman to Barack Obama, from Copernicus to Liam Gallagher. The core software we run on could fit in the memory of a digital watch circa 1985 without even scraping the sides.

And you know this, you women. You know this of course, but it's so dazzlingly obvious you actually doubt it's true. Most of my friends are women. I often find myself counselling them as they agonise for hours, trying to fathom what men are thinking, what men want. Yet no matter who they're talking about, or what the circumstance, from my perspective the answer always seems so glaringly basic it could be scratched on the back of a button. This one wants a shag. That one wants a biscuit. Every time: the butler did it.

The only mistake women make is crediting men with far more mystery than they're capable of. We're impulsive yet thuddingly predictable, and you'd better learn to love us for it because that's just about all we can muster. That's why we bollocksed the planet up. We didn't mean to. We're men, that's all.

And now, surely now, it's time for you to shunt us off the podium and take charge for a decade. If only as an experiment to see what happens. I for one welcome our titted overlords. Give us our toys and our daily bread and permit us to lie on the sofa for 10 whole years, like snoozy, spluttering pigs. We get to loll around contentedly, you get to save the world. Sound good? Do we have a deal? Well do we, you wonderful bitches?"

Art Classes DIY

I walked 15 miles yesterday (half by choice) and had lots of time to think. Sometimes it just feels quite good to be alone. Have a shitty camera and shoot with it, because real artists don't care about their equipment - yeah, real artists also die from overdose or kill themselves, or both - please go ahead and be a real artist. Start today.

What we learned this week:

1) Pictures of yourself in a gallery are cool. They help the person who sees your pictures link up with your experience (no thanks. please fuck off and just don't look at my pictures. I refuse to use the timer to take pictures of myself. end of story)

2) Trash is cool. pictures of trash create identity. People link to that. Look, we use the same laxative. I can relate to that - i might like his pictures. (Imbecile!)

3) Subtle is not always good. Subtle is good because it sounds intelligent when you say it. Not when you do it ( subtle in pictures is bad because most idiots won't fucking get it )

4) art can be made with compact cameras. They are nice and very very good. People don't notice you ( I hate compact cameras. And people who take shitty pictures with them and after that hang them at the Tate Modern. Only an idiot could write a book about 20 unsharp pixelated pictures done with a phone )

4) The verbal diarrhea that you produce is always more important than others ( for me it's a rule - because you're still reading this )

But i suppose the path less traveled and not taking the free ride in your own life kinda make better topics of discussion. Dead chickens and pictures of your feet just don't cut it.

Good Times Gone

And it's Sunday. How good. The day God said...not sure what but i bet it was important in the context he said it. So i woke up feeling like seven different kinds of shit after the party. Not hung over. Just tired. And strange. Aaaaaanyways...

Firstly, thanks for inviting me Simon. Happy birthday and... well it's all in the greeting card. Read your Facebook inbox, you got a good news on our previous night's topic.

In other news, i did nothing useful today, except talk, after many years, with somebody i used to know and helped out a little bit, or like to think i tried. I had nothing better to do, so after an omlette, i started to watch movies. Shitty ones. And mushy. some violent. Mostly bad.

Like "License to wed". That, my friends, or people who read this blog because they've got nothing better to do, is a waste of time. It was such a sweet movie, i almost got diabetes by the end of it. Weddings and fights and PMS chick with bad cheesy lines. Damnit. Being useless to humanity has never been more degrading.

But it got me thinking. The movie is shit save for a line:

"This is a non smoking flight but you're alowed to light anything up the minute we land in Jamaica"

Funny.

So yeah, it did get me thinking about being good at what you do. Like movies. Those people were most definitely bad at what they did. They sucked. Really really bad. Morally bankrupt and financially illiterate Americans (i'm a hypocrite here because i fit the bill quite well). There's no point in reading this entry to be honest. But if you got this far, i must confess i am eating Camembert (Kamilla and Denisa know) while typing. Disgusting. But tasty. and if you got this far, i must admit that you were just as bored as i was when i started writing.

PS: the picture has no link to anything. It's just a view from the window of someone i sued to know. Cool view.

Sunday Morning

Yesterday i was loading the film for the trip and put a book on the lens of the camera obscura (yeah - it's still on). I woke up in the morning and opened my eyes in complete pitch black. Something smelled fishy for a moment. Couldn't figure out what didn't seem right but the it hit me... oh yeah. and again... we had houses on the walls.

And somehow i got out of bed, all stiff and cold, thinking about this song.

And i remembered that the night before i left two notes for my housemates downstairs. The first one regarded one of the leaving their socks on the stairs, right in front of the door. How fucking wrong is that. the reply was: "i agree it's not nice, but the stairs would be better if somebody hoovered them". We did. I did. We do. I did.

