German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Nubdeb/Westf., no. 600. Photo: Warner Bros. Clark Gable in Band of Angels (Raoul Walsh, 1957). Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

With his natural charm and knowing smile, Clark Gable (1901-1959) was 'The King of Hollywood' during the 1930s. He often portrayed down-to-earth, bravado characters with a carefree attitude, and was seen as the epitome of masculinity. Gable won an Academy Award for Best Actor for It Happened One Night (1934), and was nominated for leading roles in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and for his best-known role as Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind (1939).

William Clark Gable was born in 1901 in Cadiz, Ohio, to Adeline (Hershelman) and William Henry Gable, an oil-well driller. He was of German, Irish, and Swiss-German descent. When he was seven months old, his mother died, and his father sent him to live with his maternal aunt and uncle in Pennsylvania, where he stayed until he was two. His father then returned to take him back to Cadiz. At 16, he quit high school, went to work in an Akron, Ohio, tire factory, and decided to become an actor after seeing the play The Bird of Paradise. He toured in stock companies, worked oil fields and sold ties. His acting coach Josephine Dillon, 15 years his senior, paid for him to have his teeth repaired and his hair styled. She also trained him to lower his voice and attain better body posture, attributes that that were instrumental in contributing to his later success and eventual iconic status. In 1924, with Dillon's financing, they went to Hollywood, where she became Gable's manager and first wife. He appeared as an extra in silent films between 1924 and 1926. However, he was not offered any major film roles, so he returned to the stage. While Gable acted on stage, he became a lifelong friend of Lionel Barrymore. He moved to New York City, where Dillon sought work for him on Broadway. He received good reviews in Machinal (1928). He gave an impressive appearance as the seething and desperate character Killer Mears in the Los Angeles stage production of The Last Mile. In 1930, Gable and Dillon divorced and a year later, he married Maria Langham (a.k.a. Maria Franklin Gable), also about 17 years older than him. After several failed screen tests, Gable was signed in 1930 by MGM's Irving Thalberg. He made his talking film debut as an archetypal villain named Brett in the Western The Painted Desert (Howard Higgin, 1931), starring William Boyd. Joan Crawford asked for him as co-star in Dance, Fools, Dance (Harry Beaumont, 1931) and the public loved him manhandling Norma Shearer in A Free Soul (Clarence Brown, 1931) the same year. His unshaven lovemaking with bra-less Jean Harlow in Red Dust (Victor Fleming, 1932) made him MGM's most important star. His acting career then flourished. At one point, he refused an assignment, and the studio punished him by loaning him out to (at the time) low-rent Columbia Pictures, which put him in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934) opposite Claudette Colbert. He won an Academy Award for his performance. The next year saw a starring role in Call of the Wild (William A. Wellman, 1935) with Loretta Young, with whom he had an affair (resulting in the birth of a daughter, Judy Lewis). He returned to far more substantial roles at MGM, such as Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd, 1935) and Rhett Butler in the Oscar-winning epic Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939).

After divorcing Maria Langham, Clark Gable married Carole Lombard in 1939, but tragedy struck in January 1942 when the plane in which Carole and her mother were flying crashed into Table Rock Mountain, Nevada, killing them both. A grief-stricken Gable joined the US Army Air Force and was off the screen for three years, flying combat missions in Europe. When he returned the studio regarded his salary as excessive and did not renew his contract. He freelanced, but his films didn't do well at the box office. He starred in such films as The Hucksters (Jack Conway, 1947) and Homecoming (Mervyn LeRoy, 1948) with Lana Turner. He married Sylvia Ashley, the widow of Douglas Fairbanks, in 1949. Unfortunately this marriage was short-lived and they divorced in 1952. In July 1955 he married a former sweetheart, Kathleen Williams Spreckles (a.k.a. Kay Williams) and became stepfather to her two children, Joan and Adolph ("Bunker") Spreckels III. In 1959, Gable became a grandfather when Judy Lewis, his daughter with Loretta Young, gave birth to a daughter, Maria. In 1960, Gable's wife Kay discovered that she was expecting their first child. In early November 1960, he had just completed filming The Misfits (John Huston, 1961) with Marilyn Monroe, when he suffered a heart attack, and died later that month. Gable was buried shortly afterwards in the shrine that he had built for Carole Lombard and her mother when they died, at Forest Lawn Cemetery. In March 1961, Kay Gable gave birth to a boy, whom she named John Clark Gable after his father.

Sources Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Sitting in a park in Paris, France

Reading the news and it sure looks bad

They won't give peace a chance

That was just a dream some of us had

Still a lot of lands to see

But I wouldn't want to stay here

It's too old and cold and settled in it's ways here

Oh, but California

California I'm coming home

I'm going to see the folks I dig

I'll even kiss a Sunset pig

California I'm coming home

While hiking Raad ny Foillan (Coastal Path around the Isle of Man) I was very lucky to be at the right place during sunset: Magnificent view from Bradda Head of Milner's Tower as well as Peel.

Possibly Mycena albidolilacea

Cienega Creek, Gardner Canyon near Tucson, Pima County, Arizona, USA.

©bryanjsmith.

Nikon D800 and 70-200 mm F 2.8 lens photoshoot of beautiful redhead Swimsuit Bikini Model Goddess with Pretty Blue Eyes and wavy blond hair.

Here is some awesome video I shot at the same time as the stills with the Sony Alpha NEX 6 camera with the 16-50 mm power zoom kit lens for nex6 e mount cameras bracketed to my Nikon D800:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYfDWw7w1uk

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ8v2zzItis

Combine the shallow-depth-of-field with Sony NEX-6 latest face-tracking auto focus, and you can see how the moving video keeps the model's pretty blue eyes in focus, while blurring the background! The Sony Alpha NEX 6 has much better bokeh than the cameras I have been using! :)

She was tall, thin, fit, toned, defined, and beautiful! Pretty blue eyes and firery red hair!

Modeling the Gold 45 Revolver(TM) Gold'N'Virtue(TM) Bikini!

Nikon D800E Photographs of a Beautiful Sandy-Blonde/Brunette Swimsuit Bikini Model shot with the new Nikon D800 and Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II AF-S Nikkor Zoom Lens.

Shot in both RAW & JPEG, but all these photos are RAWs finished in Lightroom 5.3 ! :)

May the HJM Goddesses guide, inspire, and exalt ye along yer heroic artistic journey!

All the Best on Your Epic Hero's Journey from Johnny Ranger McCoy!

Modeling the black & gold "Gold 45 Revolver" Gold'N'Virtue swimsuits with the main equation to Moving Dimensions Theory on the swimsuits: dx4/dt=ic. Yes I have a Ph.D. in physics! :) You can read more about my research and Hero's Journey Physics here:

herosjourneyphysics.wordpress.com/ MDT PROOF#2: Einstein (1912 Man. on Rel.) and Minkowski wrote x4=ict. Ergo dx4/dt=ic--the foundational equation of all time and motion which is on all the shirts and swimsuits. Every photon that hits my Nikon D800e's sensor does it by surfing the fourth expanding dimension, which is moving at c relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt=ic!

The books behind the pretty goddess on the Malbu bluff and surfboard are The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Homer's Iliad, Homer's Odyssey, Shakespeare, and Herman Melville's Moby Dick! My favorite books! Will have some video of the pretty model reading them beside a campfire soon.

They're all collectors editions! My books cost as much as my surfboards!

And for those who always ask, I shoot in RAW! Always! :)

Took this for a friend

Dcim\100gopro\G0120873.

