View allAll Photos Tagged Optimistic
Went out for an optimistic look for butterflies this afternoon - always a chance of some relatively docile ones resting up on a dull, windy day. Sum total for roughly 1.5 hours was a green-veined white, yes one. When I look back at last year in a months time I would have been at Collard Hill looking for an early Large Blue.
Did notice a greater variety of flowering plant emerging - Bugle, Germander Speedwell and others the identity of which I have no idea. Did see a Trefoil looking close to flowering on Walton Hill - maybe some Common Blues soon?
I have no idea what this little fella is however I liked him being completely immersed in this Buttercup. Looks good on black.
History & Meaning of Yellow Roses:
With their optimistic hue and general association with good cheer, yellow roses are the perfect way to toast friends, lift spirits and send a general wish for well-being. And that’s great news for those who love roses—the rose is known for its simple, architectural beauty, but some colors are so loaded with significance that they can be a bit tricky to work with. Sending a get-well bouquet of red roses to your administrative assistant might raise eyebrows around the office, for instance. Suffice it to say, you can never go wrong with yellow roses.
Long associated with the sun and its life-giving warmth, yellow is the age-old spokes-color for warm feelings of friendship and optimism. In many Eastern cultures, the color represents joy, wisdom and power. But while any yellow flower will send a lighthearted message, the history of the yellow rose in particuar has an optimistic, serendipitous character that really makes it the complete package.
By the 18th century the worldwide love of roses was in full swing, but they were only cultivated in shades of pink and white. At last, the elusive yellow rose was discovered growing wild in the Middle East, and the European love affair with yellow roses was born. The early yellow rose lacked the sweet scent for which the rose is famous, however, which was not to be tolerated. So, as cultivation methods were developed and refined, the beloved sweet-and-spicy rose scent was soon introduced and the yellow rose achieved all its optimistic and aromatic glory.
www.proflowers.com/blog/history-and-meaning-of-yellow-ros...
Part of the United Kingdom Set
Hey! here is a portrait(s) for a change. You might remember one of the girls from this other portrait. Still continuing shots from the London trip with the class. I can't remember the exact name of the place but its the church where they filmed the Hogwarts lunch room in Harry Potter. There was a gift shop and while a lot of the students bought stuff, most of them where wise and thought that a poster of a knight should not cost 35 pounds / 57 dollars.
Have a great monday!
Nathan
Optimistic girl that I am, I bought this Summer dress four months ago with the idea of being the Belle of Blackrock. We have the fire on tonight trying to dry clothes and keep warm so it's fair to say that it didn't quite work out as expected. Never one to be daunted, however, I'll buy a large bag of sand on Monday and pretend I had a lovely time at Bangor (as the song goes).
I woke up Saturday morning feeling optimistic. It was totally overcast, but there was no wind and no rain. Perfect weather for long exposure water shots! I grabbed my gear and headed out to one of my favorite spots, Catherine Furnace in the George Washington National Forest.
Only when I got there, I was shocked by what I found. The area all around the stream was torn up, bushes and trees removed, dirt and rocks misplaced, barriers everywhere. WTF?! Turns out the Forest Service has decided to replace the bridge that spans Roaring Run where it empties into Cub Run. So despite the ideal weather conditions and beautiful Spring foliage, my composition options were limited if I didn't want barriers to appear in my photos.
This is just another event in a long string of events that convinces me I have a photography curse. Last year, everyone I know that went to Shenandoah National Park saw a LOT of bears. Me? I saw two all year. I've been up to shoot the sunrise 6 or 7 times in the last few months and they've all been a bust. I can't find ducklings or goslings anywhere. My 5D broke. And now they've torn up one of my favorite photo spots! If that's not a curse, I don't know what is.
On a positive note, this is some of the best water flow I've ever seen at Cub Run, thanks to all the constant rain.
...hard work in a heat that would make most of us collapse within a few hours. Still there is room for a pure and warm smile!
Rice- farmers working after the sunset. Somewhere on the road west of Nong Khai, near the Mekong river, north-east Thailand 2008...
Large: View On Black
Copyright © Ioannis Lelakis.
All rights reserved.
Optimistically headboarded Peckett 0-4-0ST no 2111 'Lytham St Anne's' heads the last Midland Railway Centre vintage train service of the weekend away from Butterley.
