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best seen in black
Wearing:
Dress: "Chanelle" by Vitabela Dubrovna (Boudoir)
Glasses: "Black Angel Sunglasses" by Vitabela Dubrovna (Boudoir)
Headpiece: "Dragon Treasure Hat" by Vitabela Dubrovna (Boudoir)
Photograph taken taken at an altitude of Sixteen metres, at 14:22pm on Tuesday 10th September 2013 in Rowardennan Forest beside Rowardennan Pier on the small stretch of sandy beach on the shoreline at Rowardennan (Rubha Aird Eonain), a small hamlet on the Eastern shore of Loch Lomond in the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, Scotland.
Loch Lomond (Loch Laomainn), a freshwater loch situated on the Highland Boundary fault, is the largest inland stretch of water by surface area in Great Britain, at 39km in length and up to 8km in width with a maximum depth of 190metres. Primary inflows and outflows include Endrick water, Fruin water and the River Leven.
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Nikon D800 70mm 1/200s f/13.0 iso200 RAW (14Bit) Handheld
Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G ED IF. Jessops 77mm UV filter. MB-D12 battery grip. Two Nikon EN-EL15 batteries. Sandisc 32GB Ultra Class 10 30MB/s SDHC. Nikon DK-17a magnifying eyepiece. Hoodman HGEC soft eyepiece cup. Nikon MC-DC2 remote shutter release. Nikon GP-1 GPS unit.
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LATITUDE: N 56d 9m 8.47s
LONGITUDE: W 4d 38m 39.10s
ALTITUDE: 16.0m
RAW (TIFF) FILE: 103.00MB
PROCESSED FILE: 16.91MB
This photo was taken towards the end of my first year at university. I don't remember whose idea it was but I think it was felt to be the thing to do, to somehow draw a line under the year in readiness for the independence of smaller shared accomodation. I think the first time I heard of it was when someone knocked on the door of my room at tea time. In case you don't know I'm standing on the very far bottom right with the long hair, the navy blue jacket, greeny-orange coloured shirt and blue jeans with dirt on the knee. Amazingly I'm not the unconventional one, although at no point do I remember this being the style of the early nineties. The creases in the photo are because this is a colour photocopy of the one original copy which we all clubbed together to buy.
I'm startled not only by the number of those faces which I recognise and can name, but also by the proportion who I never spoke to for whatever reason. When we all moved into the hall everyone seemed like they were friends with everyone else. We'd sit in each others rooms until all hours or have adhoc corridor parties. But naturally that was the first week. People interact that way so that they can get a feel for who they have the most in common with.
I didn't really understand that. It seemed as though that was how it was going to be for the rest of the year. So in the second week when people I thought I was getting along with suddenly seemed colder or in those times when I was in rooms and felt generally ignored felt less welcome. That cocktailed with my rampant homesickness and possible low esteem to turn me into a nervous wreck. I remember coming home from seeing Sleepless in Seattle alone and looking around the darkened hall and seeing lots of closed doors with light peaking through the doorframes and feeling left out. Until now this memory was blocked out, but I sat on the cold, concrete stairwell and cried, as everything decended, feeling even worse because no one heard me or came out to ask what was the matter. I seemed alone and unwelcome. That was the older version of me. Now, I would have picked one of the doors, given it a knock and engratiated myself. But I was overwhelmed by the experience and the fact that what support network I had at home then was gone.
In the following days and weeks I made friends. In fact, I replayed a pattern from school and which would continue right up until today. A collection of friends who were all different and would never connect together if they ever met but who I got along with. I could have gone further. I was actually fairly square at university. I didn't really drink then either and too many times I think everyone would be out clubbing and I'd be in the library studying or curling up in front of a video. But I was the first person in my family to go to university, and at school I'd had a certain work ethic drilled into me, so I didn't want to let my grades drop even in the first year when I would have passed to the second year automatically anyway.
Most students probably look back at their time at university with some regrets either because they wish they'd been less of a hellraiser or like me that they'd made the most of the time they'd had. There were people I could have got on better with because the channels of understanding weren't in place or we just weren't fated to be 'chums'. But I'm not much of a conformists (although to a degree less so then). Perhaps the Debbie Gibson poster on the wall of my room in the first semester might have been a mistake.
Dave Foster, middle top row, tall, curly hair. He'd be the person I would end up spending the most time with over the three years at college (we'd always keep finding each other no matter the different shared houses we'd end up in), my particular memories of him at Macauley Hall were the late nights. There would usually be four of us, him and I, Paul the hall president (directly underneath him with the beard) and Paul's friend Andy. We'd regularly still be awake at 3am -- I lost a lot of sleep over those eight months. It would either be marathons of Star Trek, or X-Wing (which was the pc game of the time) or just watching satellite tv (Paul was the only halls resident in history to have a Sky system in his room). Usually, eventually, there would come a time in the evening when they'd want to go to the kebab house, Raj Putts, which was open until 4am. I only ever went once (it was a long walk). I had planned to get the pitta full of meat and hot sauce. In the event, after I'd seen the spinning lump it was coming from I plummed for a salad pitta. A sign of weakness perhaps, but I still think I would have been getting over the event until this day if I'd followed everyone else into the meat and heat.