Some background:

With more and more experience through military mecha in Japan during the late Nineties, Schaft Enterprise’s Europe branch started the development of civil Labors for public use. These models included the Type-8FF firefighting Labor, which was originally created for the Japanese market but eventually only sold and operated in the European market, and the Type-10P, a dedicated police duty Labor and a direct competitor to Shinohara Industry’s highly successful AV-98 Ingram.

The Type-10P was also promoted abroad, esp. in Japan, but it was rejected there due to its size and the strong (and established) competition from Shinohara Industry, namely the MPL-97S “Python” and the AV-98 “Ingram”. However, eight Type-10Ps were sold to the Austrian Bundespolizei and an undisclosed small number was bought by a private security service company in Northern America.

Technical Data:

Code name: Type-10P "Michael"

Unit type: police labor

Manufacturer: SEE (Schaft Enterprises Europe)

Operator: German Federal Police (Bundespolizei) and several major German federal state

police departments (Berlin, Northrhine-Westphalia, Bavaria), Austria, USA

Number built: 33

Accommodation: pilot only, in heat- and ABC-insulated cockpit in front torso

Dimensions:

Overall height 9.42 meters

Overall width 5.95 meters

Minimum revolving radius: 6.0 meters

Weight:

Standard 6.55 metric tons

Full 8.1 metric tons

Armor materials:

Light composite armor, effective against fire and small caliber rounds of up to 12.7 mm

Powerplant:

unknown

Maximum weight lifting capacity:

2.50 metric tons

Equipment and design features:

Visual and acoustic sensors, range unknown, with suitable recording and data transfer equipment

Retractable visor cover

Highly articulated manipulator hands

Searchlights

Flashlights and four claxons/loudspeakers on the shoulders

Armaments:

No internal weapons installed;

The Type-10P can operate a wide range of handheld equipment like an extendable baton,

anti-terror shields, and weapons like a 42 mm revolver handgun, a taser or a 90 mm pellet shotgun.

Two hardpoints on the lower arms to attach equipment/weapons, plus a single hardpoint on the

back with the option to carry a wide range of equipment packages.

The kit and its assembly:

Traditions can be nice to keep up, and this build is actually a kind of serial project: in 2015, a group build under the motto "De-/Militarize it" ran at whatifmodellers.com, and I submitted a thorough conversion of a 1:60 "SEE Type-7 Brocken" Labor it from Bandai – a pure military Labor turned into a firefighting mecha.

Now, in early 2021, the “Blue Lights” group build ran, and Patlabor – an anime near-SF universe circling around robot-assisted police work – lent itself for another mecha submission. I had an AV-X0 prototype as well as two Ingram kits in store, but I wanted “something different” and also not a Japanese police Labor, since I had just built a fictional Daihatsu Move police car of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. So, the choice fell on the “Phantom” kit as basis, what called for considerable modifications. The “Phantom” is actually an unmanned robot, but I found its stature quite intimidating and more plausible for a non-Japanese police Labor than e. g. a re-badged AV-X0.

At an early stage I already settled for a German police Labor, and took inspiration in some heavier vehicles that are operated by special units of the Bundespolizei, e.g. armored cars or water throwers. This also defined the Labor’s paint scheme (see below). However, the new police Labor’s design was far from certain, it gradually evolved while building the separate OOB elements. Thankfully, this 3rd generation mecha kit allows such a gradual progress, and step by step the details that had to be changed or scratched became clearer.

This primarily included:

A completely new head section; the Phantom has a kind of fixed "hood" with a relatively small and fixed "face unit" in its front. This would be changed into a free-standing head unit, like the standard Labors. I was lucky to find a leftover head unit from a “Helldiver”, an airborne military Labor from the same model universe – its pilot helmet added a tough look to my build, and I added some sensor booms from an Ingram, too. Some PSR went into the head’s re-design, too, and, in the end, it adds to the “riot control” look of my build.

The completely new head necessitated the complete removal of the original “hood” of the “Phantom” and its fixed, small head, and this gap had to be filled/framed with a scratched collar and a new attachment point for the new head. Later, the OOB “neck” element was integrated into the opening, and scratched hydraulic pistons filled void space.

In the same wake, a cockpit fairing was added to the chest, since this would become a manned vehicle, not a robot. This, as well as the collar, were sculpted with 2C putty.

In order to change the Labor’s hull shape a little more, I added a pair of headlights to the flanks of the breast – these are 1:24 car parts, left over from my recent Daihatsu Move build. The parts were fitted into holes, received a shiny backing with chrome foil (hard to tell through the protective grates, though) and were blended into the hull via PSR.

The pack with retractable boosters in the back as well as the extentable upper body (with the visible innards and the spinning blades hidden there) were omitted. Instead, I implanted a donor piece to the back (a back pack from an 1:144 Yha-Giga mecha from Megaro Zamac), which looks very mechanical (a heat exchanger, maybe?) and natural.

Furthermore, the openings for the “Phantom”’s original optical sensors in the chest were faired over.

New hands were deemed necessary; the OOB hands are much too slender and claw-like, and I was able to use the hands from an 1:24 PA-36HD (from Dorvack).

While raiding the donor banks I also came across suitable new shoulder guards, from an 1:144 “Serpent Custom” (Gundam). They replaced the OOB parts, they are taller and more edgy, which is against the “Phantom”’s rather organic design – but they were too good to be rejected, with consoles that would later carry flashlights (scratched) and louvres that could easily hide (and protect) sirens inside.

However, in order to integrate the new shoulder parts better into an overall look, I decided to modify the knee and elbow guards into a more squarish shape – with the help of styrene sheet and some (more) PSR. This stunt worked surprisingly well.

During this modification I also added hardpoints to the lower arms for equipment. I did not want a gun but rather fancied a riot shield and a baton. The right hand was modified to carry a stun baton, sourced from an Ingram kit, and the transparent shield was scratched from a mouth wash bottle.

Lots of work, but it was necessary to move the build away from its “Phantom” basis.

Painting and markings:

Basically very simple: all-blue. The current ID color of German police vehicles is RAL 5017 (Verkehrsblau/Traffic Blue), and before 2006 it was RAL 6029 (Pfefferminzgrün/Peppermint Green), both combined on standard vehicles with white - normally, these are leased white or, more recently, silver vehicles with foil. For the Labor's time frame around 2000, the classic green would have been appropriate, but I eventually voted for the later blue because it looks IMHO less militaristic.

Further design background: German special police vehicles like water throwers or armored cars rather carry a uniform livery, contrasted with very dark grey around the lower areas, and that's what I adopted for the Michael I police Labor, too, using the “Phantom”’s original livery as benchmark.

In Gunze Sangyo’s Mr. Hobby H15 (Bright Blue) I found a pretty good guesstimate for the characteristic German police blue, and it was contrasted with Revell 06 (Tar Black; RAL 9021). The backpack became medium grey, a similar tone to the silicone covers (which were left unpainted, just treated with a washing with thinned dark grey acrylic artist paint), and this medium grey was also used for some detail contrasts around the hull. This looks rather dry, but it reflects the sobriety of German police items, and the uniform blue is also a good contrast to the Japanese police Labors in white and black in my collection, and the others, too. A few highlights in white and cream are the only distractions.

Even though I did not want to weather the model, I did some dry-brushing/post shading (Humbrol 25, Revell 09, 77 and 75 in some areas) to emphasize the shapes/edges and to make the large areas, esp. on the legs, less uniform.

