View allAll Photos Tagged EXCITING
Nothing too exciting here, but this was my first time ever seeing a train here. The Friday Cape Cod Central dinner train which normally originates from Buzzards Bay has traveled to the very south end of what remains of the Falmouth branch to board passengers, one of a few times a year they originate the train down here. This allows for photos on the lower three miles of the line that is normally freight only. Here the train is pulled up to County Road at MP 6.8 awaiting passengers for their 5 PM departure north to Canal Junction and then a run south down the Cape Main to the great marshes in Barnstable before returning back to Canal Junction just ahead of the 7:10 PM arrival of the southbound CapeFLYER from Boston.
Leading the five car train on the north end is FL9 2026 (blt. Sept. 1957 as NH 2007) and bringing up the rear here is MC 2014. It is an EMD GP59 blt. Dec. 1989 as NS 4628 and retired and sold to Progress Rail in May 2020 before being rebuilt at MEI in St. Louis and ultimately arriving here this past March.
The 17 mile long Woods Hole Branch traces back to 1872 when opened by the Old Colonly Railroad shortly after its purchase of the original Cape Cod Central Railroad. The last regular passenger train ran in 1959 though for five more years the NH ran a summer only service from New York to Woods Hole that passed this way. After it's demise in 1964 the bankrupt NH lifted the lower 3 1/2 miles of rails from Falmouth station to Woods Hole. In the 1980s Cape Cod and Hyannis Railroad trains briefly returned service to Falmouth but the railroad went defunct in 1989. The rails remained fallow until 2008 when they were removed and replaced with a bike trail extending to present end of track just behind where I'm standing here at MP 6.8 in North Falmouth.
Falmouth, Massachusetts
Friday July 21, 2023
so happy to be home in New Hampshire after spending two (wonderful) weeks in Michigan.
i was in a rush as soon as I got home to finishing setting up my... Etsy Shop! i'm finally selling prints of some of my photos the way that i want. i'll do each print to order from my trusty local camera shop and i know they will be cropped right and shipped in good shape. i'm excited! i know i have at least one friend that will buy prints. who knows if anyone else will? heh...
Exciting news! My photo "Explosive Sunrise" taken at Mount Rainier National Park was chosen as Photo of the Day at Earthshots.org! Many of the best nature photographers in the world have had their photos published by Earthshots, so this is a pretty big honor! Browse through some of them when you have a chance, there are some amazing images submitted each day. In case the photo doesn't show up on the homepage, click on September 25th to view it...I think they go by UTC time for their website.
Not very exciting pics of my youngest cat June but don't want to exclude her from getting some time on Flickr. [ More below]
She is a feisty girl despite being petite and delicate. She will swat Rusty if he get's "in her space" with no hesitation.
She used to pick on Keiko [ our eldest ] relentlessly until Rusty came along. Now she rarely does, thank goodness.
Look closely and you can see the window &camera/tripod in my eyes :)
EXPLORE #412!!!! yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy :D
100 views-Feb. 11th
Estimated : € 100.000 - 125.000
Sold for € 60.375
RM Sotheby's
Place Vauban
Parijs - Paris
Frankrijk - France
February 2018
Though conceived as the ‘junior’ Lamborghini of the 1980s, the Lamborghini Jalpa has been noted as being much easier to drive than the Countach, especially in heavy traffic and at slow speeds. Equipped with a quad-cam V-8 engine with capacity increased to 3.5-litres and styling conceived and executed by Bertone, the Jalpa was designed to go head-to-head with Ferrari’s 308 in the battle for V-8 Italian sports car supremacy. With maximum power at 255 bhp and a top speed of around 155 mph, it’s hard for anyone to call this sports car ‘junior’.
