This idea is a little pull-toy that I’ve been kicking around for a while because the Tasmanian Government is trying to sell off Hayes Prison Farm outside New Norfolk. And what would they get for it? A few measly million.

I lived on Hayes Farm when it was a working minimum security prison. I have a fair idea of what is and isn’t on the property – including the accomodation and prison compound facilities, a professional working dairy, glass houses, a purpose-built vegetable processing shed with a cool room you can drive a fork-lift inside and a number of old barns and out-buildings.

Most of that infrastructure certainly is out-dated. And it certainly will take public or private investment to re-purpose. But we own the land and it’s very good land at that. Hardly something we should be giving the quick sell without airing alternative possibilities.

So here’s my idea. We currently have Technopark as a technology innovation hub for Tasmanian start-ups (and a few other businesses that use the space). By being close to each other they can cross-pollinate ideas and skills.

We’re in a Tasmania on the cusp of a new reality. We need small, nimble and resilient enterprises rather than forestry, mining and smelting aluminium. And not simply in the tourism sector. We also have to innovate and value-add around our primary industries.

So why not create infrastructure at Hayes Farm to assist in that capacity?

First – long-term lease the dairy and the prime dairy land to an established Tasmanian primary producer. Not innovative, but paddocks should be producing milk. The bottom of the farm could return to a market garden lease for the same reason – or a series of small commercial market gardens.

Second – the vegetable shed could be an ideal distillery or micro-brewery pushing in a new direction. Something we’re not currently pursuing; something out of left-field that could open a whole new direction to piggyback on our current success stories.

Third – build decent infrastructure in the heart of Hayes Farm around the current compound. Infrastructure like we see at Technopark. And offer start-ups the same incentives and support to develop and explore new ideas with value-adding to our produce. I don’t know exactly what they’ll produce, but that’s innovation.

Fourth – create a sister-relationship to TechnoPark and wrap all of that up in the single objective that there is a growing middle class out there in China and India where our innovative products belong.

Tasmania needs to relinquish the idea that the knowledge worker is our only alternative to big mining, forestry and industry. Innovation is broader than IT. And Hayes Farm, while expensive in the short-term, is certainly an opportunity to break outside our fragile unproductive little box. We already own the land. We just need the ideas around how to properly exploit its potential.

If you haven’t been introduced to this way of purchasing film there is nothing mystical or esoteric about it. You only need a bulk loader and a 100 foot roll of film with a few canisters to pre-load that film into. And you’ll need a darkroom bag to fill the bulk loader – or a pitch black room. The savings can be substantial.

I now have four bulk loaders kept in a refrigerator – two were sub-$10 purchases from online groups and I found another two locally (for free). Each is loaded with one of the following films – Ilford Pan F 50, Delta 100 and FP4 125 and the last one has a fresh roll of Kodak Tri-X 400.

A roll of film can cost as low as $30 (sourced online) or as high as $100 (sourced locally). My suppliers of choice at the moment are B&H via their online store because they’re fast, competitive and have a good range for selection. A recent order cost just under $190 (including the $38 shipping fee) and it took from Thursday night to Tuesday morning to travel all the way from the United States to my suburban doorstep in Tasmania. That’s a globalisation WOW.

For that money I got 100 feet of Delta 100, 100 feet of Tri-X 400, a five pack of 120 rolls of Tri-X 400 and four plastic reloadable film canisters. That’s not bad considering I’ll fill close to 30 rolls of 24 frames for between $55 and $70 plus shipping. Let’s call it less than $3 per roll of film compared to $10.50.

Or think of it this way – that’s 25-30 rolls for the price I’d have paid for 5-7 rolls in a local shop.

OK so in certain parts of the World film can be so cheap that bulk loading isn’t really worth bothering with anymore. And that’s why we can find the bulk loaders all over eBay for next to nothing. But here in the antipodes bulk loading 135 film can still add up to the saving of a small fortune.

And, of course, it means you can think about 35mm film stocks intended for movies. Or out of date rolls on eBay.

