View allAll Photos Tagged DarkPast
by alexc43 ift.tt/1mwSAnI Colorado Street Bridge and Richard H. Chambers U.S. Court of Appeals. Pasadena, CA. January 3, 2016 #ColoradoStreetBridge #SuicideBridge #Pasadena #CityOfPasadena #Architecture #Bridge #ArroyoSeco #ArroyoPark #Haunted #HauntedBridge #Ghosts #DarkPast #Infamous #Paranormal #RichardHChambersBuilding #NinthDistrictCourtOfAppeals #VistaDelArroyoHotel #Hotel #Haunting #Hefe #HefeFilter #Filter #Beautiful
This is the first photo I took in December 2024, a dozen long years since I last shot anything professionally. The last time I pressed a shutter button was in February 2013—before I swore off Photojournalism and photography for good.
Back then, And on the exact same day as today, the 11th of February 2013, I was on the streets of Cairo, covering what will be known as the 30th of June coup/revolution against the Islamic rule in Egypt. I thought I had seen it all—until the night I almost didn’t make it home, for I have been shot in the face.
The closest time I have been to death happened less than a month earlier.
January 22, 2013. The city was a powder keg. A police bullet had taken an innocent life, and in response, the neighborhood rose in fury. residnce took to arms and open fire at the police station and suddenly, I found myself arriving to the scene in the middle of it all—camera in hand, but unable to do much else.
Two shots. 9mm rounds. Fired in my direction. I froze. The door behind me caught them instead—two neat holes punched into the metal. That photo still exists here on my Flickr, buried somewhere in my archives. I turned around and ran, straight into the mob—bullets flying in both directions. I ducked behind a car, watching as two young men fell. They had fired back, but the police were quicker. Blood pooled around them. I should’ve been shooting with my camera, but I couldn’t. I ran.
That night, I didn’t go home. I went straight to my go-to bar and drank until I blacked out. A week passed before I could even touch my camera again.
Then came February 11, 2013—today, 12 years ago. Another protest. Another confrontation. And this time, three cartridge bullets—hunting rounds—ripped into my face.
I was lucky. No vital organs hit. No permanent damage, aside from the scars. But in that moment, as I lay on a hospital bed, baring seeing my brother in the peripheral vision, everything was clear—I was done.
I left photojournalism that day. I switched to office journalism, then to producing, then to business, leaving politics for good.
My cameras sat untouched, gathering dust, for many years, unable to touch it.
And then, one night in December, over Hanukkah and Christmas, someone dear to me suggested I play LIS.
And just like that, something stirred. I remembered how much I used to love this. How photography was once second nature, how I used to walk into chaos, camera-first, afraid of nothing.
I hesitated. I could almost taste the iron in my mouth just thinking about picking up my 550D again—this cursed camera that had witnessed more grief than joy, more blood than rain, more bullets than dust. Yet, in the weight of all it had seen, I found a reason to lift it once more. And I did.
And this—this dimly lit photo of a simple salt lamp—was the first thing I shot.
And then, I couldn’t stop.
Fragments - 01
"I'm the Doctor. Well, they call me the Doctor; I don't know why. I call me the Doctor, too. I still don't know why."
BBC's Dr. Who Portrayed by Tyler Blossom of www.flickr.com/photos/tylerblossom/
11th Doctor - Matt Smith
BBC's Dr. Who Portrayed by Tyler Blossom of www.flickr.com/photos/tylerblossom/
11th Doctor - Matt Smith
BBC's Dr. Who Portrayed by Tyler Blossom of www.flickr.com/photos/tylerblossom/
11th Doctor - Matt Smith
BBC's Dr. Who Portrayed by Tyler Blossom of www.flickr.com/photos/tylerblossom/
by alexc43 ift.tt/1mwSAnM One more photo I am posting of the Colorado Street Bridge photo I took with the black and white Inkwell filter. Pasadena, CA. January 3, 2016 #ColoradoStreetBridge #SuicideBridge #Pasadena #CityOfPasadena #Architecture #Bridge #ArroyoSeco #ArroyoPark #Haunted #HauntedBridge #Ghosts #DarkPast #Infamous #Paranormal #Inkwell #InkwellFilter #BlackAndWhite #BWPhotography #Haunting #Beautiful
In the 1920's, the Ku Klux Klan was still a major influence in America, particularly in the Southern U.S. This was the largest of their meeting halls in the area at the time, housing more than 4,000 members in its massive auditorium. I don't typically comment much on a lot of the locations I photograph for various reasons, but I do want to make an exception for this particular one. This is a building that I have wanted to learn more about for a while now due to its immense (albeit, at first, very dark) historical value. It is evident that the bulk of the structure was used as an auditorium, complete with the remnants of a stage. This is not a proud part of Fort Worth's history, but it is a very important part, in my humble opinion. The proceeding is an excerpt from the Fort Worth Star Telegram for those interested in more of the story behind the location:
"The building, designed by Earl Glasgow with a 4,000-seat auditorium, was built in 1924 as the local headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan after the firebombing of an almost identical building on the site that was built in 1920, Historic Fort Worth said.