Life can push me down
Life can wrinkle my skin
Life can shadow the sun
Life can simply pass me by
That will never break my spirit
I will stay optimistic
That just how it is
Life is what I live for
Lieutenant James Grant aboard the Lady Nelson sighted and named Mt Gambier in 1800 after a Lord of the Admiralty. The first white man to traverse the area was Stephen Henty of Portland in 1839 when he sighted the Blue Lake. He returned with cattle and stockmen in 1841. He later claimed that had he known the lake and volcano he had discovered in 1839 was in SA he would have immediately applied for an 1839 Special Survey. But Henty thought he was squatting on land in NSW and he was not an official SA settler so the government ordered him off the land in 1844. Thus the first official white settler of the South East and the Mt Gambier district became Evelyn Sturt, brother to Captain Charles Sturt, who took up an occupational license in March 1844 and a property he named Compton just north of the present city. In April 1844 Governor Grey and a party of assistants including the Assistant Surveyor General Thomas Burr and artist George French Angas explored the South East naming Robe and doing the first surveys. Evelyn Sturt became the first to have an occupational license to squat and the first purchase freehold land near Mt Gambier which he did in 1847- a section of 77 acres when 80 acres was the norm. He left the district in 1854 selling his freehold land to Hastings Cunningham who in 1855 subdivided some of this land thus creating the town of Gambierton. The town lands were adjacent to the site of the first police station selected near what is now Cave Gardens by the government in 1845. A small bush inn also operated at this spot. The first streets were named after early locals such as Evelyn, Compton, Ferrers and Crouch (built the first general store before the town was created) streets etc. The town grew quickly because of the mild climate, fertile soils, plentiful water and the influx of settlers from across the border in what was to become the colony of Victoria. Cunningham himself was a great benefactor and donated land for the first school in 1856. In 1861 the town name was changed by act of parliament to Mt Gambier.
Unlike other areas of SA the South East was seen as paradise for pastoralists and the optimistic pastoralists flocked to the area with their flocks in 1845. The large runs locked up the land and prevented farmers from settling in the region except for the fertile lands around Mount Gambier. Here small scale farmers had small properties and grew potatoes, hops, and later had dairy cows as well as growing wheat and oats. Land acts in the early 1870s designed to break up the big runs only partially succeeded in the South East where most station owners bought up their lands freehold. It was after 1905 before the big pastoral estates were really broken up for farmers and closer settlement, except for near Mt Gambier. Apart from Evelyn Sturt the other early white settlers of the South East in 1845 were Alexander Cameron at Penola, John Robertson at Struan, William Macintosh and George Ormerod at Naracoorte, the Austin brothers at Yallum Park (later John Riddoch), the Arthur brothers (nephews of Governor Arthur of Van Diemen’s Land) at Mt Schanck( now Mt Schank) and the Leake brothers at Glencoe. In fact in 1845 nineteen leasehold runs were taken up in the South East with a further thirty runs in 1846 and most had several 80 acres sections of freehold land near the main homestead. Most had got to the South East from Casterton and Portland in Victoria as the swamps near the coast were too difficult to traverse except for the country near Robe. Many of the estates were huge. Evelyn Sturt on the Compton/Mt Gambier run had 85 square miles as well as his freehold land; Robertson had 135 square miles at Struan; George Glen (and William Vansittart) of Mayurra had 110 square miles; the SA Company had 159 square miles on the Benara run; the Leake brothers had 194 square miles on Glencoe; Hunter had 56 square miles on Kalangadoo; Neil Black of Noorat Victoria had 45 square miles on Kongorong run and 101 square miles at Port MacDonnell and the Arthur brothers had a huge run at Mt Schanck. By 1851 almost 5,000 square miles of the South East was occupied by Occupational License and most licenses were converted to 14 year leases in that year. A third of all leasehold land in SA was taken up in the South East because of its higher rainfall and suitability for pastoralism and a third of all sheep in the colony were in the South East. When Hundreds were declared in the South East in the late 1850s and early 1860s pastoralists bought up the land. In one case John Riddoch of Yallum Park owned the entire Hundred of Monbulla. Another pastoralist W. Clarke who had purchased Mt Schancke station from the Arthur brothers in 1861 owned SA land valued at £1.25 million when he died in 1874 and he had 120,000 acres freehold in Victoria, 75,000 acres freehold in SA( Mt Schank) and 50,000 acres freehold in each of NSW and Tasmania! Mt Schanck was changed in Schank in 1917 when German place names in SA were changed as Schank without the second “c” is an old English name!