If you’re not confident just go onto YouTube and look at some short videos on how to bulk load film so you know what to do inside your darkroom bag. That’s all there is to it. Once bulk loaded, you can fill those convenient reloadable film canisters in front of the television.

Imagine if we lived in a world (again) without photographs. We’re so used to stopping time and capturing space on a two-dimensional object that it’s hard for the modern us to really understand the pre-photography existence of society. A normalcy where nobody, except the rich who hired painters, knew the face of their forebears. And only memory was at hand to remember the faces of our family across the excruciatingly slow amble of decades.

Images are now a ubiquitous part of everything we do and everywhere we travel. Images have saturated our lives and impressed our imaginations and motivations into a contortion unlike any time in human history. We’re the Gods of time and space – right now I have several instances of family history spanning half a century in my coat pocket.

So I still find this collection of old photographs passed down from my grandmother to be totally fascinating. In the way Rebecca Solnit’s book River of Shadows: Edweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West was a hard-to-put-down read on this very subject.

And, yes, that’s my father giving Ross a big hug for the camera. After my father passed away from emphysema in 2000 it’s easy to remember an old man saddened by the trenches of raising a wayward son like myself. Life has the odd angry battle.

We do seem to have a tradition in our family that all our aunts’ and uncles’ partners are automagically, and remain forever, with the title aunt or uncle. So yeah, this is Uncle Ross and my father having a cuddle in a cross-dressing, probably semi-legal, bit of fun with dad’s mother making photographs.

Listen to me for just a moment. An integrated marketing strategy is a pretty simple concept. The core idea is your print advertising points to your website, your website points to your social media, your van has your logo with your address and your website address – everything supports everything else. It’s integrated. Each element is in there for a reason.

Now stand back and look at what you’re doing on social media. Is it integrated? Does everything support everything else? Maybe you think it is… but maybe you need to take another look because this is a common technical mistake.

More than half the links that hit my purview from Twitter to Facebook resources lead me to a log-in page. Half is a lot of broken strategy.

If your social media strategy (which is a part of your integrated marketing strategy) links from Twitter to a post on Facebook then that link should work for everybody. If it doesn’t then don’t post (don’t market) the link. No marketing victim should receive a login screen required to view your content. That’s just a fact of business. They may not be a Facebook member, let alone a Facebook friend.

Consider the implications of those outliers – what do THEY see? Are they going to be annoyed at having their time wasted?

OK, back to basics. What is your job as a marketer (and yes you are marketing on social media)? Your job is to convince people who have YOUR MONEY in their pocket, or attention and time YOU DESERVE, to give it over to you; not to your competitors.

What is everybody else’s job? To decide whether or not you’re worthy of their attention and whether you deserve money. That’s their obligation finished. Their obligation isn’t to be a member of anything. Or to have a password. If you’re marketing to them the entire responsibility for the experience falls onto you. End of story. No excuses.

So back to the point I was making about integrated social media strategies. If you have social media islands (in other words, some rooms are secret members-only clubs) then don’t be foolish enough to send non-members of that club the web address of your secret bloody resources. Have each social media platform you choose to employ underpin the others with a shared conversation – open doors all the way. It’s that simple. Or figure out how to run a members-only club with discretion.

I know this is usually just an oversight of the social media marketer (and please don’t tell me you’re not marketing). But I’d suggest you open a web browser you aren’t logged into Facebook on and check the links before you post them.

As a web professional I have worked for private and public clients both as a contractor and occasionally as an in-house employee. I have had private sector clients from Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, the United Kingdom and Dubai. I’ve worked for the Tasmanian Education Department’s Web Strategy & Support Unit, I’ve taught hand coded web design for a semester at TAFE College and worked as a web developer on contract, then in-house, at the now defunct Tasmanian Department of Environment, Parks, Heritage and the Arts. I also spent a semester at the Tasmanian Department of Economic Development as an undergrad working on an internal paper to assess the cost value of the unemployed.