Second note regarded a small fucked up bed thingy. the ones that you have the lamp on, at the side of your bed. And glasses. And condoms. Might have gone too far there. Still. If you remember the exhibition series, with the falling tv, it's the thing that the tv was falling off. Well, after staying outside since the exhibition (it's been some months, hasn't it?), come rain come shine, one of my housemates decided it's a good idea to take it in the house. It might come in handy.

YES IT MIGHT. IF YOU WANT TO HANG YOURSELF AND NOT SURE IF A CHAIR WILL HOLD YOUR WEIGHT. SO YOU CHOOSE SOMETHING MORE STURDY.

Apart from this, which is really rather dirty, although the person said it had been cleaned, we have a 1970's radio - you know the kind: grey, with two old speakers, with yellow light at the tuning band. the one senile grandmothers listen to - three broken bicycles, 2-3 copies of famous paintings - but not the proper ones, the ones with fucked up frames and wrinkled paper, from that much raining outside - and various other useless shit.

All these items, combined with the regime - not keeping the living room radiator on because it's consuming energy (NO, IT'S MAKING THE FUCKING HOUSE WARM), closing all lights at all times (LOVELY TO LIVE IN A CAVE, RIGHT?), not taking baths because it's too much water spent (I PROBABLY AM THE ONLY ONE WHO ACTUALLY TOOK A BATH - SHOWERS SUCK), and the overall low cost way of living bring us back to...

C O M M U N I S M

Your parents fought for freedom of opinion, for rights and Bob Dylan records. They fought for the abolition of food coupons and KGB/Securitate/Whatever the fuck kind of agency other pitiful countries in the ex-soviet block had. And for what? For bad music, imbecilization of the people and lowering your standards beyond anything communism WAS EVER ABLE TO DO. By choice. Are you fucking kidding me?

People who try to raise the standard of living are not prodigal sons. 2 jars of Uncle Ben's for £2 are not much different than 2 jars of Uncle Ben for £1,60. Imagine that is divided by four. IT'S 10 FUCKING PENNY. You've become so concerned with gathering 10 penny from there, 10 from there that you forgot about the fun of being a student. It's wasting. It's living life. you're like 50 year old people in 20 year old lives. Not even that. My dad is 50, he viciously outranks you at being fun.

This discussion will go on and on and on. But i finish it here, benevolently, stating that my room is Monarchy. I am the Monarch. The radiator will stay on even if i am away because i pay my share of the utilities and don't give a fuck about what you do with your share. Light will be on whenever i feel like it. Because i have a light bulb. Classic.

About how we never left for Africa

So i am back. Sooner than expected. Now i hate the people here even more. I hate the mud but somehow it's home. There were people i didn't manage to see. Perhaps now is a good time. But let's start at the beginning.

It's yesterday morning and we're good to go. The radiator on the Toyota is getting mended, so everything is in order, the mechanic from Land Rover reassured us there's no problem with our Defender so we set off. All packed, all ready and willing, leaving behind only the memory of the dirty cloudy rain in Bucharest.



400 and something kilometers later the engine stopped. Just stopped, in the middle of the motorway. Our luck was that it stopped some kilometers away from a friend of a friend's car service. What were the odds? We got toed there and popped the hood.



A few hours passed, in which we tried all simple solutions to revive the car. The symptoms and effects were simmilar. It would start after 6 to 12 keys and die like it would run out of diesel. Bugging. Even the mechanic, who was an Extreme class racer as well, had no clue of what that might be. Hours passed, we took out the fuel filter, fuel tank, electronic engine management, unplugged all power chips and reset the computer and nothing happened. We were at the end of the rope.

A friend was called, who took two of Land Rover's best mechanics from Bucharest to our little middle of nowhere. 5 and something hour trip. Meanwhile we went for dinner, where we discussed all manner of things possible, from deadly car crashes to jokes, and get some sleep.




They managed to arrive at 2:30 am, and set off to work. Nobody slept until now really. The car was torn appart from rear to front, taking EVERY, and i mean EVERY piece of metal that could cause this, off.



The most difficult part was left for last: the engine. We hooked the laptops up to the computer and the diagnostic cables and started looking at all possible faults. Apparently the ccylinder balance was completely off, varying from -16 to +26 on the same cyclinder, which, for those of you who don't know cars, qualifies for the first prize in the "as bad as it can get" competition.



The engine was opened up, all pistons taken out and cleaned, and in the process discovered that the copper isolation gaskets for the fuel injection pumps were beyond worn out and had not been doing their job for a while. Needless to say that we called everyone, from the coast of ther Romanian Sea, all the way to Hungary, and nobody ever had any problems with them, let alone change them or have spares.