The markings come from two aftermarket sheets for German police cars: one is a 1:43 scale sheet from IDC Decals, the other a 1:87 scale sheet from TL Modellbau. The provided not only suitably-sized “Polizei” letterings and emblems, the IDC set also came with the characteristic dotted trim lines (reflective material in real life) that decorate many typical German police cars and which help to visually structure the Labor’s lines – even though their application to the bulbous surface of the model was not easy, and I rather used them sparsely.

After some more detail painting (e. g. some fake black panel lines, created with a fine felt tip pen) the model’s sections were sealed with a mix of matt and some semi-gloss acrylic varnish on the blue areas for a sheen finish, while the dark grey areas were painted with pure matt varnish.

The build of the “Michael I” police Labor was quite a challenge – mostly because it was not easy to get away from the model’s “Phantom” basis. But with the completely new head/shoulder section and the slight mods on arms and legs it looks quite unrelated – but still intimidating. The all-blue livery is not spectacular, but true to German standards, and it works surprisingly well and convincingly.

All over the capital, the Arirang adverts (« Grand mass gymnastic and artistic performance », « Welcome to Pyongyang » and so on) warn the profane…Between August and October, takes place one of the biggest and most impressive performances in the world. The tone is set : even the Beijing Olympics ceremony can’t compete with the mass games organized by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). The show is held several times a week and welcomes tourists from all over the World, including the US, in one of the most isolated and despised country on earth. The well-called « mass games » are designed to emphasize group dynamics rather than individual performances as the supreme emblem of communism. Prepared by hundred of thousands performers all along the year, after their classes for the youngest of them, they are entirely dedicated to the NK’s leader Kim Jong Il and his deceased father Kim Il Sung, considered as the « Eternal president » and « sun of the 21st century »…

In the surroundings of Pyongyang's May Day giant Stadium, two girls are running to perform for the Arirang show. They are already dressed in their gymnastic outfits, as well as some 100,000 others who participate to the performance. They all come to honour their self-proclaimed « dear leader » Kim Jong Il, after a very hard and gruelling training, since their earliest age. Yet, it has been many years that Kim Jong Il has not shown up, formally for business reasons. But officials now admit the western medias’ assertions of illness. Anyways, Kim Jong Il or not, the mass games are held every year in Pyongyang, as a means for the regime to show to the entire world the country’s strength and good shape. To reach this sole purpose, not less than 100,000 people are involved in a choreographed show of simultaneous dancing and gymnastics. Many symbols are displayed by thousands of trained athlets, whether they are adults or even children. Hand over their heart, the young pupils sing in chorus "We are the happiest children in the world", one of the famous propaganda songs in North Korea. Many dancers make movements either with ribbons or colourful flowers named « kimjonglias » after the leader Kim Jong Il. All along the show, a live band plays a ceremonious music.

On the background, some 20,000 young koreans sit on the terraces, facing the spectators. They flip coloured cards at a high speed to form a fresco of animated and detailed images, changing from one to another. Each time they turn the page to create a new giant picture, they cry out. It creates a awe-inspiring atmosphere, as the shout is mixed with the noise of thousands of pages turned at the same moment. The figures are stunning : to compose these images, 2000 children are needed to make only one soldier, 20,000 for a north korean flag. Hiding a much more grim reality, the panels represent Pyongyang enlightened by night, wheat fields ready for harvest, scientists at work, atoms as symbols of the nuclear bomb and others for the reunification of two Koreas. One of the North Korea’s myths (history according to them) is recounted by the means of a huge image made by thousands of children. It represents the two pistols reportedly used by Kim Il Sung, when he founded the Anti-Japanese People’s Guerrilla Army in 1932. When the pistols appear, the audience applauses loudly. Among them, many soldiers attend the show as the ultimate award after years of good and faithful service.The thousands and thousands of boys and girls involved create a giant mass movement in the stadium which leaves the public stunned. These talented performers are used to that kind of performance: in North Korea they have to dance, sing, jump and spin around as many times as there are celebrations, always in praise of their leaders. There are mainly two sorts of shows. The first one is the classical artistic show, named "Arirang" after the famous korean folk song (whose story sometimes changes, but most often recounts the legend of a disappointed woman who hopes that her lover will return to her –metaphor of the break-up with South Korea). The second one is a more political show, which was untitled in 2008 "Prosper our country" and intended to show the country’s greatest achievements and its struggle against the foreign oppressors.

The show continues in the same way for one hour. Thereafter, the thousands of people present vanish in the dark and silent streets of Pyongyang, which contrast with the flood of lights and music in the stadium. Within the space of a few hours, it gives us a a strange feeling, between the real and unreal, of another universe both terrifying and fantastic.

Dans toute la ville, les publicités d’Arirang (« Grande représentation gymnastique et artistique de masse », « Bienvenue à Pyongyang » etc.) mettent le profane en garde …Entre août et octobre, a lieu l’une des plus grandes et impressionnantes représentations au monde. Le ton est donné : pas même la cérémonie des Jeux de Pékin ne peut rivaliser avec les mass games organisés par la République Démocratique Populaire de Corée (RDPC). Le spectacle se tient plusieurs fois par semaine et accueille des touristes du monde entier, y compris des Etats-Unis, dans l’un des pays les plus isolés et méprisés sur terre. Les biens nommés mass games (« mouvements de masse») sont conçus pour mettre en avant les dynamiques de groupe plutôt que les performances individuelles comme emblème suprême du communisme. Préparés par des centaines de milliers d’artistes tout au long de l’année, après les cours pour les plus jeunes d’entre eux, les jeux sont entièrement dédiés au leader de la Corée du Nord, Kim Jong Il, et feu son père Kim Il Sung, considéré comme l’ « Eternel président » et « soleil du 21ème siècle »…

Aux environs du Stade géant May Day de Pyongyang, deux filles courent pour participer au spectacle de Arirang. Elles sont déjà en costume de gymnastique, tout comme quelque 100 000 autres qui participent à la représentation. Tous viennent pour honorer leur autoproclamé « cher leader » Kim Jong Il, après un très difficile et éprouvant entraînement, depuis leur plus jeune âge. Pourtant, cela fait plusieurs années que Kim Jong Il ne s’est pas montré, formellement pour des raisons professionnelles. Mais des officiels admettent les assertions des médias occidentaux sur sa maladie. Quoi qu’il en soit, Kim Jong Il ou pas, les jeux de masse ont lieu chaque année à Pyongyang, comme moyen pour le régime de montrer au monde entier la puissance et bonne santé du pays. Pour atteindre ce seul but, pas moins de 100 000 personnes sont engagées dans une chorégraphie de danses et gymnastiques synchronisées. De nombreux symboles sont affichés par des milliers d’athlètes entraînés, qu’il s’agisse d’adultes ou même d’enfants. Main sur le cœur, les jeunes élèves chantent en chœur « Nous sommes les enfants les plus heureux du monde », l’une des chansons de propagande les plus connues en Corée du Nord. De nombreux danseurs font des mouvements avec des rubans ou avec des fleurs colorées appelées « kimjonglias », du nom du leader Kim Jong Il. Tout le long du spectacle, un orchestre joue une musique solennelle.