In the 1850s Mt Gambier was a shanty village as the South East was a region of large pastoral estates and little agricultural farming and very low population numbers. It was far from Adelaide and remote and it was only after the Princeland episode in 1862 with the threat of possible secession to a new state that the Adelaide government began to invest in the South East and encourage settlement there. The Border Watch newspaper was established in 1861, the Mt Gambier Hotel opened in 1862 and the Mt Gambier Council was formed in 1863.By the early 1860s Mt Gambier had almost 1,000 residents making it one of the largest towns in SA after the copper mining centres of Burra, Kadina and Moonta. By the 1881 SA census Mt Gambier had 2,500 residents making it the biggest town outside of Adelaide. In 1865 four iconic historic buildings were erected-the Courthouse, the Gaol, Christ Church Anglican and the Post Office and Telegraph Station. The flourmill which later became the Oat Mill opened in 1867 as wheat farmers had now taken up lands around the Mount. Mt Gambier was growing into a fine prosperous looking town with churches, stores, banks, hotels and fine residences. In the 1870s the rural population increased dramatically with tenant potato farmers on Browne’s Moorak estate and intensive hop growing in several localities such as Yahl and OB Flat and Glenburnie etc. Also in 1876 the first commercial forestry was started at the behest of George Goyder. A tree nursery was established on the edge of Leg of Mutton Lake in 1876 on a site selected by George Goyder himself. A stone cottage for the first nurseryman Charles Beale was constructed and it survived until demolished in 1969 but the nursery closed in 1929. The nursery propagated eucalypts, Oak, Elm, Ash, Sycamore, and North American pines. Pinus radiata was first grown at Leg of Mutton Lake and was being dispersed to other areas by 1878. Pinus canariensis was also grown in the 1880s. Pinus radiata is now the most commonly grown commercial forest tree in SA and Australia. Also in the 1870s the first hospital was erected and Dr Wehl, the town’s doctor for many years was in residence.
In the mid 1880s the first rail line was laid as the railway lines pushed out from Mt Gambier to Naracoorte. The service to Naracoorte began in 1887 and connected on with the line to Bordertown and Adelaide. By 1897 a railway connected Mt Gambier to Millicent and the port at Beachport. The railway line across the border to Heywood and Melbourne was not completed until 1917 as the SA government resisted a line that would take goods and passengers from Mt Gambier to Port Melbourne rather than to Port Adelaide. Mt Gambier railway station used to be a hive of activity with daily trains to Adelaide and an overnight sleeper services several times a week. Passenger trains to Mt Gambier from Adelaide stopped in 1990 after Australian National took over the SA railway network. Freight services stopped in 1995 and the railway line and station was formally closed. The railyards and other buildings were cleared in 2013.
I asked my best buddy if he liked to assist me as a model for my first photo shooting ever and surprisingly he agreed. That`s the result. I hope you like it.
It was with a slight sense of surprise that I discovered that I had achieved a ‘treble’ at the weekend; I have now visited all three of the outstanding great ‘de Warenne’ castles - Castle Acre in Norfolk and Sandal and Conisbrough, both in Yorkshire. The de Warennes were Norman Conquest knights with the first arriving with Duke William of Normandy in 1066 and thus being granted extensive English estates by his grateful leader. It was this first William de Warenne who built both Castle Acre and Conisbrough Castles.
It was William’s son, another William, who then went on to build Sandal Castle, near Wakefield, which I consider to be a greatly improved Castle Acre, Castle Acre Mark II if you like. While all of these were typical Norman ‘motte and bailey’ castles in the beginning - made of earth with timber palisades - it is possible to see that Sandal was made more secure by having a round barbican tower in front of the motte to act as an ‘airlock’ into the keep on top. This is a much more secure arrangement than at Castle Acre.
While Castle Acre, in relatively peaceful East Anglia, remained comparatively undeveloped Sandal (now sadly mostly demolished) and the still extant Conisbrough went on to greater things over the next 100 to 150 years with the earthworks acquiring tall stone defences instead of the combustable timber palisades that these castles had started with. Of course putting heavy stone on to earthworks has to be approached with caution. This had disastrous consequences at Conisbrough where half the gateway into the inner ward and a section of the adjacent wall eventually slid down the slope and still lies partly in the moat.
Conisbrough Castle sits on a steep hill above the River Don. Its outstanding feature is a stunning keep of the late 12th century which is still 28 metres or 92 feet high and which was re-roofed and re-floored in the late 1990s to make this elegant building fully accessible up to the roof level. The tower is essentially round and supported by six great buttresses, possibly because of doubts about the stability of the site. But it clearly points the way to the great round towers of 50 and 100 years later which were built by Edward I.
Starting at basement level there is a huge domed cellar (not accessible) which can been seen from the first floor level above. This is deep and wide and contains a well. While optimistically described as ‘for storage’ it looks to me like a huge oubliette or bottle-necked dungeon and one whose only saving grace is that there is a water supply as there are no windows and no stairs. It now contains a ton of glittering small change thrown down by visitors using it as a ‘wishing well’. The keep stairs are wide and easy to use and are still some of the best castle stairs I have tackled, none of this twisting around a single post. Instead there is an an elegant sweep up inside the thickness of the walls to the next level at a comfortable angle. Moving up the stairs to the two floors above are handsome chambers with large fireplaces, garderobes (toilets) venting outside, hand basins also draining to the outside and a small well decorated chapel. On the roof is a small bread oven built into the battlements.
After the first de Warennes it passed through the hands of the husbands of Isabel de Warrene, first William de Blois and then Hamelin Plantagenet, the half brother of King Henry II. It was Hamelin who built the keep. King John visited in 1201. The castle then passed through various noble or royal hands before ending up with Richard, Duke of York, who started the so-called Wars of the Roses. When he died at the gates of Sandal Castle in 1460 Conisbrough passed into the hands of his son Edward IV and became royal once again.