Though only offered for seven years, the Jalpa went through a few revisions during its production run. The later versions of the Jalpa, like the one on offer here, had the original black plastic bumpers, air intakes and engine cover replaced by parts painted in the body colour. Originally ordered in Argento and delivered new to Rome prior to moving to the UK and subsequently France, where it resides today. The car is now presented in stunning yellow, a colour much more suited to the era. The interior blue leather is thought to be original and shows very little signs of age.
This Lamborghini Jalpa is a fantastic option for any owner looking for a rare and exciting sports car.
Exciting time!
Photographer Khalid Almasoud © All rights reserved
I wanted to know a sense of who they are inside the Kuwait Towers in this moment! , View from height of more than 180 meters, without a doubt a great, rare and distinguished , when you see the clouds with the level of your eyes, embrace you, the season will return again, and return such moments!
وددت أن أعرف شعور من هم داخل أبراج الكويت في هذه اللحظات ! , مشاهدة من ارتفاع تبلغ أكثر من ١٨٠ متر، بلا شك رائعة ، نادرة تلك الاوقات ومميزة ، عندما تشاهد السحاب مع مستوى نظرك ، يعانقك ، سيعود الموسم من جديد ، وتعود مثل تلك اللحظات !
This photo was taken on March 8, 2011 using a Leica D-LUX 5
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Like many others, the most exciting thing about the new Stranger Things set for me was the K5 Blazer designed by Adam Grabowski. Having seen it iterated in various colors by other people such as ER0L and Martin S., as well as Adam's original sketch, I knew I had to make one for myself. I went with the recently revived color Dark Turquoise for mine.
The original build uses a 1x2 - 1x4 bracket to form the 1/2 plate vertical offset in the hood, but that piece doesn't exist in turquoise, so I used two 1x2 - 2x2 brackets instead, with the classic 4081a plates holding the grill in place. Also, since this is a civilian version, I removed the cage and replaced it with a seat, using white lipstick pieces to now hold the side windows in place.
Ask yourself, if your power were out and you really wanted a hot shower, or to have lights on in your home that evening, would you call your local power company or the Contrail Company or maybe the Air Force? LOL
HTT
"DSCN1740TheContrailsMayLookMorePowerful and Exciting, BUT..."
Exciting to see this fully electric prototype out doing tests recently in anticipation of its first flight!
Moses Lake, Washington.
My friend made these outfits on this sewing machine when she was eight or ten. I LOVE the blue and white dress! An awesome benefit of being the keeper of things is that my friends give me their treasures knowing I will always cherish them and when my friends become nostalgic they can come for a visit. A few days ago one of my friends gave me her childhood dolls. I have been having so much fun.
In a decade’s time, an exciting new visitor will enter the Jovian system: ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or Juice. As its name suggests, the mission will explore Jupiter and three of its largest moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – to investigate the giant planet’s cosmic family and gas giant planets in general.
Juice is planned for launch in 2022, and its instruments are currently being perfected and calibrated so they are ready to start work once in space. This image shows one of the many elements involved in this calibration process: a miniature gold-plated metallic model of Juice used to test the spacecraft’s antennas.
Juice will carry multiple antennas to detect radio waves in the Jupiter system. These antennas will measure the characteristics of the incoming waves, including the direction in which they are moving and their degree of polarisation, and then use this information to trace the waves back to their sources. In order to do this, the antennas must work well regardless of their orientation to any incoming waves – and so scientists must figure out and correct for the antennas’ so-called ‘directional dependence’.
This shiny model was used to perform a set of tests on Juice’s Radio and Plasma Wave Instrument (RPWI) last year. It was submerged in a tank filled with water; an even electric field was then applied to the tank, and the model was moved and rotated with respect to this field. The results revealed how the antennas will receive radio waves that stream in from different directions and orientations with respect to the spacecraft, and will enable the instrument to be calibrated to be as effective as possible in its measurements of Jupiter and its moons.
Similar tests, which are technically referred to as rheometry, were conducted in the past for spacecraft including the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn (which operated at Saturn between 2004 and 2017), NASA’s Juno spacecraft (currently in orbit around Jupiter), and ESA’s Solar Orbiter (scheduled for launch in early 2020 to investigate the Sun up close).