The vast majority of the work that I’ve undertaken as a web professional was by invitation. However, since I graduated in 2010 from the MBAS Program there has been no real interest on my part to go back to plod coding websites. Yes, I could probably scrape a crap spare change from it but the market is over-saturated with a constant race to the bottom and a need to pull about $100,000 in the door to achieve a decent wage. So there… I’m currently one of the 800,000 Australians collecting a Disability Support Pension. A pension that underpinned my university education as work came and went.

Prior to that I had served in the Royal Australian Navy, worked on fishing boats, farm work and spent a decade and a half in prison. Regardless of what anybody has to say on the question of my academic record – I earned it. The hard way. Pretty much dirt poor.

Currently I shoot a bit of amateur film photography and make some pretty nice Tasmanian artisan mead. That said, yes, eventually we hope to commercialise – given all the above. That should be an expected path forward rather than one that occasionally rankles feathers.

The following is my academic record from the University of Tasmania and several trade certificates that I also earned. The hard way.

Bachelor of Computing

• KXA151 Programming & Problem Solving (HD 84%)
• KXA153 Computer Applications (HD 81%)
• KXA154 Software Process (CR 66%)
• KXA155 Professional Computing (HD 86%)
• KXA156 Multimedia & Web Applications (DN 73%)
• BSA102 Information Modelling & Infrastructures (CR 67%)
• BMA101 Introduction to Management (HD 87%)
• BMA121 Management of Human Resources (HD 81%)

• KXA252 Artificial Intelligence (CR 68%)
• KXA253 Software Design (CR 62%)
• KXA254 Operating Systems (DN 72%)
• KXA281 Advanced Web Development (DN 78%)
• KXT201 Algorithms (DN 76%)
• BMA201 Organisational Behaviour (HD 88%)
• BSA207 Web Management (HD 81%)
• BMA251 Principles of Marketing (DN 76%)

• KXA355 Mobile & Ubiquitous Computing (HD 80%)
• KXA358 Human-Computer Interaction (HD 85%)
• KXT301 Software Engineering Project A (HD 80%)
• KXT302 Software Engineering Project B (DN 72%)
• KXT307 Computer Networks (DN 73%)
• BSA309 Multimedia Professional Placement (DN 78%)
• BAA321 Corporate Internship (DN 78%)

Note: Placed on the Dean’s Roll of Excellence for the Faculty of Science, Engineering & Technology for 2007.

Master of Business Administration (Specialisation)

• BMA581 Organisational Behaviour (HD 90%)
• BMA584 Marketing Management (DN 75%)
• BMA684 Electronic Marketing (HD 83%)
• BMA773 Management Ethics (HD 84%)

• BMA774 International Business Management (HD 87%)
• BMA787 Entrepreneurship (HD 88%)
• BMA799 Strategic Management (HD 89%)
• BEA681 Data & Business Decision Making (CR 68%)

• BEA683 Economics for Managers (HD 80%)
• BFA772 Finance for Managers (PP 58%)
• BFA582 Financial Reporting & Analysis (DN 74%)
• BFA682 Law for Managers (HD 82%)

• HEJ504 Media Writing (DN 76%)
• HEJ606 Advanced Journalism (HD 80%)

Other Units & Certificates

• HEJ505 Investigative Journalism (HD 84%)
• Website Design Certificate IV (TAFE) (2004)
• Website Administration Certificate IV (TAFE) (2005)
• CCNA1 Networking Basics (Cisco) (2007)
• CCNA2 Router & Routing Basics (Cisco) (2007)

Australia has a prison population of roughly 30,000 – it’s approximately 93% male with 80% of inmates born in Australia and a median age of 34 years. The median age is directly affected by the number of people serving long sentences because every year sees a stratum of that population age within their sentence.

Look at the age demographic chart – the major bumps are from 20-30 years of age. When you account for the sentencing ages of Australian prisoners it is highly likely the offender was between 16 and 30 years of age.

Also note that the prison system is constantly growing, making it increasingly costly to support. A mere 20 years ago the Australian prison population was half this number at 15,000.

Many more Australians have previously served a sentence within the Australian prison system, although I can’t find that statistic. The combination of serving and those who have served would give us the total of people with a prison record.