The last recorded repairs were made during the reign of Richard III. It would be sometime after this that the wall of the inner ward slipped and took out part of the gatehouse as well. This damage was fortunate as it made the castle quite undefendable during the English Civil War and thus is escaped being ‘slighted’ (made undefendable) by the victorious Parliamentarians. The castle became a setting for Sir Walter Scott’s romantic novel Ivanhoe in 1819 and this may have saved it as a picturesque and romantic ruin which was well worth a visit.
There was an outer bailey or ward in front of the collapsed gatehouse but this has largely disappeared. A Victorian or Edwardian lodge occupies part of the outer ward containing a small but well stocked museum and an education room. It is now managed by English Heritage.
Available at HypeForType: www.hypefortype.com/affair.html
Type designers are crazy people. Not crazy in the sense that they think we are Napoleon, but in the sense that the sky can be falling, wars tearing the world apart, disasters splitting the very ground we walk on, plagues circling continents to pick victims randomly, yet we will still perform our ever optimistic task of making some little spot of the world more appealing to the human eye. We ought to be proud of ourselves, I believe. Optimism is hard to come by these days. Regardless of our own personal reasons for doing what we do, the very thing we do is in itself an act of optimism and belief in the inherent beauty that exists within humanity.
As recently as ten years ago, I wouldn't have been able to choose the amazing obscure profession I now have, wouldn't have been able to be humbled by the history that falls into my hands and slides in front of my eyes every day, wouldn't have been able to live and work across previously impenetrable cultural lines as I do now, and wouldn't have been able to raise my glass of Malbeck wine to toast every type designer who was before me, is with me, and will be after me. As recently as ten years ago, I wouldn't have been able to mean these words as I wrote them: It’s a small world.
Yes, it is a small world, and a wonderfully complex one too. With so much information drowning our senses by the minute, it has become difficult to find clear meaning in almost anything. Something throughout the day is bound to make us feel even smaller in this small world. Most of us find comfort in a routine. Some of us find extended families. But in the end we are all Eleanor Rigbys, lonely on the inside and waiting for a miracle to come. If a miracle can make the world small, another one can perhaps give us meaning.
And sometimes a miracle happens for a split second, then gets buried until a crazy type designer finds it. I was on my honeymoon in New York City when I first stumbled upon the letters that eventually started this Affair. A simple, content tourist walking down the streets formerly unknown to me except through pop music and film references. Browsing the shops of the city that made Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, and a thousand other artists. Trying to chase away the tourist mentality, wondering what it would be like to actually live in the city of a billion tiny lights.
Tourists don't go to libraries in foreign cities. So I walked into one. Two hours later I wasn't in New York anymore. I wasn't anywhere substantial. I was the crazy type designer at the apex of insanity. La La Land, alphabet heaven, curves and twirls and loops and swashes, ribbons and bows and naked letters. I'm probably not the very first person on this planet to be seduced into starting an Affair while on his honeymoon, but it is something to tease my better half about once in a while.
To this day I can't decide if I actually found the worn book, or if the book itself called for me. Its spine was nothing special, sitting on a shelf, tightly flanked by similar spines on either side. Yet it was the only one I picked off that shelf. And I looked at only one page in it before walking to the photocopier and cheating it with an Argentine coin, since I didn't have the American quarter it wanted.
That was the beginning. I am now writing this after the Affair is over. And it was an Affair to remember, to pull a phrase. Right now, long after I have drawn and digitized and tested this alphabet, and long after I saw what some of this generation’s type designers saw in it, I have the luxury to speculate on what Affair really is, what made me begin and finish it, what cultural expressions it has, and so on. But in all honesty it wasn't like that. Much like in my Ministry Script experience, I was a driven man, a lover walking the ledge, an infatuated student following the instructions of his teacher while seeing her as a perfect angel. I am not exaggerating when I say that the letters themselves told me how to extend them. I was exploited by an alphabet, and it felt great.
Unlike my experience with Ministry Script, where the objective was to push the technology to its limits, this Affair felt like the most natural and casual sequence of processions in the world – my hand following the grid, the grid following what my hand had already done – a circle of creation contained in one square computer cell, then doing it all over again. By contrast, it was the lousiest feeling in the world when I finally reached the conclusion that the Affair was done. What would I do now? Would any commitment I make from now on constitute a betrayal of these past precious months? I'm largely over all that now, of course. I like to think I'm a better man now because of the experience.