In 1931, Leonard Brothers Department Store bought the building for a warehouse. It was later converted for use as the Fox and Fox Boxing Arena.
Ellis Pecan bought it in 1946 and ceased its operation in 1999. A local engineering firm owned the property for a short time and had plans to renovate the structure for its offices."
Read more here: www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/art...
The second album released in 2011 from "Brite Futures" formerly known as "Natalie Portman's Shaved Head". Their last album before announcing their split in 2012.
11th Doctor - Matt Smith
BBC's Dr. Who Portrayed by Tyler Blossom of www.flickr.com/photos/tylerblossom/
11th Doctor - Matt Smith
BBC's Dr. Who Portrayed by Tyler Blossom of www.flickr.com/photos/tylerblossom/
11th Doctor - Matt Smith
BBC's Dr. Who Portrayed by Tyler Blossom of www.flickr.com/photos/tylerblossom/
A quiet almost silent Lake Dringo in a cold mountain range surrounded by bushes and wilderness. The water is still and mists are hanging all day long.
This natural beauty has a price, in a long forgotten time, mount Sinila erupted toxic gases and wiped out all villages nearby. A tragedy that keep on haunting the memories of survivors from the volcanic gas.
picture taken from the lakeside of Lake Dringo, Mount Sinila, Dieng highlands, Central Java, Indonesia.
11th Doctor - Matt Smith
BBC's Dr. Who Portrayed by Tyler Blossom of www.flickr.com/photos/tylerblossom/
11th Doctor - Matt Smith
BBC's Dr. Who Portrayed by Tyler Blossom of www.flickr.com/photos/tylerblossom/
11th Doctor - Matt Smith
BBC's Dr. Who Portrayed by Tyler Blossom of www.flickr.com/photos/tylerblossom/
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You can see him here most every day around the same time. A quarter after ten, as the hands of time tick around the clock of life with inevitable precision, come rain or shine as a well practised daily routine unfolds amidst the bustling crowds and coach parties of exciteable students that spill and spew onto the London landscape from around the globe. Better to hide in plain sight than be locked away in the dark confines of one's own mind, perhaps. Ambling along the dirty grey tarmac pathway of St James' Park, the little old man with the shuffling gait and wrinkled hands that now shake with age and ailments, clutching an old Asda plastic bag that is chock full of breadcrumbs and treats for the eager pigeons and grateful squirrels who beg, much to the amusement of the assembling crowd as the feeding frenzy commences.
Inconspicuous and anonymous, expensive designer clothing that dwarfs his diminutive frame as the years claim their pound of flesh from weiry bones and scrawny hide, he holds captive the warmth with his snazzy headgear, as once he had held captive those upon whom he vented his warped actions and dispicable deeds, now memories in a forgetful mind, dark episodes from a past littered with dirty secrets. And he smiles, oh so sweetly to the excited faces, the myriad of foreign tongues who laugh and clap as the animals jostle for the old mans attentions and the lure of his tasty morsels to eat.
He'll play to the crowd, as he always does, years of well practised feeding, a knowledge of the creatures of habit vast and plentiful and a location carefully picked just off the bridge where the black and white swans and family of beautiful pelicans majestically glide and saunter across the mill pond surface of the water. His fallen mouth, sucked in like a corpse with his dentures conspicuous by their very absence, and sullen eyes that have viewed the seedy side of life that you and I could never comprehend nor wish to ponder, define the man who is and was, and will bean enigma until his natural demise. They say that secrets follow a man to the very confines of his grave, and perhaps that is for the best in the case of some folk, for him at least this would be the case. For this man harbours a past that is riddled with inglorious acts of momentous notoriety, a darkness amidst the light of reason in a world still shell shocked by the very nature of such heinous crimes that filled the local tabloid spreadsheets, made the early evening news listened to by concerned mothers on radio players through the decades long gone by and consigned to the annals of histroy itself, along with the evidence pawed over by innept hands and processed in the days when technology took a back seat to leg work and corruption.
The sixties were the days of his prime, strutting like a peacock amidst the bravado and bullshit of the London scene. Beatles in the charts, Mary Quant on every girls lips and Twiggy as a role model, he walked the lanes of Carnaby street draped in high fashion, dripping elegance and charm, catching the eyes of the young and impressionable in the days long before cell phones, plasma TV's and forensic investigations that ventured further than an alibi and some police ineptitude as depicted in the weekly episodes of 'Dixon of dock green' or 'Softly softly'.