The test performed for Juice posed a few additional hurdles – the model’s antennas were especially small and needed to be fixed accurately onto the model’s boom, which required scientists to create a special device to adjust not only the antennas, but also the boom itself.
The model was produced at a 1:40 scale, making each antenna 62.5 millimetres long from tip to tip; scaled up, the antennas will be 2.5 metres long on Juice. The main spacecraft parts modelled here include the body of the probe itself, its solar panels, and its antennas and booms. The model has an overall ‘wingspan’ of 75 centimetres across its solar panels. The photo also shows a spacecraft stand, which extends out of the bottom of the frame. The gold coating ensured that the model had excellent electric conducting properties, and reacted minimally with the surrounding water and air during the measurements.
Meanwhile, the assembly of the Juice flight model has started in September, with the delivery of the spacecraft's primary structure, followed by integration of the propulsion system.
More information: Juice begins to take shape
This model of Juice was built by the Technical University of Dresden, Germany, and the tests were performed by the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Space Research Institute in Graz, Austria, as part of a project financed by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG). The lead scientist for the calibration effort was Georg Fischer of the Space Research Institute, also using computer simulations performed by Mykhaylo Panchenko.
Credits: G. Fischer/IWF Graz
There are many towns in the world that go by the handle “Highland Park.” New Jersey, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Florida all contain Highland Parks. So do the countries of New Zealand and Canada. We will spend the next 36 hours in the Highland Park located in northeast Los Angeles, California - a low-key working-class neighborhood with an exciting variety of dining and cultural options.
Friday
6pm: We start our weekend with a drink at Johnny’s on York Boulevard (4). The place is full. The speakers are buzzing at a moderate volume with the bass line from Devo’s “Uncontrollable Urge.” The foosball and pool tables make for great entertainment whether you're playing or just spectating. There's a nice not-trying-too-hard-to-be-cool vibe to the place.
8pm: You won't find any pizza in LA both better and cheaper than the Neapolitan-style pies at Folliero's (3). On most nights you're sure to catch a glimpse of Titina Folliero, whose father Tony started the restaurant in 1968. These days there are post-impressionist paintings of Los Angeles on the brick walls, which are earthquake-retrofitted with several massive I-beams. Dinners here are a solid tradition among local families. Some patrons say they have been coming since "before they were born"!
9:30pm: Across the street from Folliero’s is an old dive bar and bowling alley called Mr. T’s Bowl. Perhaps the best thing about this place is the sound man Arlo. Bands have been named after him. He seems to have no last name, even to his good friends. Arlo is renowned among the indie musicians of Los Angeles for A) giving a hoot, B) not being totally deaf, and C) being an extremely good egg. Between bands he spins Dave Brubeck and the Breeders.
Saturday
8am: Saturday morning breakfast is at Café de Leche, about two doors down from Johnny’s on York. Café de Leche is about as trendy as Highland Park gets. We would guess this is due to the proximity of Occidental College and the more affluent neighborhoods of Eagle Rock. The coffee is great, as are the pastries.
10am: Highland Park is a small neighborhood, quite navigable by bike. The Flying Pigeon both sells and rents bicycles (ask for Car - despite her name, she's an expert on bikes). With an elegant and reliable set of wheels we're ready to explore the rest of the day's activities under our own power.
12pm: On weekends, the house and gardens built by the renowned author, historian and bon vivant Charles Lummis are open to visitors. Lummis wrote many books about the American Southwest, worked for the LA Times, and founded the Southwest Museum, the first museum in Los Angeles. The walls of his house are constructed of big river rocks. The doors are carved from thick slabs of oak. Inside the Lummis house are objects and pictures related to his life and work. Outside, huge sycamore trees shade the gardens and walkways.