Affair is an enormous, intricately calligraphic OpenType font based on a 9x9 photocopy of a page from a 1950s lettering book. In any calligraphic font, the global parameters for developing the characters are usually quite volatile and hard to pin down, but in this case it was particularly difficult because the photocopy was too gray and the letters were of different sizes, very intertwined and scan-impossible. So finishing the first few characters in order to establish the global rhythm was quite a long process, after which the work became a unique soothing, numbing routine by which I will always remember this Affair. The result of all the work, at least to the eyes of this crazy designer, is 1950s American lettering with a very Argentine wrapper. My Affair is infused with the spirit of filete, dulce de leche, yerba mate, and Carlos Gardel.
Upon finishing the font I was fortunate enough that a few of my colleagues, great type designers and probably much saner than I am, agreed to show me how they envision my Affair in action. The beauty they showed me makes me feel small and yearn for the world to be even smaller now – at least small enough so that my international colleagues and I can meet and exchange stories over a good parrilla. These people, whose kindness is very deserving of my gratitude, and whose beautiful art is very deserving of your appreciation, are in no particular order: Corey Holms, Mariano Lopez Hiriart, Xavier Dupré, Alejandro Ros, Rebecca Alaccari, Laura Meseguer, Neil Summerour, Eduardo Manso, and the Doma group. You can see how they envisioned using Affair in the section of this booklet entitled A Foreign Affair.
The rest of this booklet contains all the obligatory technical details that should come with a font this massive. I hope this Affair can bring you as much peace and satisfaction as it brought me, and I hope it can help your imagination soar like mine did when I was doing my duty for beauty.
I once wrote that one stranger leads to another. There is a portrait that is important to my project because it has led to a number of other portraits. However, it doesn’t appear in my stranger gallery. I photographed Jean-François Bélanger a few weeks after I first met him at the end of one of his concerts. I had heard him say he would play an acoustic concert with traditional Swedish instruments named nyckelharpas at the Redpath Museum. I offered to document it. He agreed that I shoot his performance as long as it was done very discreetly and only in available ambient light. The Redpath concert was special for its context. It was part of the Montréal Baroque Festival and set amongst the museum’s artefacts.
I met my stranger # 77, Meaghan, when I first visited the exhibition hall, where there is a standing dinosaur skeleton, to make sure there was enough light to make decent handheld camera photos. The day of the concert, I met Matthias, my stranger # 85. He is a composer and a co-director of the festival.
That day I learned Jean-François would be playing guitar in a quite different context at the Festival Mémoires et racines, in Joliette. I spent a day there in July. At the inn where my wife and I stayed the night before, we met Vern and Pat, visitors from California and my strangers # 92 and 93. On the Festival’s site, I met another J-F. Jean-François Berthiaume is a set caller and contemporary visual artist and my stranger # 94. I also met my stranger # 95 there, Malin, a singer from the Swedish vocal group named Kongero.
Malin told me Kongero would give a concert garage in Montreal the following week. I went to it and met Rossana, my stranger # 97. Rossana told me she gives workshops where she teaches “optimistic writing”. Recently, she sent me an e-mail letting me know that I could attend to one of her workshops in the course of the twentieth edition of “Les Journées de la culture”, a week-end of open door event and free of charge cultural activities.
So, off to the workshop I go. It was held in the exhibition room of l’Artothèque, a bank of art works for rental at affordable cost. There were two tables set-up. In total, there were seven participants. I was seated with three women. One of them was Ornella. I thought the workshop was going to be a bit directive. Things turned out different. Rossana made us listen to Louis Armstrong singing “What a wonderful world” and basically told us to think about something positive and write. So we all wrote and then read out our texts. It turned out everyone could write pretty well, admittedly, with different levels of positivism. There was only one other man but he had the craftiest, most poetic style.
This almost filled the scheduled time for the activity. I hadn’t had the opportunity to speak to my table mates at this point. Ornella was with a friend whom, I felt, seemed the most outgoing of the three women. I thought she would agree to be photographed. I was wrong. It’s OK, I respect refusals. I turned to Ornella who, as you can see, accepted to pose for my project.
As she and her friend had to leave because of another commitment, I got to know very little about either of them. She said she was born in Ukraine, her friend was from Congo. Ornella clearly had a strong sense of style. She had lovely round earrings made of colored beads and was wearing what looked like a hand knitted scarf also with colorful designs. I was very surprised to hear that it was actually a table centerpiece cloth that she had cleverly diverted from its original function. The earrings and the centerpiece cloth were from South Africa.
I wish I could tell you more. The ladies had no time left and ran away in a hurry.
Who knows, our paths may cross again…
J'ai déjà écrit qu’un inconnu mène à un autre. Il y a un portrait qui a été important pour mon projet parce qu'il a conduit à un certain nombre d'autres portraits. Cependant, vous ne le trouverez pas dans ma collection d’inconnus. J'ai photographié Jean-François Bélanger quelques semaines après l’avoir brièvement rencontré à la fin de l'un de ses concerts. Je l'avais entendu dire qu'il allait donner un concert acoustique avec des instruments traditionnels suédois nommés nyckelharpas au Musée Redpath. Je lui ai offert de documenter cet événement. Il a accepté que je couvre sa performance à la condition que ce soit fait très discrètement et seulement en lumière ambiante. Le concert au Redpath était particulier pour son contexte. Il faisait partie du Festival Montréal Baroque était joué au cœur de la collection du musée.