Add to this the segment of the population with a police record. Stand outside a local magistrate’s court on any weekday and it’s busy. Courts are in every locality across the country dealing with all manner of events that will impact a person’s police record, and possibly their prison record.

My point is simple. Convicts and ex-convicts are a large demographic in a country of 23 million. Australia is approximately half male, with a potential working population between 15-64 totaling 15 million. Deduct from that figure the unemployment rate and those outside the workforce (approximately 30 per cent of all men, including roughly 800,000 people receiving disability support pensions, home carers, home parents and early retirees).

So here’s the rub. A prison or police record prohibits somebody from all but the rarest employment opportunity regardless of (toothless) human rights legislation, the person’s individual qualification or their ability to perform the job. Ex-convicts, in all except the rarest instances, are not allowed to work as volunteers or be employees of a charity organisation.

We don’t want ex-convicts to cook or touch our food supply, to have access to the young or elderly (bus driver, park mower, removalist), to serve, to clean or to know where we live. Hands off our money, property and, I’m only half joking, our women!

The financial cost of that paradigm to Australia is extreme. We lock out a large proportion of the working age population from employment and opportunity based on a social record of having done bad things. Meaning there are even less workers being asked to support even more people on a welfare system that is often generational.

Sit down and go through those numbers on your fingers. And again. And yet again. Why is this not a major political question in 2013?

In the last few years there has been criticism leveled at ANZAC Day.

They say ANZAC Day is nationalistic. I say it’s patriotic. They say it glorifies war. I say it respects those who have fought in our name and who serve in our defense. They say it’s not in line with modern principles of social equality. And I say, ANZAC Day respects a historic experience among living men and women that bonds in a way non-service citizens may not entirely comprehend.

They say it’s about Gallipoli. I say, all stories have a beginning whether a battle is lost or won.

They call our flag racist. I worry that people are lulled into some idea that wars only happen nowdays between rich countries and poor. I worry that chai tea comfort and iPhone convenience have spoiled a good crop of otherwise well intentioned Australians. Our flag encompasses a British heritage. That is just a fact of life. We are a constitutional monarchy, the Commonwealth of Australia.

I thought our country had learned its lesson with the shunning of Korean War and Vietnam Veterans. But I can tell you the parents of the fallen, the brothers and sisters, the children of those service personnel who gave life (and many-a-limb) experience a real connection to ANZAC Day. It’s not just a story marketed to the people. This is an ongoing shared story between service men and women and their loved ones.

To serving military personnel and reservists (over 80,000 Australians) it’s a day where we as a society stop just for a minute to say thank you. There are around 58,000 full time serving members, 22,000 active reservists and another 22,000 standby reserves. They all have families. They all have feelings.

The number of Australian ex-military personnel would be huge. Many a medal stands on the sidelines of the parade as the old men and young children pass.

To ex-military personnel it is also a day for society to say thank you. Thankyou for that effort. Thankyou for that leg. That relationship. Those five marriages. That piece of mind. And it’s a day where old friends are able to come together for a few quiet beers and remember the years when they served.

It’s not an easy job in peacetime. It’s a terrifying job in wartime. When you see old men shed tears at ANZAC Parades it’s not for rubbish ideals about Gallipoli. They are tears for the fallen, the lost and the maimed. Tears for memories that haunt their dreams a half a century after the event. A man my age at the Hobart Cenotaph this week couldn’t stem the tears. Don’t suggest they’re not real or invalid. The story behind those tears may be utterly profound to the human being.

ANZAC Day is probably lost on people who have never served. I understand that. But those who expect their beliefs to be respected should have the decency to respect the opinions and beliefs held by a large number of Australians.

Yes there should never be War. It’s an abomination. But if you for one second are foolish enough to believe we live in a World where socio-economic drivers aren’t going to lead us into mass conflict ever again you are naive in the extreme. The military has, and will again, lay down their lives for us if asked to do so.

If you don’t like ANZAC Day, don’t attend. Be respectful. Say thank you anyway.

