ianpwatkinson's Photos on Flickriver

 

" Seeing as none of us knows where we're going we'd better stick together just in case one of us gets there" - Ken Kesey

 

"The most beautiful mind the most profound emotion one can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the source of all true science." - Albert Einstein

 

"Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.

But you are life and you are the veil.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

But you are eternity and your are the mirror." - Kahil Gibran

  

..... an engineer with a camera.

 

Darkroom is now closed and the silver chemistry gathers dust....

 

Well I was young, spirited and rebellious in the 60s and the 70s. Those times produced so many rapid changes in the mainstream of society, and inspired a great unity in the culture of youth.

 

We thought we were the vanguard of change, the torch bearers of a new dimension and a new way of thinking.

 

In reality nothing really changed in the world, the "same old same old" just kept on churning along.

 

The sense of injustice in the fabric we create called 'society' , and our abuse of our mother planets resources, are ever more corrupted and unsustainable. - more now than ever we need to change the way we are, we need a new way to think, we need to be aware of the unseen effects of our consumerism and how we treat our fellow humans ... we are, each and every one of us, responsible for the direction our future both as individuals and as a human community takes, and the subsequent impact that will have on our world.

 

The muted warnings of 30 and 40 years ago, so widely dismissed at the time by the governors of our world, are now discussed by those same governors with an urgency none of us can avoid taking on board - pollution, melting ice caps, falling fish stocks, inequality, global poverty.

 

Communication is one of the keys enabling us to make those changes - the visual image probably has more impact on the human psyche than any other form of communication, even the written word cannot have that same dynamic.

 

And Flickr enables a huge global 'pond' of immediacy, contact, expression, emotion, protest, direction and information unlike any other.

 

Sharing, appreciating the work of others, learning and motivating are a part of the Flickr process too, for us all.

 

Underneath it all, way back in time, we all have the same handful of ancestors - the common DNA keys that are present in humans.

 

That should make us all some kind of big family.

 

My love of travel, particularly to Asia and India in particular was first really fuelled by travelling through Europe to North Africa in the early 1970s, and then overland via Europe to Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and India shortly afterwards, before the days of Rough Guides, Lonely Planet and global "pancake breakfasts". Thereafter the travel carried on.

 

What have I learned? That those who have nothing still have boundless friendship and love, that they will give and share what little they have with a travelling stranger from another land, a transient being.

 

That money and wealth do not bestow any meanigful status to any of us, whoever we may be. In the eyes of nature material wealth has no meaning.

 

I have been taking pictures since I was a boy, from black and white through colour and Kodak Instamatics, an interest inherited from my father.

 

We would process black and white negatives and prints in his garden shed, using a wooden framed enlarger with an old 1930s camera bellows bolted on to focus, give aperture and size.

  

You could browse all my photos at one time as thumbnails using FlickrLeech, thanks very much for looking

 

www.flickrleech.net/user/ianpwatkinson

   

 

Please note all my work is copyrighted.....

 

ALL of the photos and artwork on my flickrstream are © IanPWatkinson - All rights reserved.

 

I would be happy to discuss making arrangments for you to use my images if you send me an email.

 

If you would like prints with Ultrachrome K3 inks mail me and I'm sure we can work something out ...

 

This work is copyright of ian watkinson

 

 

 

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