J'ai rencontré mon inconnue # 77, Meaghan, lors de ma première visite dans cette salle d'exposition où il y a un squelette de dinosaure debout. Je m’y étais rendu pour m’assurer qu'il y avait assez de lumière disponible pour faire des photos adéquates. Le jour du concert, j'ai rencontré Matthias, mon inconnu # 85. Il est un compositeur et est co-directeur du festival.
Ce jour-là, j'ai appris Jean-François jouerait de la guitare dans un contexte bien différent au Festival Mémoire et racines, à Joliette. J’ai donc passé une journée là-bas à la fin de juillet. À l'auberge où ma femme et moi avons passé la nuit précédente, nous avons rencontré Vern et Pat, des visiteurs venus la Californie et mes inconnus # 92 et 93. Sur le site du Festival, j'ai rencontré un autre J-F, Jean-François Berthiaume, qui est un calleur de set et un artiste visuel contemporain. C’est mon inconnu # 94. J'ai aussi rencontré là mon inconnue # 95, Malin, une des chanteuses du groupe vocal suédois nommé Kongero.
Malin m'a appris que Kongero donnerait un concert de garage à Montréal la semaine suivante. J’y suis allé et j’y ai rencontré Rossana mon inconnue # 97. Rossana donne des ateliers où elle enseigne «l’écriture optimiste». Récemment, elle m'a envoyé un e-mail me laissant savoir que, dans le cadre de la vingtième édition des «Journées de la culture », un week-end de portes ouvertes et d’activités culturelles accessibles, je pourrais participer à l'un de ses ateliers. Je me rends donc à cet atelier qui avait lieu dans la salle d'exposition de l'Artothèque, une banque d'œuvres d'art en location à un coût abordable.
Il y avait deux tables de préparées. Au total, il y avait sept participants. J'étais assis avec trois femmes. L'un d'elle était Ornella. Je pensais que l'atelier allait être plutôt encadré. Les choses se sont avérées différente. Rossana nous a fait écouter Louis Armstrong chantant «What a wonderful world » puis nous a dit de penser à quelque chose de positif et d’écrire. Nous avons alors tous écrit puis lu nos textes. Il est apparu que tout le monde pouvait écrire assez bien, avec, il est vrai, différents niveaux de positivisme. Il n'y avait qu'un autre homme, mais il avait l’écriture la plus fine, la plus poétique.
Cela a pratiquement rempli le temps prévu pour l'activité. Je n’avais pas eu l'occasion de parler à mes compagnes de table pour la peine à ce point. Ornella était avec une amie qui m’avait parue être la plus communicative des trois femmes. Je me disais qu'elle serait d'accord pour être photographié. J'avais tort. C’est OK, je respecte les refus.
Je me suis alors tourné vers Ornella qui, comme vous pouvez le voir, a accepté de poser pour mon projet. Comme elle et son amie devait quitter en raison d'un autre engagement, je n’ai pu apprendre que très peu de choses sur elles. Ornella m’a dit qu'elle et née en Ukraine, son amie est originaire du Congo. Ornella a clairement un bon sens du style. Elle avait de belles boucles d'oreilles rondes en petites billes multicolores et portait ce qui ressemblait à une écharpe tricotée main comportant aussi avec des motifs bien colorés. Je fus très surpris d'entendre qu'il s’agissait en fait un centre de table qu'elle avait habilement détourné de sa fonction d'origine! Les boucles d'oreilles et le tissu provenaient d'Afrique du Sud.
Je voudrais bien pouvoir vous en dire plus. Les deux dames étaient pressées et sont parties à la hâte.
Qui sait, nos chemins se croiseront peut-être de nouveau...
This photo is part of my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page
...smiling when you have stuff on your face.
Or something like that.
January 3: Optimistic
Look. I am not the most optimistic person at all. That is just not how I am wired. I see the bad before the good. But sometimes it's refreshing to see the innocence in my little girl who seriously doesn't have a care in the world and know that it will be okay. Sure, she has her fits at times for the strangest reasons that I have yet to understand, but all in all she is happy. I need to be more like her. <3
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An overly optimistic photographer was waiting for one more ray of sun.
He told me he had seen photos of the arch lit from the underneath at sunset. Well, he may have to wait there till a different time of the year, because on that day the sun definitely was not going to jump up a little higher in the sky just to humor him!.
The strange thing to his right is a shrub, though it looks more like a lying matted wild boar.