One row back from the front is Karen Lopez. One night I was in the laundry room reading and washing and Karen came in with a basket of clothes. We'd never been great friends, but we'd chatted in hallways and I think I'd been up to her room a couple of times (which describes my relationship to most of the people in the hall). Karen who was always happy and hyper, looked shaken and depressed. I asked her what was wrong and she told me. It was one of the best nights I spent that year. Before Uni, at school and out I had always ended up being a listener and problem solver. My mouth can run away with me sometimes, but when I need to shut up I will. In those first few months no one seemed to need me. I like being needed. So when Karen started talking I suddenly felt at home again. She'd had an argument with her boyfriend (Andy, top row) and it seemed permanent. I just sat and listened, until long after we'd forgotten about the laundry. It's one of times when you don't remember exactly what was said, just the impression. I think I might have said some things about it not being the end of the world, about how two people love each other then can work it through. Whatever it was they got back together that night. I maintain that they would have done that anyway, but it just nice to have helped again. Just once.
But of everyone the one face which stands out is on the front row. Rosie Holt. She's the one in purple. Of all the people it would be nice to see her again. She's the one who on reflection was so unlike me and yet so close to who I think I am. She tried my patience sometimes, but equally I probably didn't give enough of a chance. I think we were friends, but too often she'd shock me enough that I'd run away and hide; at times I'd want to be quiet and Rosie would be there -- I'd think she was interupting but actually she was keeping me sane. Last time I saw her was ten years ago. I met her in the Merrion Shopping Centre in Leeds after I'd heard she left University. We didn't talk for long -- whoever she was with was hurrying her along (so mid-nineties) but there was something about her which made me worry. And I've worried about her for a whole decade. I've put her name in the 100 things I post in my user profiles online. Spookily, this exact day last year I posted on the weblog that someone had found the site by googling for the name Rosie Holt. Then tonight, as I was writing this, trying to remember someone's name, I inevitably looked on Friends Reunited. And there she was. Rosemary Holt now. Her entry says: "I am working in Glasgow, bringing up my 4 year old daughter and 'net surfing most of time!" Doesn't closure come from the strangest of places? Perhaps Rosemary might stumble on this sometime and we will see each other again.
This photo for me is about people, and memories of people. There's Phil Wynne who I'd chat to every night before I went to bed, and Andrew De Swarte who'd go the local supermarket a hairsbreath before closing so that he could gather up the reductions. Unlike a holiday snap which might remind the owner of a single moment, this is the record of an entire year of my life. Even if not everyone made it to the steps on time (Jess, Benoit, Anne-Marie) they're also there by association. I'd probably never known so many people at once before and at the same time not known them at all. But it also lets me see how far I've gone in ten years. Although my hair looks almost exactly as it did then, so something things aren't supposed to change.
My avatar in my (now defunct) gallery in the virtual world Second Life years ago. The illustrations (acrylics and iPad) were by me and the bar code still works taking you to another of my paintings (thanks for the warning). The picture on the right is also a bar code but the original link seems to have been broken.
taken by me on 28th december 2011 is regal busways leyland olympian 1203 B203DTU in chelmsford dukes street
Sculpture "Trains to Life"-Jewish children going safely to England on Kindertransport (Children's Transport). Berlin, Germany.
Escultura "Comboios para a Vida"-Crianças judias fugindo para Inglaterra nos Kindertransport (Transporte de crianças). Berlim, Alemanha.
live simply, love generously, speak truthfully, pray daily
and leave everything else to god...
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dear new ppl entering my life
thanx for being here
i just love my new life
=)
Still-life image - played with to give it a 'lost in the attic' look...maybe!
A couple of texture layes and the edges messed with!
Best viewed on black!
“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”
- Chief Crowfoot - 1821 -1890
The tree grew dim in the setting sun, yet wonderous color played in last of the suns rays. And so each day of our life passes into another. Days that are filled with multitudinous and myriad little wonders of life.
This is a common manual brick field in Bangladesh; children of working families in these brick fields also work here. They sacrifice their childhood and their rights. When I was taking photographs in brick field, they came to me and demanded favor of taking their photos. They posed spontaneously with smile being forgotten their hardship.
Oh where to begin…
Well it has been some time since my last serious post, and whilst I do drop in from time to time to see how you all are in the flickrverse, I rarely leave any trace of my being here, and yet I often mean to let you know I have peeped into your visions, so perhaps the time is now…
At first glance this seems an innocuous shot…taken with a new camera of my old camera, with my even older one behind…the new camera will not replace the new camera, but this photo has been taken using a tablet enabled computer, giving a vision of the older that I never dreamed possible…
Now this shot may seem pretty simple, a camera on a cluttered work space…if only you had a wider view…and it seems, to me, to encapsulate so much…
The Canon 5D in the foreground represents an incredible amount to me personally, the transition from hobby photographer to professional photographer (can’t believe I let myself say that), the purchase of a tool that was directed at achieving a goal, my first full frame experience, a huge step along a road that seemed untraversable…
Behind sits the 10-20mm lens of the Canon 7D, my first tentative step into my new life, a camera that represented so much to me when I bought it, but is increasingly being shunted aside in my life as I use the other gear more…a camera that a mate really wanted me to buy as it represented a step away from a “past” an into a “new”…a mate that without whom this photo would never have been possible…
And behind to the left is the father’s day present my son gave me…the lopsided desk tidy with the holes that a pen will never fit in…with a fluted Perspex wave design that a million monkeys working a million years could never reproduce…beautiful for its utter uselessness.
Under the 5D sits the registration papers for my car…which I am trying to work out if I can afford to re-register again…a car that I bought with my ex after my first child was born (she is about to turn 17), a car that I have nursed through so much, that has nursed me through so much, the both of us held together with duct tape and staples…
And behind again is the pile of paperwork that sits gathering dust…the incomplete tax return, unpaid bills, child immunisation forms, unsigned legal documents and records of a life that could have been lived better…
And behind again is the window of the home Ihave built with a supportive and loving partner, one who sees all of the above, yet is still there beside me when I wake up in the morning…
....where will it end.
and the soundtrack to it all - www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5k5Bg0L07w