À l’arrière-plan, quelque 20 000 jeunes coréens sont assis sur les gradins, faisant face aux spectateurs. Ils retournent des cartes colorées à une grande vitesse pour former une fresque d’images animées et détaillées, changeant de l’une à l’autre. Chaque fois qu’ils tournent la page pour créer une nouvelle illustration, ils crient. Cela crée une atmosphère impressionnante, le cri étant mêlé avec le bruit de milliers de pages tournées au même moment. Les chiffres sont stupéfiants : pour composer ces images, 2000 enfants sont nécessaires pour faire un seul soldat, 20 000 pour un drapeau de la Corée du Nord. Cachant une réalité bien plus dure, les panneaux représentent Pyongyang éclairée la nuit, des champs de blé prêt à être récolté, des scientifiques au travail, des atomes comme symboles de la bombe nucléaire et d’autres pour la réunification des deux Corées. L’un des mythes de Corée du Nord (ou histoire selon eux) est relaté au moyen d’une image gigantesque faite par des milliers d’enfants. Elle représente les deux pistolets que Kim Il Sung aurait utilisés quand il a fondé l’armée de guérilla populaire anti-japonaise en 1932. Lorsque les deux pistolets apparaissent, le public applaudit bruyamment. Parmi eux, de nombreux soldats assistent au spectacle comme récompense ultime après des années de bons et loyaux services. Les milliers et milliers de garçons et de filles participant créent un mouvement de masse géant dans le stade, qui laisse le public ébahi. Ces artistes talentueux sont coutumiers de ce type de représentation : en Corée du Nord ils doivent danser, chanter, sauter et virevolter autant de fois qu’il y a de célébrations, toujours à la gloire de leurs chefs. Il existe principalement deux sortes de spectacles. Le premier est le spectacle classique artistique, appelé « Arirang » d’après la célèbre chanson folklorique coréenne (dont l’histoire quelques fois change, mais qui raconte le plus souvent la légende d’une femme déçue qui espère que son amant lui reviendra –métaphore de la séparation avec la Corée du Sud). Le second est un spectacle plus politique, qui était intitulé en 2008 « Que prospère notre pays » et qui tentait de montrer les plus grandes réalisations du pays et sa lutte contre les oppresseurs étrangers.

Le spectacle continue de cette façon pendant une heure. Ensuite, les milliers de personnes présentes disparaissent dans les rues sombres et silencieuses de Pyongyang, ce qui contraste avec le déluge de lumières et de musique dans le stade. En l’espace de quelques heures, cela nous donne un étrange sentiment, entre le réel et l’irréel, d’un autre univers à la fois terrifiant et fantastique.

© Eric Lafforgue

www.ericlafforgue.com

Effigy (c. 1199) on the tomb of King Richard I of England (front) and Queen Isabella of Angoulême (back). Richard I was known as Richard Cœur de Lion or Richard the Lionheart because of his reputation as a great military leader and warrior.

The Royal Abbey of Our Lady of Fontevraud was a monastery in the village of Fontevraud-l'Abbaye, near Chinon, France.

The abbey was founded in 1101 by the itinerant preacher Robert of Arbrissel. The first permanent structures were built between 1110 and 1119.

The area where the Abbey is located was then part of what is sometimes referred to as the Angevin Empire. The King of England, Henry II, his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and son, King Richard the Lionheart were all buried here at the end of the 12th century.

It was disestablished as a monastery during the French Revolution.

The complex of monastic buildings served as a prison from 1804 to 1963. Since 1975, it has hosted a cultural centre, the Centre Culturel de l'Ouest.

A major restoration was completed in 2006. The abbey is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a historic monument of France.

All over the capital, the Arirang adverts (« Grand mass gymnastic and artistic performance », « Welcome to Pyongyang » and so on) warn the profane…Between August and October, takes place one of the biggest and most impressive performances in the world. The tone is set : even the Beijing Olympics ceremony can’t compete with the mass games organized by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). The show is held several times a week and welcomes tourists from all over the World, including the US, in one of the most isolated and despised country on earth. The well-called « mass games » are designed to emphasize group dynamics rather than individual performances as the supreme emblem of communism. Prepared by hundred of thousands performers all along the year, after their classes for the youngest of them, they are entirely dedicated to the NK’s leader Kim Jong Il and his deceased father Kim Il Sung, considered as the « Eternal president » and « sun of the 21st century »…

In the surroundings of Pyongyang's May Day giant Stadium, two girls are running to perform for the Arirang show. They are already dressed in their gymnastic outfits, as well as some 100,000 others who participate to the performance. They all come to honour their self-proclaimed « dear leader » Kim Jong Il, after a very hard and gruelling training, since their earliest age. Yet, it has been many years that Kim Jong Il has not shown up, formally for business reasons. But officials now admit the western medias’ assertions of illness. Anyways, Kim Jong Il or not, the mass games are held every year in Pyongyang, as a means for the regime to show to the entire world the country’s strength and good shape. To reach this sole purpose, not less than 100,000 people are involved in a choreographed show of simultaneous dancing and gymnastics. Many symbols are displayed by thousands of trained athlets, whether they are adults or even children. Hand over their heart, the young pupils sing in chorus "We are the happiest children in the world", one of the famous propaganda songs in North Korea. Many dancers make movements either with ribbons or colourful flowers named « kimjonglias » after the leader Kim Jong Il. All along the show, a live band plays a ceremonious music.

On the background, some 20,000 young koreans sit on the terraces, facing the spectators. They flip coloured cards at a high speed to form a fresco of animated and detailed images, changing from one to another. Each time they turn the page to create a new giant picture, they cry out. It creates a awe-inspiring atmosphere, as the shout is mixed with the noise of thousands of pages turned at the same moment. The figures are stunning : to compose these images, 2000 children are needed to make only one soldier, 20,000 for a north korean flag. Hiding a much more grim reality, the panels represent Pyongyang enlightened by night, wheat fields ready for harvest, scientists at work, atoms as symbols of the nuclear bomb and others for the reunification of two Koreas. One of the North Korea’s myths (history according to them) is recounted by the means of a huge image made by thousands of children. It represents the two pistols reportedly used by Kim Il Sung, when he founded the Anti-Japanese People’s Guerrilla Army in 1932. When the pistols appear, the audience applauses loudly. Among them, many soldiers attend the show as the ultimate award after years of good and faithful service.The thousands and thousands of boys and girls involved create a giant mass movement in the stadium which leaves the public stunned. These talented performers are used to that kind of performance: in North Korea they have to dance, sing, jump and spin around as many times as there are celebrations, always in praise of their leaders. There are mainly two sorts of shows. The first one is the classical artistic show, named "Arirang" after the famous korean folk song (whose story sometimes changes, but most often recounts the legend of a disappointed woman who hopes that her lover will return to her –metaphor of the break-up with South Korea). The second one is a more political show, which was untitled in 2008 "Prosper our country" and intended to show the country’s greatest achievements and its struggle against the foreign oppressors.

The show continues in the same way for one hour. Thereafter, the thousands of people present vanish in the dark and silent streets of Pyongyang, which contrast with the flood of lights and music in the stadium. Within the space of a few hours, it gives us a a strange feeling, between the real and unreal, of another universe both terrifying and fantastic.