Almost half a century later and he is barely recognisable as the sharp dressing psychopath who terrorised the streets in those heady days of his youth. The point and shoot compact cameras with their promise of a trillion mega pixel clarity and idiot proof technology are out in force as parents usher their little ones to stand by the old man, centre stage in mediocre frames that back home on the walls of Europe will be blown up to gargantuan size and immortalized in acrylic form on the walls of happy homes. A tiny tot in baby blue designer clothing feels the lure of the old mans smile,and the touch of his hand on her shoulder as he poses with her for a series of hastily snapped shots. She moves away towards the comfort and reassurance of her grinning parents, her five year old mind somewhat confused and slightly dazed by the unnerving occurrence, a feeling within that her young mind that she cannot understand nor put into words of coherency as an ice cream van grabs her attention.
Far away in a nameless town in a faceless community lies a church and it's graveyard where a body lays rotting back to the earth and fresh flowers are placed with singular regularity each first Sunday in the new month by a little old man who the locals neither know nor notice. Times change, life goes on, but a friendship and bond that was forged in life by two like minds has never been forgotten. Accomplice and lover, the brains behind the meticulous planning and detail of each and every act, admired and revered, a role model of sorts to a mind so warped and depraved. A pillar of the community who was known for his beaming smile and pleasant disposition, doffing his trilby and stepping into the road at each and every instance of a meeting with an oncoming lady on the paved streets of that little Utopia.
It's cold this morning and the old man decides that enough is enough, he has satisfied his need for a connection of the mind and flesh, as a man snaps away with his fancy Nikon, smiling as a lone squirrel braves the wrath of the legion of pigeons that vastly outnumber him and snatches some food from the wrinkled fingers of the old man who stands before him. It was different back then when the seventies arrived amidst a hail of Hendrix riffs and drug induced melancholy.
There was an innocence that has long since died, a vibe on the streets that was as intoxicating as it was dangerous, and a freedom to roam and prey on the weak and hapless with vicious impunity and callous disregard for the humanity of compassion. They were the hunting days for the predatory pair, the killing fields that have now become shopping malls and motorway extensions, rubble piled on bones that have never been discovered nor excavated, nor ever shall. He'll take his morbid secrets to the grave that is bought and paid for in the plot next to his soul mate and peer. And the tears of the families in generations that successively spawn and hope to forget the past though cannot hide from the anger and regret, still flow and always shall as rivers of remorse with no bones to bury, no closure to take comfort in.
Lost love, broken hearts, nightmares and regret as police files lie dormant and dusty in the dank confines of the cement breeze block storage rooms where the unsolved cases go to rest. And still the little old man smiles at the children who fill his heart with happiness and joy, those tiny faces glowing with enthusiasm and excitement as he throws the food into the air and the pigeons catch the bites mid air with ease and aplomb. He tries to forget, or at the very least push to the very far reaches of his subconscious those tint faces that haunt him so in every waking hour, for some secrets gnaw away at a man, tearing at his inner self until he breathes his last breath. Life now seems so very different, though the routines followed bare a striking resemblence to those hunting days of old. Like a pied piper of sorts, the little old man procures the presence and interest of the animals with the lure of food now as perhaps he and his lover once did way back with candy and promises to the eyes and minds of the innocents. He no longer waits for a knock on his door nor fears the lonliness of a prison cell as his life clock ticks ever closer to a conclusion of sorts, and he views those mementos of his former life from time to time, remembering how things used to be.
Emptying the remaining dregs of food onto the grass section on the other side of the shallow black painted fence, the little old man neatly folds the plastic band, first in half and then once more again, placing the folded piece into his pocket before turning and shuffling away against the flow of people like a car down a one way street. The hands are riddled now with arthritics that moulds and deforms his limbs, though the intent within that ageing brain still lingers like a bad smell that just will not pass.
He'll walk a well trodden pathway towards the sanctity of his quiet abode, doffing his cap to neighbours one and all who ask about his health and wish him a good day before he closes the front door and throws the locks with a metallic clunk as the drawbridge is lifted. Bedroom attire and the comfort of Marks and Spencer's slippers, a mug of cocoa and some rich tea biscuits to dunk and savour and the upstairs bedroom with the padlock and chain firmly affixed to an old English oak wardrobe in which lies a monogrammed travel case and the memento's of each victim who suffered at his hands. There is little on the Television to occupy a restless mind, so a trip down memory lane to days gone by when life was good and love filled his now black and empty heart.
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Written March 24th & 25th 2011
Photograph taken at 10:07am on March 17th 2011 in St James park, just off The Mall in central London, England.