"Mesa Arch is perched on the east rim of the Island in the Sky plateau (or mesa) high above the middle fork of Buck Canyon. The view through the arch, looking out towards the distant and often snow-covered La Sal Mountains, is one of the most photographed in the park, especially at sunrise."
The Island in the Sky district of the Canyonlands National Park, Utah. November 2019
I was feeling optimistic when I headed down to Birnbeck Pier yesterday evening as the tide was pretty low and the weather forecast wasn't great. I'm glad I took the chance though as the low tide reveals these rocks and sticks which add some nice interest.
Canon EOS 5D Mark III|24-105mm L|Lee Grad Filters|Lee Little Stopper
I've been teaching Poppy photography, take a look at her Flickr.
Some day, I will fly. In spite of the limitations thrust upon me by myself, and, others, I will fly. I will overcome adversity, and failure, and, I will fly. I will fly. I will.
Call me Snake offers an optimistic provocation – ‘imagine what could be here’ by Judy Millar. On a walk into the city October 3, 2015 Christchurch New Zealand.
The work is comprised of vibrant graphics of Millar’s looped paintings, which are adhered to five intersecting flat planes, and draws inspiration from the forms found in pop-up books. The colourful piece will add a dramatic and rhythmic counterpoint to the city’s current urban landscape — a mix of flattened sites, construction zones and defiant buildings that have stood through the quakes. The work employs theatricality, playfulness and visual trickery, whereby the viewer is unsure about the work’s flatness or three-dimensionality; and it has been designed to offer a different perspective from each angle. The bright colours interrupt the grey of the work’s surrounds, and as buildings pop up around it,
SCAPE 8, New Intimacies curated by Rob Garrett was a contemporary art event which mixed new artworks with existing legacy pieces, an education programme, and a public programme of events. The SCAPE 8 artworks were located around central Christchurch and linked via a public art walkway. All aspects of SCAPE 8 were free-to-view.
The title for the 2015 Biennial – New Intimacies – came from the idea that visually striking and emotionally engaging public art works can create new connections between people and places. Under the main theme of New Intimacies there are three other themes that artists responded to: Sight-Lines, Inner Depths and Shared Strengths.
For more Info: www.scapepublicart.org.nz/scape-8-judy-millar
A new portrait shot using day light.
And this time I tried to keep it in colors so it would suit the title and the expression that the girl have.
Hope you like it and like always you can see the b/w version from this link.
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iso : 100
shutter speed : 1/80
Lens Aperture : F2.8
Focal Length : 200mm
Lens : Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM
Light Source : natural
programs edited with : Photoshop Cs5
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Optimistically entitled, this treaty promised an alliance between England and Scotland, sealed with a marriage alliance. James IV of Scotland was betrothed to Princess Margaret, the daughter of Henry VII of England. The borders of this document illustrate the thistle (James’ emblem), the Tudor rose and the marguerete representing Margaret.
This document is held in the National Archives.
Optimistically headboarded Peckett 0-4-0ST no 2111 'Lytham St Anne's' fair belts along with the Midland Railway Centre vintage train.
flooded film archives
film scan
Kodak Plus X Pan
Minolta SR7/ 50mm Rokkor
sepia tones courtesy of nature
scratches courtesy of the rewind mechanism in my old camera
taken mid-80s. might be New Orleans or there abouts - anyone know for sure?
*edited to note: Susan solved the mystery! This is Aransas Pass in Texas. Scroll down for more details. Thanks Susan!!
Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.
"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.
That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.
"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."
Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.
Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.
“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.
When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.
“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”
Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.
The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.
The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.
Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.
Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.
“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.
Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.
Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.
In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.
Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.
There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”
www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...
Outside of the Town Hall theater on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, a crowd of smiling and optimistic people Friday overflowed into the one-way street. Delivery trucks and yellow taxi cabs creeped by, their engines engaged in a shouting match with Bennet Weiss, a man who bore a fleeting resemblance to the Democratic presidential candidate they were all there to support.
"We don't have billions of dollars! All we have are people wearing Bernie pins," Weiss yelled, a large black umbrella covered in Bernie Sanders campaign pins at his feet, catching drops of sweat from his brow. The Occupy Wall Street protester-turned-Sanders supporter urged the crowd to wear the pins at all times with no exception -- even in the shower -- and gave them away freely to anyone who said they didn't have enough cash to afford to pay the suggested donation.
That's the kind of populist support Sanders' campaign has steadily been attracting since the U.S. senator from Vermont formally announced his candidacy in late April. Friday was no exception, with passion-filled people who think Sanders has proved himself the worthy champion of causes they care about the most, such as income inequality, climate change, Wall Street reform and further healthcare reforms. But, perhaps most importantly, they also think he can win the White House.
"Absolutely" he can win, said Joe Trinolone, 30, a former finance industry worker from Long Island, New York, who is studying mathematics at St. Joseph's University. "I mean, he's winning right now."