Dans toute la ville, les publicités d’Arirang (« Grande représentation gymnastique et artistique de masse », « Bienvenue à Pyongyang » etc.) mettent le profane en garde …Entre août et octobre, a lieu l’une des plus grandes et impressionnantes représentations au monde. Le ton est donné : pas même la cérémonie des Jeux de Pékin ne peut rivaliser avec les mass games organisés par la République Démocratique Populaire de Corée (RDPC). Le spectacle se tient plusieurs fois par semaine et accueille des touristes du monde entier, y compris des Etats-Unis, dans l’un des pays les plus isolés et méprisés sur terre. Les biens nommés mass games (« mouvements de masse») sont conçus pour mettre en avant les dynamiques de groupe plutôt que les performances individuelles comme emblème suprême du communisme. Préparés par des centaines de milliers d’artistes tout au long de l’année, après les cours pour les plus jeunes d’entre eux, les jeux sont entièrement dédiés au leader de la Corée du Nord, Kim Jong Il, et feu son père Kim Il Sung, considéré comme l’ « Eternel président » et « soleil du 21ème siècle »…

Aux environs du Stade géant May Day de Pyongyang, deux filles courent pour participer au spectacle de Arirang. Elles sont déjà en costume de gymnastique, tout comme quelque 100 000 autres qui participent à la représentation. Tous viennent pour honorer leur autoproclamé « cher leader » Kim Jong Il, après un très difficile et éprouvant entraînement, depuis leur plus jeune âge. Pourtant, cela fait plusieurs années que Kim Jong Il ne s’est pas montré, formellement pour des raisons professionnelles. Mais des officiels admettent les assertions des médias occidentaux sur sa maladie. Quoi qu’il en soit, Kim Jong Il ou pas, les jeux de masse ont lieu chaque année à Pyongyang, comme moyen pour le régime de montrer au monde entier la puissance et bonne santé du pays. Pour atteindre ce seul but, pas moins de 100 000 personnes sont engagées dans une chorégraphie de danses et gymnastiques synchronisées. De nombreux symboles sont affichés par des milliers d’athlètes entraînés, qu’il s’agisse d’adultes ou même d’enfants. Main sur le cœur, les jeunes élèves chantent en chœur « Nous sommes les enfants les plus heureux du monde », l’une des chansons de propagande les plus connues en Corée du Nord. De nombreux danseurs font des mouvements avec des rubans ou avec des fleurs colorées appelées « kimjonglias », du nom du leader Kim Jong Il. Tout le long du spectacle, un orchestre joue une musique solennelle.

À l’arrière-plan, quelque 20 000 jeunes coréens sont assis sur les gradins, faisant face aux spectateurs. Ils retournent des cartes colorées à une grande vitesse pour former une fresque d’images animées et détaillées, changeant de l’une à l’autre. Chaque fois qu’ils tournent la page pour créer une nouvelle illustration, ils crient. Cela crée une atmosphère impressionnante, le cri étant mêlé avec le bruit de milliers de pages tournées au même moment. Les chiffres sont stupéfiants : pour composer ces images, 2000 enfants sont nécessaires pour faire un seul soldat, 20 000 pour un drapeau de la Corée du Nord. Cachant une réalité bien plus dure, les panneaux représentent Pyongyang éclairée la nuit, des champs de blé prêt à être récolté, des scientifiques au travail, des atomes comme symboles de la bombe nucléaire et d’autres pour la réunification des deux Corées. L’un des mythes de Corée du Nord (ou histoire selon eux) est relaté au moyen d’une image gigantesque faite par des milliers d’enfants. Elle représente les deux pistolets que Kim Il Sung aurait utilisés quand il a fondé l’armée de guérilla populaire anti-japonaise en 1932. Lorsque les deux pistolets apparaissent, le public applaudit bruyamment. Parmi eux, de nombreux soldats assistent au spectacle comme récompense ultime après des années de bons et loyaux services. Les milliers et milliers de garçons et de filles participant créent un mouvement de masse géant dans le stade, qui laisse le public ébahi. Ces artistes talentueux sont coutumiers de ce type de représentation : en Corée du Nord ils doivent danser, chanter, sauter et virevolter autant de fois qu’il y a de célébrations, toujours à la gloire de leurs chefs. Il existe principalement deux sortes de spectacles. Le premier est le spectacle classique artistique, appelé « Arirang » d’après la célèbre chanson folklorique coréenne (dont l’histoire quelques fois change, mais qui raconte le plus souvent la légende d’une femme déçue qui espère que son amant lui reviendra –métaphore de la séparation avec la Corée du Sud). Le second est un spectacle plus politique, qui était intitulé en 2008 « Que prospère notre pays » et qui tentait de montrer les plus grandes réalisations du pays et sa lutte contre les oppresseurs étrangers.

Le spectacle continue de cette façon pendant une heure. Ensuite, les milliers de personnes présentes disparaissent dans les rues sombres et silencieuses de Pyongyang, ce qui contraste avec le déluge de lumières et de musique dans le stade. En l’espace de quelques heures, cela nous donne un étrange sentiment, entre le réel et l’irréel, d’un autre univers à la fois terrifiant et fantastique.

© Eric Lafforgue

www.ericlafforgue.com

Detail of a stained glass window in St. Mary Magdalene Catholic Church in Omaha, Nebraksa, USA

Window by Mayer of Munich; it was installed in 1920

rural Alberta

Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania and its largest city, with a population of 574,221 as of 2017. Vilnius is in the southeast part of Lithuania and is the second largest city in the Baltic states. Vilnius is the seat of the main government institutions of Lithuania and the Vilnius District Municipality. Vilnius is known for the architecture in its Old Town, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. Before World War II, Vilnius was one of the largest Jewish centers in Europe. Its Jewish influence has led to it being described as the "Jerusalem of Lithuania" and Napoleon named it "the Jerusalem of the North" as he was passing through in 1812. In 2009, Vilnius was the European Capital of Culture, together with Linz.

Information from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilnius

Sometime this coming summer, I'm sure I'll be one of the most talked-about students at my high school when our publications class distributes our new yearbooks.

You see, this photo is going to appear on Page 122. Let me provide some details.

The journalism class's rationale for printing this photo is that paddlings occur so frequently at our high school that this form of punishment should be documented as a significant aspect of everyday student life. They believed it would be priceless if one of their staff members could photograph one of our students getting a REAL paddling!

Their plan was to get the student posing in position to have his butt whacked, while the principal faced the camera, brandishing the paddle, with the stern face of a disciplinarian. That part would be posed, but the shot will acquire authenticity by the fact that she did proceed to administer the paddling.

And of all the days and all the possible students, of course it would be just my luck that the photographer would show up at the exact moment I was about to be paddled! After he explained to the principal the reason he was there, she gave him permission to quickly shoot the photo, while firmly instructing me to stay put!

The yearbook staff had its desired photo, but couldn't yet act upon it.. It had to be approved by both the principal and the student before it could be published. She told the yearbook advisor she was OK with it as long as I was OK with it.

I was OK with it!

The reaction from my parents -- who spit out their coffee in a combination of laughter and disbelief when I showed them the photo -- caught me completely off-guard. "Of course they have our permission to use it. It's a very nice picture. Tell 'em we want to order the wallet-sized."

The yearbook staff planned for me to remain anonymous, thus being spared the embarrassment of being identified in this ridiculous positon. However, the staff reversed direction and decided to print my name after all! Their reasoning: My shorts were so recognizable that most of the student body would know who I was -- so the picture caption wouldn't make any difference. They asked me to make sure, and I was, like, "Yeah, do it! Tell 'em who I am! Give credit where credit is due!"

So, come August, I will have quite the humorous photo that will live in infamy. I'm sure this picture will pop up in countless conversations, and I'll be asked why on earth did I agree to it!? (To which, I'll respond, "I don't know. ... I just thought it would be funny.")

The issue I'll have to contend with later in life is: Do I share this yearbook with my kids? What would they say when they run across their dad in all his glory bending over, with FIGHTING ILLINI plastered across the seat of his PE shorts, about to get his butt paddled? I pray they inherit my sense of humor by smiling and chalking it up to dad being a goofy kid.

Oh, and by the way, as soon as the guy snapping the photo left, she hauled off and gave my butt one hellacious paddling!

I bet my butt will still be sore on the day the yearbooks come out!