Defeated and sleepless, we left the Defender in Sebes and returned home awaiting the parts so we can go back and fix it. Five days have been alreay lost of the expedition, along with all possible reservations, taking into account the fact that we were supposed to be in Fes on the 22nd of December, which coincides with the date when the gaskets in question will be arriving in Bucharest, thus the expedition is off and we have alot of free time on our hands all of a sudden. Not to happy about it. So, in this peculiar situation, do try not to get on the wrong side of me, as people have been known to get hit by randomly flying car parts.

weekends

And so it seems another weekend passes by. Life is not really what i would expect it to be. I smoke another cigarette and hope that it would get better but it doesn't. A bottle of whiskey drank with Tony seems to be justify a means to an end at the very beginning but throughout the night it just seems a delay of real world's problems. It applies to all of you minions. If you don't like it go fuck yourselves. This is life and it won't get any better. Miss you Jo, Cherie, Nelda. There's not much i can do about it now. So in the end life is an endless succession of failures. the question is: 'How big are the failures?'

Teamwork

Teamwork is for people who like to sit down, drink tea and come up with creative ideas that each can write with their favorite ballpoint pen. Teamwork is meant to be fun and useful. But at least half of the times, teamwork is a bunch of incompetents relying on people who are less incompetent then they are to deal with their shit and get the credit for it. For those of you in the second category, i wish you a Saw-series death. Pick your choice and i'll be more than happy to help along with logistics. Idiots.

10

Let's resume the 10 commandments in 10 words:
Don't
Don't
Don't
Don't
Don't
Don't
Don't
Don't
Don't
Don't

No-brainer

Now then, it seems the world has been quite made redundant by the on-going recession. It's been affecting the economy long enough to fuck things and to make me interested enough to write about it.

It's a normal and logical follow-up to the 9.11 event which carefully led the greatest nation of cunts in the world (commonly known as Americanus Imbecilis) into a spiraling paranoia regarding terrorism. Why would America have 12-13 trilion dollars in debt? It's a simple answer to this simple question... Let's try to do simple maths:

1 tank driven for 1 mile ... in Afghanistan ... costs USD 1000.
few hundred thousand tanks driven for few hundred thousand miles ... same location cost... few thousand of thousands of dollars
few hundred thousand soldiers for one day ... same location ... ammunition ... costs the rest of the money.

Furthermore, it seems that the country's shit idea of spending and spending and buying new phones and new everything, faster cars, bigger engines, more luxury, has managed the wonderful act of putting them in debt up to their neck, and even deeper in shit.

Unfortunately, all countries who thought America isn't such a bad country are floating around in the same shit, holding hands ans singing "Kumbaya". England, France, Germany, Slovakia, Latvia, Romania...etc. We all supported the country that spawned Metallica, cocaine and and slavery, but with this last action they fucked up. After ranting quite alot i will now leave you with this question:

"Why do you think Russia, China, Japan or India are not affected by the recession?"

NATO

Just out of curiosity, why would NATO want to have the stupid summit in Bucharest? another chance to show how incapable is Romania of dealing with this kind of situations and how police can easily and without remorse block any manner of human rights on command? we have a lovely country. Pity it is filled with incompetents.

inflatable women.

Not that i am particulary interested but I cannot help but be amazed at how much people are trying to replace women. The odd part is that they are getting better and better at it, looking at the fact that today's inflatable dolls tend to look alot better than most women (which is not very difficult in Western Europe). They don't talk without being talked to, they are always willing to have sex with you even if you're the ugliest bloody homo sapiens that ever roamed the land. The attached picture is an example.

Sad but True

http://www.220.ro/Nothing_Else_Matters_varianta_lautareasca-60752.html

Micro-revolution with Colages

Well well... the time has come to rise against the authority. With the changes made in the recent days (and by changes I mean people getting fired) the student body felt very strongly about bringing the issues of Raymond and tech staff for MAD students out on the table for a little discussion. Sadly enough the decisions to let all the tech staff that holds the Media, Arts and Design section together was taken by the pricks in the financial dept with no consideration whatsoever on the impact that this will have on the students and the quality of learning. Apart from that and perhaps one of the most important aspects of this so-called cut-back is the fact that the Digital Photography and Video Arts course has it's hands behind it's back, finding itself without the resources or manpower to continue a normal course of action in learning. As you have all noticed, the Media Hub is open every now and again these days putting student projects and deadlines at risk. As student representative for the first year I will be attending today's Field Committee meeting to try and get some answers as to why this rash and stupid decision was taken in the middle of the second semester and what will happen to the empty workplaces. Any questions or queries are welcome and if nothing is solved within the deadlines that will hopefully be imposed today, a petition will be in order, as well as various forms of protest, chapter at which I am sure you can be very inventive given a proper occasion.