1:30pm: The Good Girl Dinette advertises "American diner meets Vietnamese comfort food", and the tightly edited menu offers such delights as rice noodle salads (6), curry pot pies, banh mi with spicy fries, and "Grandma's pho". Chef and owner Diep Tran is an enthusiastic member of the community and sources some of her ingredients from local urban farmers - she's even hoping to work out an arrangement with the community garden just two blocks away.
3pm: After lunch we visit Galco's (1), a strangely world-famous "mom and pop pop shop." It turns out that there are hundreds of varieties of carbonated drinks that few have heard of or tasted. These drinks have been shouldered off the grocery shelves by bigger brands that literally pay for retail space. One of the few places to try these hundreds of different soda pops from around the globe is Galco's. There's also time to look at some funky old shirts at a thrift store called Urchin, play a couple of used guitars at Future Music, and peruse the vinyl at Wombleton Records.
6pm: As the sun sets, we stop on the sidewalk to pick up a couple of excellent made-to-order tacos at a place with no name (5). These two guys don't need a name, apparently, because they know how to cook. Everything costs one dollar. Their advertising is strictly olfactory. There is always a throng of hungry people there.
7pm: We join the fleet of bikers touring the neighborhood art galleries, which all have openings on the second Saturday of every month. Along with the Future Studio, Clare Graham’s MorYork Gallery (7) is a crowd favorite. This place is huge and filled with astonishingly labor-intensive sculptures. You have never seen more buttons, wooden yardsticks, scrabble tiles, neck vertebrae, or pop tops. The MorYork is very art-creepy and not to be missed.
10pm: For a final drink and bite to eat just cross the street to The York. This being a Saturday night, a DJ is crankin' some old-school hip hop. The bartenders make a decent margarita (2), and the gastropub fare includes steak & fries, truffle mac & cheese, and shrimp bruschetta (they also do a weekend brunch).
Sunday
8am: Antigua Bread will set you up with coffee, but if you want more, we recommend the Antigua breakfast. It's a simple winning combo of eggs, frijoles and platanos con crema.
10am: What better way to spend your Sunday than with a round of miniature golf at the Arroyo Seco municipal golf course? Four bucks gets you nine holes with your own colored ball and club. Most of the holes initially appear pretty easy, but -- as they say -- hilarity ensues. The blades of the windmill seem to have a knack for interception. There is a hole where gravity exerts its force diagonally. The dollhouse architecture verges on the Escher-esque.
12pm: The Arroyo Seco Grill at the course is a relaxed and sunny place for a meal. From the outdoor seating, we can observe the progress of the next group of miniature golfers while we dine on classic all-American fare. You can't go wrong with a burger, a tuna salad sandwich, or an omelet (breakfast, of course, is served all day).
Lighting:
1) SB-800 with a diffusion dome high camera left, after careful soda-bottle curation
2) SB-900 with a 1/4 CTO gel in a Lumiquest LTp softbox camera left and a little behind the subject. Camera on a tripod partly blocking the path to the restroom, necessitating many pauses.
3) SB-900 with a 1/4 CTO gel through a semi-collapsed umbrella high camera right, and an SB-800 with a diffusion dome far camera left, wedged between a tower of pizza boxes and the wall, lighting the pizza-maker in the background.
4) SB-900 with a 3/4 CTO gel in a Lumiquest LTp softbox camera right, and a slow shutter speed to capture ambient light & motion. Bouncer asked what I was doing, and told me "some of our customers probably don't want to have their picture taken." I did not inquire as to the reason why.
5) bare SB-800 camera left for a cooler accent against the warm lights of the taco stand camera right.
6) window light behind the subject, and a white reflector camera right to bounce fill into the small bowl of charred pork.
7) ambient light from many, many sources (quite a few of them visible in the image!)
See an expanded set of images created in pursuit of this assignment here. I shot at almost every location in my itinerary, met so many local businessfolk, and had a fantastic time. It got me to visit places I'd only passed by before, and set me up with contacts for possible future work. I'd call it a rousing success!