Kourou Monastiri (Greek: Κουρού Μοναστήρι; Turkish: Çukurova "Çukurova", previously Kuru Manastır) is a Turkish Cypriot village in the Nicosia District of Cyprus, located 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) east of Kythrea. Kourou Monastiri is under the de facto control of Northern Cyprus. As of 2011, it had a population of 208.

One of the biggest and best Veterans Day parades this area has ever seen. More than 100 units with multiple components signed up to march or perform during this year's annual parade, hosted by the Hampton Roads Council of Veterans Organizations (HRCVO). The parade started at 9 a.m. at 16th Street and Atlantic Avenue, and ended at the Tidewater Veterans Memorial at 19th Street, across from the Virginia Beach Convention Center.

This year's Grand Marshal is CPL Johnny Johnson, USMC (Ret.) and MR1 William T. Jones, Jr., USN (Ret.) is this year's Co-Marshal. The parade will include, among others: Marching bands from the U. S. Army Training & Doctrine Command at Fort Eustis, Bayside, Green Run, Kellam, Landstown, Ocean Lakes, Salem and Tallwood High Schools, Honor Guards and/or Motorcycle and Mounted Units from Chesapeake, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach Police Departments and the Virginia Beach Sheriff's Office.

This year's parade is co-sponsored by the La Societe des Quarante Hommes et Huit Chevaux (40 & 8) Voiture Locale 86). It will include military units from the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force that represent military installations across the region. Veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Desert Shield, Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom will participate, as well as several Tidewater municipal and veterans support organizations, including Naval Junior ROTC Units and Boy Scout and Girl Scout Troops.

The Veterans Day Parade is sanctioned by the Department of Veterans Affairs National Veterans Day Committee and the Mayors of Chesapeake, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk and Virginia Beach who signed the Veterans Day Proclamation resolving that "citizens, businesses and organizations demonstrate due appreciation, admiration and respect for all veterans who have served our great nation."

Immediately following the parade, a formal ceremony was held at the Tidewater Veterans Memorial. This service included military and civilian honors to the Veterans. Afterwards, there was a luncheon at the DoubleTree Hotel.

Photography - Craig McClure

17076

© 2016

ALL Rights reserved by City of Virginia Beach.

Contact photo[at]vbgov.com for permission to use. Commercial use not allowed.

Picture Taken Of Seven Bryant Park Building Located At 41st Street And 6th Avenue Lit Up for The Holidays In New York City. Photo Taken Tuesday December 7, 2021.

IMG9169

iPhone 11 PRO

Shot of the 'BBQ Sunday' at the Westergasterras in Amsterdam. Taken with a Sony HX200V.

Last Sunday I went to the 'BBQ Sunday' at the Westergasterras to take photos of the DJ crew, it was a beautiful, perfect Summer day and I managed to enjoy the sunshine and the company of nice people between take pictures, lucky me :)

Amsterdam photos

Wicked reflections

www.amstersam.com

'Like' me on Facebook :)

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?

www.ravishlondon.com/londonstreetart

glorification of youth

blogged

1:52 out with the old as in let us elevate and honour the old

In the swirl of the Edinburgh Festival, you never quite know who you’ll meet — and that’s half the joy.

Here, a masked performer holds court within his rope-drawn circle, colours blazing from head to toe, as if he’s stepped straight out of a Commedia dell’Arte dream and into the High Street.

Rhythm, ritual, theatre and a touch of mystery — exactly what August in Edinburgh does best.

...Imagine a world with no armies, no crimes, no blood and no violence.

...Imagine streets free from hunger, injustice, gunshots and threatning eyes.

...Imagine respect, brotherhood, love and care flowing from our hearts.

...Imagine nothing but joy can wet our eyes, only thorns draw scars and only enough pleasure leaves dead bodies.

...Imagine the whole world speaking one language: THE LANGUAGE OF PEACE.

Class of 2023 cadets participate in Ruck Back upon completion of Cadet Field Training, August 10, 2020. Ruck Back is a 6-mile road march from Camp Buckner back to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. (U.S. Army photo by Michelle Eberhart)

cup of tears

Found during construction work in 1893, the 58 square metre mosaic floor quickly became one of the leading attractions of the health-resort city. Its hypocaust heating system is completely preserved. A walk through the understructure of the mosaic provides a view of the underside of the floor and reveals the principle and functionality of the Roman hypocaust system. The lively picture of the main mosaic depicts a scene in an amphitheatre. This is surrounded by a group of pictures alternating between gladiator and animal fights.

The Thraex (plural Thraeces, "Thracians") wore the same protective armour as the hoplomachi with a broad-rimmed helmet that enclosed the entire head, distinguished by a stylized griffin on the protome or front of the crest (the griffin was the companion of the avenging goddess Nemesis), a small round or square-shaped shield (parmula), and two thigh-length greaves. His weapon was the Thracian curved sword (sica or falx, c. 34 cm/13 in long). They were introduced as replacements for the Gauls after Gaul made peace with Rome. They commonly fought Myrmillones or Hoplomachi.

The murmillo (plural murmillones) or myrmillo wore a helmet with a stylised fish on the crest (the mormylos or sea fish), as well as an arm guard (manica), a loincloth and belt, a gaiter on his right leg, thick wrappings covering the tops of his feet, and a very short greave with an indentation for the padding at the top of the feet. The murmillo carried a gladius (40–50 cm long) and a tall, oblong shield in the legionary style. Murmillones were typically paired with Thraecis, but occasionally with the similar hoplomachi.

A wonderful view of the Ford Works at Dagenham in Essex from a fascinating book issued by the Ford Motor Company of England to tell the story of the company's activities during WW2. The book, issued in 1946, is full of sketches and paintings by Helen McKie, an artist who produced a lot of 'Thames-side' material for the river boat operators, the General Steam Navigation Co., as well as commissions for the Southern Railway.

The view looks across the Blast Furnace and other parts of the plant that formed the massive integrated vehicle production plant Ford had opened in 1931 on the marshes adjoining the River Thames. It replaced Ford's earlier UK factory at Trafford Park in Manchester. The camouflage used to try and break up the visual outline of the plant, and so distract enemy bombers, is very clearly shown. The subject of wartime 'camo' is brilliantly told in a book on the subject by Henrietta Goodden that was a relevation to me as it showed the work, and links, between so many mid-20th century graphic designers and artists whose names and work are so well known apart from their wartime service.

The lovely Mel in her gold sequinned dress

MelanieRose1 (MM #4380038).

Four studio flash and reflector - two gridded strip soft boxes from sides, beauty Dish plus large octa from front

DCFD Engine 2 District Of Columba fire department China town Washington DC

Tokyo, April 2024

University of Maryland Cheerleader

Michigan verses Maryland on September 24, 2022

Michigan Stadium, Ann Arbor, Michigan

When you look in the mirror and you see an image, in your mind, of faultless femininity where the outfit, make up and hair all work together, an air of happiness, contentment, calm and relaxation descends and envelops you and you wish that this was the way you were born and the way you could present yourself to the world everyday. x

Local call number: fs851494

Title: [Buck Thompson playing blues guitar outside of his house : Hastings, Florida]

Personal Author: Owen, Blanton, Collector.

Date: Photographed in February 1985.

Physical descrip: 1 slide : col.

Series Title: (Florida Folklife Collection.)

Repository: State Library and Archives of Florida, 500 S. Bronough St., Tallahassee, FL 32399-0250 USA. Contact: 850-245-6700. Archives@dos.state.fl.us

Persistent URL: www.floridamemory.com/items/show/121686

Aerial view of South end of Guelph. I can spot my house. Lots of nice woods and fall colours.