Two years ago I shot a Nikon D90 with a 50mm 1.8 lens. Last year I shot a Fujica ST705w using Ilford Delta 100 film (the photograph above was from the 2012 parade). This year my primary camera was the Nikon F2A Photomic loaded with Ilford FP4, an old Konica Big Mini SR BM-100 loaded with Pan F and a Holga 120n loaded with a roll of Tri-X 400. Luckily, my coat has large pockets.

At this year’s parade, I was lured early with the Holga 120n into shooting photographs of the HMAS Cerberus Gunnery and the RAN Bubblehead banners and before I knew it there was the Holga right back in my pocket, spent and smoking its metaphorical post-climactic cigarette. While I plugged the odd angry shot at the assembling cadets and bystanders. And I realised two distressing mistakes:

1. The crowd further down meant I was now trapped towards the rear of the parade, and
2. I was positioned with ASA 125 film on a cloudy day shooting a backdrop of a dark park

The ideal place for me on a drab and cloudy day would have been on the other side of the road further along the parade route beside the ceremonial dais. At that point I’d have photographed the march past salutes with the white ex-Mercury building behind to provide contrast. So I don’t place much hope in retrieving masterpiece photographs in that low light position where I became stranded. At some points the shutter speeds were ridiculously slow – perhaps the best I can hope for is the lomo effect? So, to say the least, this wasn’t my finest roll of exposures and I’m not rushing to process them first.

Then I had a chat with some of the dignitaries and I got asked on the spot to shoot a family portrait of somebody important as they were heading off to the cenotaph in their chauffeured car. That was kind of interesting, but I don’t hold great hopes for the quality of the image. Low contrast, slow shutter speed and fumbling with a manual camera in the seconds before they had to be inside their car.

The rest of the film was shot up on the Cenotaph at the Domain where the Hobart ANZAC service is held. Horses. Vehicles. Ceremony. Much better light.

In total I shot two rolls through the Nikon F2A Photomic, a roll through the Konica Big Mini SR BM-100 and a roll at the very beginning through the Holga 120n. That’s my ANZAC tradition. Lest we forget.

Yes, a landscape can make your jaw drop when it spawns from the bowels of a large format camera and spread as a vista in its own right across a gallery wall. And so can a portrait where every pore of the subject’s face gets bared for the viewer. But sometimes, many times, I’m left with a feeling that if size is needed to awe me into submission then perhaps the photographer has missed the point. The simple beauty of that landscape as a contact print, for me, is usually enough.

Everybody else might be happy. I just have a sneaking suspicion large photographs make us go WOW because they are relatively uncommon experiences.

An example jumps to mind… A few years ago I was a jury picked finalist in a mixed media art award (not something I’m normally interested in doing) and the winning image from a room of wonderful paintings, jewellery, sculpture and etching just happened to be a deadpan perfect digital print of a photograph – a top view of a clean kitchen sink. Had the photograph been smaller, would it have got the time of day; let alone $10,000 prize money for a professional studio? Did it impress because it took nearly half an end wall in that limited space?

And I see this quite a bit at galleries and art school exhibitions. Girl sitting on the side of a single bed, sullen, twenty feet across the image. WOW. But as time goes on I’m quietly thinking “And so bloody what!?” Surely there’s more to photography than being able to afford $1000+ printing costs.

I’ve grown fond of the idea that anything can be used to photograph anything as long as the photographer is intuitive enough to play to the strength of the technology in hand.

But mostly I’m fascinated by how a well crafted small photograph can draw me into its space on a gallery wall and talk to me as an individual. This is akin to the intimacy of a kiss. For just a little time I’m the only one. Yes, I know how corny and crappy that sounds; but, in contrast, many of those super-sized gallery prints seem to be only average photographs – gratuitous masturbation of wall space to impress the WOW-crowd. If it’s big, it’s awesome.

Occasionally I see big and awesome. Don’t get me wrong. But that’s a rare photograph. And when I’m walking the boards around a gallery with a red wine in hand I’m after a sweet kiss, not a strip joint neon sign overselling their value proposition.

Although, perhaps I’m just getting old, cynical and grumpy. That happens, too.