Update: One of the photos I shot at the Good Girl Dinette and gave to the owner has been used in an LA Times interview with her!
Tango dancing at the Vieille Bourse. Between july and september you can go to the old stock exchange in Lille to watch this event. You can watch but also dance on the exciting Tango tunes, or just take pictures.
when iguanas get hibiscus blossoms. The "Great Lord Borders" is a Green iguana (Iguana iguana). Photo by Frank. .
Dear friend!
I've had such a beautiful and exciting day today, just take a look here
See you around, Avinash Mohite
www.ravishlondon.com/londonstreetart
Together Shoreditch and Spitalfields in the East of London constitute the most exciting place to be in London. The population is young, dynamic and imaginative; Friday and Saturday nights are a riot with a plethora of bars and clubs many with their own unique flavour. But what makes this area really special is that Shoreditch and Spitalfields comprise what one might call, ‘the square mile of art’; a de factor open air art gallery; with graffiti, posters and paste-ups being displayed on the main streets, down the side roads and in all the nooks and crannies of this post-industrial environ.
From Eine’s huge single letters being painted on shop shutters, to the haunting propaganda posters of Obey, to Cartrain’s political black and white pop-art; and to the one very small bronze coloured plastic circle, with the imprint of a dog shit and a man's foot about to step into it, which I once saw pasted to a wall, there is an incredible diversity.
Being on the streets, the work can be destroyed, taken or painted over at any minute. It is fragile and transient. Furthermore the juxtaposition of different pieces of art is random and unpredictable both in content and its location, which means that each day throws up a new and unique configuration of work within the streets, which you can only experience by travelling through the city.
Street Art Beginnings
The reasons for why East London has seen the flowering of street art are manifold. The post-industrial legacy of Shoreditch’s crumbling low-rise warehouses, not only provides an environment in which the artists and designers can do their work, but East London’s proximity to the City of London provides an economic source of support for the artists and designers; and finally Shoreditch with its building sites, old dilapidated warehouses provides a canvas upon which those artists can display their work and increase their commercial value.
Set against the characterless nature of the steely post-modernity of the city, the autumnal colours of the terraced warehouses in Shoreditch, no bigger than four to five stories high; offer a reminder of the legacy of a thriving fabrics and furniture industry which blossomed in the seventeenth Century. Both Shoreditch and Spitalfields have industrial pasts linked to the textiles industry, which fell into terminal decline by the twentieth century and was almost non-existent by the end of Wolrd War II. The decline was mirrored in the many three to four storey warehouses that were left to decay.
The general decline was arrested in the 1980s with the emergence of Shoreditch and Hoxton (Hoxton and Shoreditch are used interchandeably to refer to the same area) as a centre for new artists. It is difficult to say what attracted the artists to this area. But it was likely to be a combination of the spaces offered by the old warehouses, the cheap rents, and the location of Shoreditch and Spitalfields close to the City of London; where the money was to buy and fund artistic endeavour.
Not just that but post-war Shoreditch dominated by tens of post-war tower blocks, built amidst the ruins of the terraced housing that lay there before, which was bombed during World War II; had the rough edge which might inspire an artist. Shoreditch hums with the industry of newly arrived immigrants but also of the dangers of the poorer communities which inhabit these areas. Homeless people can be found sat underneath bridges on the main thoroughfares on Friday and Saturday nights; and Shoreditch is apparently home to one of the largest concentrations of striptease joints and a number of prostitutes. So, Shoreditch is a crumbling dirty, dodgy, polluted mess but it also has money; and these two factors provide an intoxicating mix for artists, who can take inspiration from their environment, but also rub shoulders with people who have the kind of money to buy their work.