Sony A7 R RAW Photos of Pretty Sandy-Blond Bikini Swimsuit Model Goddess! Carl Zeiss Sony FE 55mm F1.8 ZA Sonnar T* Lens! Lightroom 5.3! Pretty blue eyes and long, long legs! Long as the day!

And here're a couple of HD video movies I shot of the goddess with the 4K Sony:

vimeo.com/45surf

Enjoy! Be sure to watch in the full 1080P HD!

The epic goddess was tall, thin, fit, tan, and in wonderful shape (as you can see).

Check out my greatest hits compilation, and let me know what you think:

www.elliotmcguckenphotography.com/45surf/45SURF-Heros-Jou...

As the Great Mick Jagger stated, "Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, girl

Pretty, pretty

Such a pretty, pretty, pretty girl." -Beast of Burden Sexy, hot, and cute too!

Epic Goddess Straight Out of Hero's Journey Mythology! Pretty Model! :) Tall, thin, fit and beautiful!

Welcome to your epic hero's journey! The beautiful 45surf goddess sisters hath called ye to adventure, beckoning ye to read deeply Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, whence ye shall learn of yer own exalted artistic path guided by Hero's Journey Mythology. I wouldn't be saying it if it hadn't happened to me.

New 500px!

500px.com/herosjourneymythology

New instagram! instagram.com/45surf

twitter.com/45surf

Pretty Swimsuit Bikini Model Goddess! :)

Join/like my facebook page! www.facebook.com/45surfHerosJourneyMythology

Follow me on facebook! facebook.com/elliot.mcgucken

vimeo.com/45surf

dailymotion.com/45surf

Nikon D300 Photos of Beautfiul Sexy Hot Brunette!

She was a beauty--a gold 45 goddess for sure! A Gold 45 Goddess exalts the archetypal form of Athena--the Greek Goddess of wisdom, warfare, strategy, heroic endeavour, handicrafts and reason. A Gold 45 Goddess guards the beauty of dx4/dt=ic and embodies 45SURF's motto "Virtus, Honoris, et Actio Pro Veritas, Amor, et Bellus, (Strength, Honor, and Action for Truth, Love, and Beauty," and she stands ready to inspire and guide you along your epic, heroic journey into art and mythology. It is Athena who descends to call Telemachus to Adventure in the first book of Homer's Odyssey--to man up, find news of his true father Odysseus, and rid his home of the false suitors, and too, it is Athena who descends in the first book of Homer's Iliad, to calm the Rage of Achilles who is about to draw his sword so as to slay his commander who just seized Achilles' prize, thusly robbing Achilles of his Honor--the higher prize Achilles fought for. And now Athena descends once again, assuming the form of a Gold 45 Goddess, to inspire you along your epic journey of heroic endeavour.

ALL THE BEST on your Epic Hero's Journey from Johnny Ranger McCoy!

Modeling the Gold 45 Revolver Gold'N'Virtue swimsuit. :)

A laid-back,classic, socal lifestyle shoot!

May the 45surf goddesses inspire you along am artistic journey of your own making!

ca. 1940

Image H99.201/3863

Shows pile of gas masks that have been assembled and tested

Visit our catalogue to download a hi-res copy or find out more about this image: handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/187199

Want to find more pictures from the State Library of Victoria's collections? guides.slv.vic.gov.au/pictures

Kussum in Simigaon

Fort Hays State University (FHSU) is a public university in Hays that is the fourth largest of the six state universities governed by the Kansas Board of Regents.

Fort Hays State was founded in 1902 as the Western Branch of Kansas State Normal School, which is now known as Emporia State University. The institution was originally located on the grounds of Fort Hays, a frontier military outpost that was closed in 1889. The university served the early settlers' needs for educational facilities in the new region. The first building closer to Hays was completed in 1904, at which time the university moved to its present location.

Information from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Hays_State_University

With a 2020 population of roughly 21,000 residents, Hays is the largest city in northwestern Kansas. It serves as the seat of Ellis County, and is home to Fort Hays State University.

The Venus of Arles is a 1.94m high sculpture of Venus at the Musée du Louvre. It is in Hymettus marble and dates to the end of the first century BC.

It may be a copy of the Aphrodite of Thespiae by Praxiteles, ordered by the courtesan Phryne. In the second century AD, Pausanias mentioned the existence at Thespiae in Boeotia (central Greece) of a group made up of Cupid, Phryne and Aphrodite. The Praxitelean style may be detected in the head's resemblance to that of the Cnidian Aphrodite, a work of Praxiteles known through copies. In a tentative attempt to reconstruct his career, the original Aphrodite of Thespiae would be a work from his youth (in the 360s BC), if we choose to believe that this partially-draped female (frequently repeated in the Hellenistic era - the Venus de Milo, for example - is a prelude to the fully-naked nude that was his c. 350 BC Cnidian Aphrodite.

The Venus of Arles was discovered in several pieces at the Roman theatre at Arles. The sculptural program at Arles was executed in Italy, perhaps by Greek artisans. Venus was the divine ancestor of the gens Julia; Arles, which had backed Caesar when Massilia backed Pompey was rewarded in numerous ways. A semi-nude heroic statue of Augustus was the dominating figure in the sculptural program of the Arles theatre.

The Venus was found in 1651, by workmen who were digging a well. The head appeared first, at a depth of six feet, which spurred further excavations. Later, after it had been given in 1681 to Louis XIV to decorate the Galerie des Glaces of Versailles, further excavations were made in the area of the theatre's scenae frons, but no further fragments were found. The statue was seized from the royal collection at the Revolution and has been at the Musée du Louvre ever since its inception, though it is not currently on display.

This Plaxton 'Supreme' bodied Bristol LHS6L was parked up outside the Appley Hotel on the seafront at Ryde on the Isle of Wight on August 12th 1992. HCG 58S was new in April 1978 to Southampton based Easson Coaches and during the interim period had worked for Rons, Ashington, West Sussex.

This image is excerpted from a U.S. GAO report:

www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-104

MARITIME TRANSPORTATION: Implications of Using U.S. Liquefied-Natural-Gas Carriers for Exports

Northwest Battle of the Beasts brought to you by Crossfit Finish First, August 3 & 4, 2014. North Thurston High School, Lacey WA

Blond & Pretty, Hot & Sexy Twin Sister Bikini Swimsuit Model Goddesses with Long Blonde Hair!

One of these may be in my LA gallery show!

While shooting stills with a Nikon D800 & video with a Sony NEX 6 with my 45surfer rig, I set another D800 up on the rocks for video! Enjoy some of the video here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLIwKVQ0JOA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGpIJ6c7u0g

In a Malibu sea cave!

They were tall, thin, pretty, hot, beautiful and hard to tell apart! :)

Twin sister goddesses!

Shot with my rather expensive B&W CP (circular polarizer)--the B W XS-Pro Kaesemann Circular Polarizer with Multi-Resistant Nano Coating ! I love the finish it gives! Nothing in post compares! :)

Finished in Lightroom 5!

Nikon D800 Photographs of two beautiful blonde swimsuit bikini model twin sisters shot with the brand new Nikon D800 and Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II AF-S Nikkor Zoom Lens.

Captured in both RAW and JPEG.

Check out the amazing detail in the full resolution photos! I was running out of CF & SD cards fast, as the files are huge!

Classic California Hero's Journey Mythology Goddesses! Tall, pretty, thin, fit, with pretty blue eyes and long straw-blonde hair, blowing on the sea breeze.