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Nikon D700 135mm 1/80s f/6.3 iso200
Nikkor AF-S 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3G ED IF VRII. UV filter. Nikon GP-1 GPS.
Latitude: N 51d 30m 10.59s
Longitufe: W 0d 8m 5.14s
Altitude: 25m
11th Doctor - Matt Smith
BBC's Dr. Who Portrayed by Tyler Blossom of www.flickr.com/photos/tylerblossom/
11th Doctor - Matt Smith
BBC's Dr. Who Portrayed by Tyler Blossom of www.flickr.com/photos/tylerblossom/
11th Doctor - Matt Smith
BBC's Dr. Who Portrayed by Tyler Blossom of www.flickr.com/photos/tylerblossom/
11th Doctor - Matt Smith
BBC's Dr. Who Portrayed by Tyler Blossom of www.flickr.com/photos/tylerblossom/
by alexc43 ift.tt/1PaCbMf View of the beautiful Colorado Street Bridge from Arroyo Boulevard next to Arroyo Park. Pasadena, CA. January 3, 2016 #ColoradoStreetBridge #SuicideBridge #Pasadena #CityOfPasadena #Architecture #Bridge #ArroyoSeco #ArroyoPark #Haunted #HauntedBridge #Ghosts #DarkPast #Infamous #Paranormal
11th Doctor - Matt Smith
BBC's Dr. Who Portrayed by Tyler Blossom of www.flickr.com/photos/tylerblossom/
Percy Smithers 1885 and family about 1939. He was an Uncle I never got to meet and who possibly wasn't even aware of my existence,
He served in WW1 after a rather shady background that's preserved in the family.
In the 1920's, the Ku Klux Klan was still a major influence in America, particularly in the Southern U.S. This was the largest of their meeting halls in the area at the time, housing more than 4,000 members in its massive auditorium. I don't typically comment much on a lot of the locations I photograph for various reasons, but I do want to make an exception for this particular one. This is a building that I have wanted to learn more about for a while now due to its immense (albeit, at first, very dark) historical value. It is evident that the bulk of the structure was used as an auditorium, complete with the remnants of a stage. This is not a proud part of Fort Worth's history, but it is a very important part, in my humble opinion. The proceeding is an excerpt from the Fort Worth Star Telegram for those interested in more of the story behind the location:
"The building, designed by Earl Glasgow with a 4,000-seat auditorium, was built in 1924 as the local headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan after the firebombing of an almost identical building on the site that was built in 1920, Historic Fort Worth said.
In 1931, Leonard Brothers Department Store bought the building for a warehouse. It was later converted for use as the Fox and Fox Boxing Arena.
Ellis Pecan bought it in 1946 and ceased its operation in 1999. A local engineering firm owned the property for a short time and had plans to renovate the structure for its offices."
Read more here: www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/art...
by alexc43 ift.tt/1kEwI89 View of the Colorado Street Bridge from Arroyo Park also infamously known as the Suicide Bridge for many people jumped to their deaths on this bridge, most of them came during the Great Depression during the 1930's, it is also believed to be haunted of the souls who tragically ended their lives too soon. Pasadena, CA. January 3, 2016 #ColoradoStreetBridge #SuicideBridge #Pasadena #CityOfPasadena #Architecture #Bridge #ArroyoSeco #ArroyoPark #Haunted #HauntedBridge #Ghosts #DarkPast #Infamous #Paranormal
11th Doctor - Matt Smith
BBC's Dr. Who Portrayed by Tyler Blossom of www.flickr.com/photos/tylerblossom/
while you're walking on the flaggings of the sidewalks you sometimes stumble over some special rocks with the name of a person and the date when he or she was deported to a concentration camp. this is touching you deep inside...
Strobist:
Modelo sobre pedestal a 2 m del suelo
- Yn460 1/16 snoot a la derecha a de distancia 2m elevado en muro a 1,20m
- Yn560 1/1 a la izquierda a 2m en tripode con paraguas reflectante elevado a 2,2m
- Camara en mano (1,75) a 2m
I saw a comercial on TV promoting this game and it seemed pretty clear that we've learned very little about how Europeans settled America.
You couldn't pay me to play this game. Way to go Microsoft.
walking through the holocaust-memorial was touching me as well.
it felt so cold, lonesome, uncoloured, strange.
by alexc43 ift.tt/1kEwHBc View of the beautiful Colorado Street Bridge from Arroyo Boulevard next to Arroyo Park. Pasadena, CA. January 3, 2016 #ColoradoStreetBridge #SuicideBridge #Pasadena #CityOfPasadena #Architecture #Bridge #ArroyoSeco #ArroyoPark #Haunted #HauntedBridge #Ghosts #DarkPast #Infamous #Paranormal