Sanders, during a fundraising speech Friday, ticked through the policies he cares about and areas of change he wants to see in Washington should he become president. At each turn, his blend of outrage, optimism and sly sarcasm brought raucous cheers from the crowd of 1,100. He rejected recent Wall Street Journal criticism of the high price tag of his proposals, including making public colleges and universities free, lowering so-called real unemployment by pumping funding into infrastructure repairs for the nation’s roads and bridges and implementing a universal healthcare system.
Instead, he pointed to European nations that already have those programs. He implored the crowd to think about what many of them were already talking about: that taking on the big-money interests in the United States that impede those sorts of policy changes is a shared moral obligation.
“Welcome to the revolution,” Sanders said, describing what he believes must happen to American politics. “We can accomplish all of this and more.” And the crowd ate it up.
When asked why they support Sanders, many described his candidacy as a movement. They love his policies, and have a hard time thinking of much they don’t like about him. They especially like that he has been a consistent voice during his time in Washington. That’s a big perceived difference between Sanders and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those "feeling the Bern" were split on whether they would consider voting for her if she becomes the nominee. Many were newcomers to political action but felt compelled to join the fray when they heard Sanders and his message.
“I’ve never been excited about a politician my entire life,” said Meira Marom, 34, a Brooklyn third-grade teacher with a master's degree in creative writing. When Marom started seeing social media posts about Sanders and reading about him, she decided to stop focusing her personal time on writing for herself. She now writes and publishes something about Sanders every day -- Dr. Seuss themes every Sunday, poems and parodies. “I decided this is the most worthy cause to put my rhymes to use.”
Sanders has seen an unexpected rise in the polls since he joined the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after the current national front-runner Clinton announced her candidacy. While Sanders was trailing Clinton by 21.4 percent in national averages of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, a look at early nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire paints a different picture of vulnerability for Clinton and strength for Sanders.
The two candidates are tied in Iowa, which constitutes a dramatic drop for Clinton and an impressive surge for Sanders, who has been distancing himself from Clinton in New Hampshire at the top of the Democratic pack since Aug. 25, when he jumped past her in the state for the first time. He currently leads there by 10.5 points.
The candidates are noticeably different in many ways, from policy prescription to fundraising strategy.
Clinton has moved leftward since announcing her candidacy, but she is still threatened by the populist appeal of Sanders, who has long championed the causes that seem to be coming into grace for the Democratic Party. While the candidates currently hold some very similar positions on issues such as immigration reform, gay rights, gun control and campaign finance reform, Sanders has been able to stake out positions to the left of Clinton on other issues that excite some vocal voters.
Among them are his strong anti-war and anti-government surveillance positions as well as his distaste for President Barack Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. Sanders also has been a vocal critic of Wall Street and champion of financial reforms, and his stance on those issues has drawn attention to Clinton's cozy relationship with Wall Street executives and the huge paychecks she has received for speeches to large banks since leaving the U.S. State Department. For some Sanders supporters, though, the perception that Sanders has been a consistent proponent of these liberal policies, and cares about them more than winning, is key.
“It’s the message that supporting Bernie Sanders is not just voting on a horse in the race” that attracts Brian Dillon, a 28-year-old self-employed Web designer and developer for e-commerce, said Friday. Dillon has voted just one time in his life, but he has been organizing meetings to drum up support for Sanders.
Sanders's fundraising portfolio also is the reverse of Clinton's. While the former secretary of state is expected to spend somewhere north of $1 billion should she win the primary and head into the general election for 2016, the same has not been said of Sanders. Currently, Clinton has raised, through her campaign committee and super PACs associated with the campaign, $47.5 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Sanders, on the other hand, has raised just shy of $16.5 million, according to CRP data.
Their most startling difference in fundraising, however, can be seen in the size of the donations they're receiving. The Clinton campaign received 82 percent of its donations from large contributors, and her top industry donors, not including retired people, so far have been lawyers, business services and the financial industry.
In contrast, Sanders relies much more on small donations, which are defined as donations totaling $200 or less. So far, 69 percent of his contributions have come from small donors, and the biggest industries that have given to his campaign have been from the education, legal and healthcare sectors.
Who are those small donors? The types of people who showed up Friday. Some said they donate $25 to $30 a month to Sanders. Some said they have donated several hundred dollars since he jumped into the presidential race. Nearly all of them mentioned they don't earn a ton of money personally. One in particular, Machumu Sakulira, said he donated $500 before attending Friday’s event.
There is “no way” he would support a Clinton ticket, said Sakulira, a 31-year-old senior political science student at the University at Buffalo. He got on a bus Thursday night at 11 p.m. and arrived in New York at 7 a.m. for the Sanders speech. He said he was going back Friday night. “Bernie represents my interest. My vote is a moral choice, I don’t give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”
www.ibtimes.com/election-2016-bernie-sanders-nyc-fundrais...