On El Matador Beach in Malibu!

Enjoy the epic beauty of the mythological hero's journey, in great detail via the Nikon D800! :)

The full resolutions RAWs and JPEGs are amazing!

Enjoy!

May the goddesses inspire you along your artistic hero's journey!

The tall, golden-haired, blue-eyed twin goddesses were modeling the black & gold Braveheat Sword (Cross) simsuit and "Gold 45 Revolver" Gold'N'Virtue swimsuits with the main equation to Moving Dimensions Theory on the swimsuits: dx4/dt=ic. Yes I have a Ph.D. in physics! :) You can read more about my research and Hero's Journey Physics here:

herosjourneyphysics.wordpress.com/ MDT PROOF#2: Einstein (1912 Man. on Rel.) and Minkowski wrote x4=ict. Ergo dx4/dt=ic--the foundational equation of all time and motion which is on all the shirts and swimsuits. Every photon that hits my Nikon D800e's sensor does it by surfing the fourth expanding dimension, which is moving at c relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt=ic!

May the Hero's Journey Mythology Goddess inspire you (as they have inspired me!) along your own artistic journey! Love, love, love the 70-200mm F/2.8 Lens! Holding it up all day, alongside the Sony NEX 6 with the 50mm F/1.8 lens for cool video bokeh which I have mounted under the Nikon D800E camera, is quite the workout! My shoulders have gotten bigger after so many days with six hour shoots in the AM and 3 hour shoots in the PM holding that rig up :). Plus I have to carry all the gear, books, and clothes a few hundred yards up and down the steep cliffs. I count my photography days as two workout days. :) But I love it! Every day presents a puzzle--how to figure out the light, and every model presents a mystery to be unlocked--what are her best angles/poses/actions? Nothing beats the challenge of capturing the natural beauty of a day out there, when the light's dynamic range can change by a factor of ten in a few minutes as the mist burns away to reveal the sun, and then the wind whips up and a fog rolls on in, making it seem like a windy December dusk in July. One must always be mindful of tide, times, and temperatures and work quickly before the cameras get too hot in the sun, or the model gets too cold in the wind, as the tide and rogue waves reach out to grab your equipment/props/clothes and claim them for Poseidon, the god of the sea . Beach photography/video is just like surfing, with the conditions always changing and every wave a bit different. Studio photography is like riding an exercise bike set at level 1 in a gym in front of a TV. And shooting stills and video @ the same time is like Jimmy Page or Slash improvising on his double-necked guitar.

I'm working on a book called "Lone Cowboy Photography: A Humble Hero's Journey into the Art of Photography" about how to shoot it all on your own--stills and video for sports, portraits, and landscapes--with no assistants nor teams. Just you and the goddesses, the heroic athletes, the majestic, epic landscapes, and a copy of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey to teach you of the poetry of epic, heroic beauty. You gotta be ready, son--you gotta be ready for quick-draw showdowns at sunrise and sunset, during the magic hours and in the harsh light at high noon. Every shoot is over the second you finish packing your bags for the day with all your batteries, backup cameras, freshly-cleaned lenses, washed and folded clothes and hoodies, and props and polarizer filters. Every shoot ends the second the prep is over, and the fun, and art, and life of the live performance begins. :) "Every fighter has a plan," said boxing great Mike Tyson, "Until they get hit."

All the Best on Your Epic Hero's Journey from Johnny Ranger McCoy!

Postcard scan of the Book of Kells (c. 800 AD). Folio 27v. The four symbols of the Evangelists.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_kells

Layer upon layer the ancient sand dunes accumulated and hardened into what we see today at Valley of Fire.

New Instagram! instagram.com/45surf

New blog celebrating my philosophy of photography with tips, insights, and tutorials!

45surf.wordpress.com

Ask me any questions! :)

Sony A7R RAW Photos of Pretty Brunette Bikini Swimsuit Model Goddess! Carl Zeiss Sony FE 55mm F1.8 ZA Sonnar T* Lens! Lightroom 5.3 ! Pretty Hazel Eyes & Silky Brown / Black Hair!

And here're a couple of HD video movies I shot of the goddess with the 4K Sony:

vimeo.com/45surf

Enjoy! Be sure to watch in the full 1080P HD!

The epic goddess was tall, thin, fit, tan, and in wonderful shape (as you can see).

Check out my greatest hits compilation, and let me know what you think:

www.elliotmcguckenphotography.com/45surf/45SURF-Heros-Ody...

Epic Goddess Straight Out of Hero's Odyssey Mythology! Pretty Model! :) Tall, thin, fit and beautiful!

Welcome to your epic hero's odyssey! The beautiful 45surf goddess sisters hath called ye to adventure, beckoning ye to read deeply Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, whence ye shall learn of yer own exalted artistic path guided by Hero's Odyssey Mythology. I wouldn't be saying it if it hadn't happened to me.

New 500px!

500px.com/herosodysseymythology

New instagram! instagram.com/45surf

twitter.com/45surf

Pretty Swimsuit Bikini Model Goddess! :)

Follow me on facebook! facebook.com/elliot.mcgucken

vimeo.com/45surf

dailymotion.com/45surf

Nikon D300 Photos of Beautfiul Sexy Hot Brunette!

She was a beauty--a gold 45 goddess for sure! A Gold 45 Goddess exalts the archetypal form of Athena--the Greek Goddess of wisdom, warfare, strategy, heroic endeavour, handicrafts and reason. A Gold 45 Goddess guards the beauty of dx4/dt=ic and embodies 45SURF's motto "Virtus, Honoris, et Actio Pro Veritas, Amor, et Bellus, (Strength, Honor, and Action for Truth, Love, and Beauty," and she stands ready to inspire and guide you along your epic, heroic journey into art and mythology. It is Athena who descends to call Telemachus to Adventure in the first book of Homer's Odyssey--to man up, find news of his true father Odysseus, and rid his home of the false suitors, and too, it is Athena who descends in the first book of Homer's Iliad, to calm the Rage of Achilles who is about to draw his sword so as to slay his commander who just seized Achilles' prize, thusly robbing Achilles of his Honor--the higher prize Achilles fought for. And now Athena descends once again, assuming the form of a Gold 45 Goddess, to inspire you along your epic journey of heroic endeavour.

ALL THE BEST on your Epic Hero's Odyssey from Johnny Ranger McCoy!

Modeling the Gold 45 Revolver Gold'N'Virtue swimsuit. :)

A laid-back,classic, socal lifestyle shoot!

May the 45surf goddesses inspire you along am artistic journey of your own making!

All 45surf Hero's Odyssey Mythology Photography is shot in the honor of Truth, Beauty, and the Light of Physicist Dr. E's Moving Dimensions Theory's dx4/dt=ic . The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c. Ergo relativity, time, entropy, and entanglement.

All the best on your Epic Hero's Odyssey from Johnny Ranger McCoy!

New blog celebrating my philosophy of photography with tips, insights, and tutorials!

45surf.wordpress.com

Ask me any questions! :)

Sony A7R RAW Photos of Pretty Brunette Bikini Swimsuit Model Goddess! Carl Zeiss Sony FE 55mm F1.8 ZA Sonnar T* Lens! Lightroom 5.3 ! Pretty Hazel Eyes & Silky Brown Black Hair!

All the best on your Epic, Homeric, Heroic Odyssey into the Art of Photography from Johnny Ranger McCoy!

All 45surf Hero's Odyssey Mythology Photography is shot in the honor of Dynamic Dimensions Theory's First Law and equation: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c: dx4/dt=ic.