By the early nineties Hoxton’s reputation as a centre for artists had become well established. As Jess Cartner-Morley puts it ‘Hoxton was invented in 1993. Before that, there was only 'Oxton, a scruffy no man's land of pie and mash and cheap market-stall clothing…’ At that time artists like Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin were taking part in ‘A Fete Worth than Death’ an arts based event in Hoxton. Gradually these artists began to create their own gravity, attracting more and more of their own like. Clubs and bars began to emerge, as did a Hoxton style, ‘the Hoxton fin’ being a trademark haircut. Many designers and artists located around Shoreditch and Spitalfields. Shoreditch has also become a hive of studios for artists, vintage fashion shops, art students and musicians.
At the same time as an artistic community was forming fuelled by money from the City, London was subject to a revolution in street art. According to Ward, writing for Time Out, the street art scene began in the mid-1980s as part of London’s hip-hop scene. Graffiti artists, emulating what was going on Stateside, began to tag their names all over London. According to Ward many of those pioneers ‘went on to paint legal commissions and are at the heart of today’s scene’. That is to say, from the community of artists congregating in East London, a number were inspired by graffiti, and because the East London, with its countless dilapidated warehouses, and building sites, offered such a good canvas; they went on to use the East London as a canvas for their work.
Little seems to have been written about the individual journey’s particular street artists have taken to get to where they are, which help illuminate some of the issues talked about in this section. Cartrain said that Banksy was a huge influence for him commenting that, "I've sent him a few emails showing him my work and he sent me a signed piece of his work in the post."
What created the East London street art scene may also kill it
The East London urban art scene is unlikely to last forever, being the symptom of a delicate juxtaposition of industrial decline and economic forces.
The irony is that the same factors which are responsible for the creation of the East London art scene are likely to destroy it.
Politicians from all parties, spiritual leaders for global capital, tell us of the unstoppable forces of globalisation. They say if Britain is to continue to dip its paw into the cream of the world’s wealth it needs to become a post-industrial service economy; suggesting a rosy future of millions of Asians slaving away co-ordinated by keyboard tapping British suits, feet on desk, leant back on high backed leather chairs, secretary blowing them off.
Art, which is feeble and dependent upon the financial growth of an economy for its survival, will have to shape itself around the needs and demands of capital.
The financial district of the City of London, lying to the south of Shoreditch, has been successfully promoted as a global financial centre, and its mighty power is slowly expanding its way northwards. Plans are afoot for the glass foot soldiers of mammon, fuelled by speculative property investment, to gradually advance northwards, replacing old warehouses with a caravan of Starbucks and Japanese sushi places and a concomitant reduction in dead spaces to portray the art, increased security to capture and ward off street artists, increased property prices and the eventual eviction of the artistic community. Spitalfields has already had big corporate sized chunks taken out of it, with one half of the old Spitalfields Market being sacrificed for corporate interests in the last five years.
So then the very same financial forces, and post-industrial legacy, which have worked to create this micro-environment for street art to thrive, are the same forces which will in time eventually destroy it. Maybe the community will move northwards, maybe it will dissipate, but until that moment lets just enjoy what the community puts out there, for its own financial interests, for their own ego and also, just maybe, for the benefit of the people.
Banksy
Banksy is the street artist par excellence. London’s street art scene is vibrant and diverse. There is some good, cure, kitschy stuff out there, but in terms of creativity and imagination Banksy leads by a city mile. His stuff is invariably shocking, funny, thought provoking and challenging.
Banksy considers himself to be a graffiti artist, which is what he grew up doing in the Bristol area in the late eighties. According to Hattenstone (2003) Banksy, who was expelled from his school, and who spent some time in prison for petty crimes, started graffiti at the age of 14, quickly switching over to stencils, which he uses today, because he didn’t find he had a particular talent for the former. His work today involves a mixture of graffiti and stencils although he has shown a capacity for using a multitude of materials.
Key works in London have included:
•In London Zoo he climbed into the penguin enclosure and painted "We're bored of fish" in six-foot-high letters.
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•In 2004 he placed a dead rat in a glass-fronted box, and stuck the box on a wall of the Natural History Museum.
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•‘A designated riot area’ at the bottom of Nelson’s Column.
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•He placed a painting called Early Man Goes to Market, with a human figure hunting wildlife while pushing a shopping trolley, in the British Museum.
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His work seems to be driven by an insatiable desire to go on producing. In an interview with Shepherd Fairey he said, ‘Anything that stands in the way of achieving that piece is the enemy, whether it’s your mum, the cops, someone telling you that you sold out, or someone saying, "Let’s just stay in tonight and get pizza." Banksy gives the impression of being a person in the mould of Tiger Woods, Michael Schumacher or Lance Armstrong. Someone with undoubted talent and yet a true workaholic dedicated to his chosen profession.
Its also driven by the buzz of ‘getting away with it’. He said to Hattenstone, ‘The art to it is not getting picked up for it, and that's the biggest buzz at the end of the day because you could stick all my shit in Tate Modern and have an opening with Tony Blair and Kate Moss on roller blades handing out vol-au-vents and it wouldn't be as exciting as it is when you go out and you paint something big where you shouldn't do. The feeling you get when you sit home on the sofa at the end of that, having a fag and thinking there's no way they're going to rumble me, it's amazing... better than sex, better than drugs, the buzz.’
Whilst Banksy has preferred to remain anonymous he does provide a website and does the occasional interview putting his work in context (see the Fairey interview).
Banksy’s anonymity is very important to him. Simon Hattenstone, who interviewed Banksy in 2003, said it was because graffiti was illegal, which makes Banksy a criminal. Banksy has not spoken directly on why he wishes to maintain his anonymity. It is clear that Banksy despises the notion of fame. The irony of course is that ‘Banksy’ the brand is far from being anonymous, given that the artist uses it on most if not all of his work. In using this brand name Banksy helps fulfil the need, which fuels a lot of graffiti artists, of wanting to be recognised, the need of ego.
Banksy is not against using his work to ‘pay the bills’ as he puts it. He has for example designed the cover of a Blur album, although he has pledged never to do a commercial job again, as a means of protecting his anonymity. Nevertheless he continues to produce limited edition pieces, which sell in galleries usually for prices, which give him a bit of spending money after he has paid the bills. Banksy has said, ‘If it’s something you actually believe in, doing something commercial doesn’t turn it to shit just because it’s commercial’ (Fairey, 2008). Banksy has over time passed from urban street artist into international artistic superstar, albeit an anonymous one.
Banksy has a definite concern for the oppressed in society. He often does small stencils of despised rats and ridiculous monkeys with signs saying things to the effect of ‘laugh now but one day we’ll be in charge’. Whilst some seem to read into this that Banksy is trying to ferment a revolutionary zeal in the dispossessed, such that one day they will rise up and slit the throats of the powers that be, so far his concern seems no more and no less than just a genuine human concern for the oppressed. Some of what seems to fuel his work is not so much his hatred of the system but at being at the bottom of it. He said to Hattenstone (2003) ‘Yeah, it's all about retribution really… Just doing a tag is about retribution. If you don't own a train company then you go and paint on one instead. It all comes from that thing at school when you had to have name tags in the back of something - that makes it belong to you. You can own half the city by scribbling your name over it’
Charlie Brooker of the Guardian has criticised Banksy for his depictions of a monkey wearing a sandwich board with 'lying to the police is never wrong' written on it. Certainly such a black and white statement seems out of kilter with more balanced assessments that Banksy has made. Brooker challenges Banksy asking whether Ian Huntley would have been right to have lied to the police?
Brooker has also criticized Banksy for the seemingly meaninglessness of some of this images. Brooker says, ‘Take his political stuff. One featured that Vietnamese girl who had her clothes napalmed off. Ho-hum, a familiar image, you think. I'll just be on my way to my 9 to 5 desk job, mindless drone that I am. Then, with an astonished lurch, you notice sly, subversive genius Banksy has stencilled Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald either side of her. Wham! The message hits you like a lead bus: America ... um ... war ... er ... Disney ... and stuff.’ Brooker has seemingly oversimplified Banksy’s message, if indeed Banksy has one, to fuel his own criticisms. It is easy to see that for many the Vietnam painting tells us that the United States likes to represent itself with happy smiling characters, that hide the effects of its nefarious activities responsible for the real life faces of distress seen on the young girl. Something that we should be constantly reminded of. But then that’s a matter of politics not of meaninglessness.
Banksy’s ingenuity comes through in his philosophy on progression, ‘I’m always trying to move on’ he says. In the interview he gave with Shepherd Fairey he explained that he has started reinvesting his money in to new more ambitious projects which have involved putting scaffolding put up against buildings, covering the scaffolding with plastic sheeting and then using the cover of the sheets to do his paintings unnoticed.
Banksy has balls. Outside of London he has painted images in Disney Land; and on the Israeli wall surrounding Palestine. How far is he willing to push it? What about trying something at the headquarters of the BNP, or on army barracks, or at a brothel or strip club employing sex slaves, or playing around with corporate advertising a la Adbusters?
Exciting day yesterday; I live very close to the finish line for Stage 4 of the Tour of Britain and was able to watch the preparations, the crowd build up and then bag a spot 100 meters from the finish to watch the actual race. Here are a few I captured of the end of the race. The atmosphere was great and continued long after the racers had boarded their tour buses and moved on. Kwiatkowski looks over his shoulder as he makes his break for the line. Well done Bristol, another great event!
Exciting moments from the 2011 NYC Pride parade. It was my first time seeing NY's version, and it was very interesting.
Just got my first set of studio lights. two umbrella lights and I also got two backdrops (a black one and a white one)
Im also starting to work with RAW imaging and lightroom instead of jpeg which is new to me but I think it's for the better. It's just going to take some time getting used to.
I really like this edit. Its one of my first real lightroom edits.
Exciting days ahead now that we can actually get out of the house and go to the beach! Credits Here!
I pretty much bought this set with the intention of putting it on Raksa to do a shoot with her. She just seems like she should always be wearing exciting underwear. I also feel like I just have to put her in it, and she does the rest.
There's a little furniture under the drapery to give some stuff for her to lean or sit on.
Isn't this exciting?
I've never seen an artist painting a mural for a movie set!
The Madate Pictures comedy, “Great Hope Springs,” is being filmed solely in Connecticut, as crews scouted locations across New England with director David Frankel of "The Devil Wears Prada" and starring Steve Carell and Meryl Streep, set to release in December, 2012.
The flick follows Streep and Jones, a middle-aged couple, as they try to rekindle the romance in their 30-year marriage with the help of a therapist, played by Carell, and by taking a trip to Great Hope Springs, a fictional town set in Maine (all of us locals are wondering why they aren't in Maine)!
“Ye diners out from whom we guard our spoons.”
~ Thomas Babington Macaulay ~
“A restaurant is a fantasy ~ a kind of living fantasy
in which diners are the most important members of the cast.”
~ Warner LeRoy ~
Guanabara's Palace's front garden. Love the exuberance here!
Laranjeiras District, Rio de janeiro, Brazil.
Have a great weekend! :¬)
This time is exciting for photographers!!
I often go out unintentionally...
Please accept my heartfelt condolences for Steve Jobs on this occasion.
data:
Taken on Sep. 28, 2011
Nikon and Sigma10-20mm.
Shot on focal 10mm / Exposure 1/80sec / iso200 / F4 / with C-PLw filter.
Retouch on Photoshop +"Topaz DeNoise4 " layer, +"Topaz Adjust4" effect-layer.
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Ⓒ Tommy Tsutsui All rights reserved.
You can purchase license for this photo from Getty Images!
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