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I think the boots and trousers are a bit of a "give away".
Or maybe he is just on his way home after a day on the beat.
Candid street shot, Taunton, Somerset, UK.
Police Community Support Officers in Avon and Somerset have the distinctive blue cap band as opposed to the more normal black and white chequered band.
The 'Red Notebook' is a series of woodland studies. Each book is about four metres long. These works are a development of my recent 'plein air' paintings and concern both memory and observation.This work is comprised of two concertina notebooks drawn in mixed media, using ink, gouache, graphite and charcoal. The basis for these two scroll-like drawings is Simon's Wood near Crowthorne, Berkshire and Badbury Clumps near Faringdon. Much of my work between 2011 and 2015 was painted out of doors ('plein air') with no reference to photographs or subsequent studio alteration. These drawings, although largely begun from observation, were worked on over a longer period of time, each taking on their own life. By using touches of red and rose madder washes I was able to pick out certain characteristics of the winter woodlands. The mark making was also an emotional and even physical response to the immediate environment. Unlike my recent paintings they do not employ one vanishing point but rather are like a frieze which can envelope the field of vision. I placed both works on the ground within the woodland. They actually became wet with the raindrops and were in some way connected with the place that a purely imaginary work could not be. Both works are slightly different in technique, one more fiery and the other slightly more subdued. They were painted and drawn in January, which this year has been unusually warm and wet. Like much of my work, they concern atmosphere and an engagement with the natural world.
The brighter of the two drawings also connects the tree and undergrowth forms with Red Coral or maybe human veins and blood. However, I don't see either work as overtly symbolic or necessarily a comment upon contemporary events. It remains my concern to express nature in as vital and vibrant a way as possible and to fully engage with the experience of looking hard at what's out there. I like the idea that a drawing like this can be cinematic and without a beginning or an end, that the work can envelop and absorb which is akin to one's experience in the woodland itself.
Martin Beek 2016
This is the headquarters of the Powerful Secret Society of Steampunk Travelers or PSSST for short. Why would a secret society building stick out so much? Well, in the words of Sherlock Holmes, “It’s so overt, it’s covert.” This building is 3 stories tall & features smokestacks, gears, pipes, lights, windows, doors, flat roof to land Zeppelin & a telephone booth (sublevel secret entrance)…I designed this MOC & came up with the backstory. The PSSST secret society & building don’t really exist...or do they? ;D
This is my second and final entry in the Mini Building Madness contest on rebrick.com. You can see other builder's amazing entries here: www.lego.com/en-us/rebrick/contest-page/contests/mini-mod...
In a city where the town hall is a sheik’s palace, the Chamber of Commerce is a Turkish harem, and the train station is a mosque, you would probably expect to be somewhere in the Middle East. But no, this is Opa-Locka, Florida, a diminutive city northwest of Miami with the nation’s largest and strangest collection of Islamic Revival architecture.
Opa-Locka was built during the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s, when films like Rudolf Valentino’s orientalist fantasy The Sheik and Douglas Fairbanks’ The Thief of Baghdad had harnessed the sultry and romantic appeal of the Middle East into a full-blown cultural fad.
Florida was hot and tropical enough to feel exotic, so when developer Glenn Curtiss built Opa-Locka, he did so around an overt One Thousand and One Nights theme. In addition to the orientalist architecture, the streets were given names such as Ali Baba Avenue and Sabur Lane.
Though the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 destroyed a number of Opa-Locka buildings, several of the Moorish buildings survived and have since been added to the National Register of Historic Places. The crowning jewel is the former Opa-Locka City Hall building, an onion-domed and minaret-sporting marvel inspired by the description of the palace of Emperor Kosroushah in One Thousand and One Nights.
Opa-locka is currently in a state of advanced decay as the cash-strapped city faces financial collapse. Many of the Arabian-inspired buildings are falling apart, and the former City Hall itself is boarded up and in a state of advanced disrepair, but a walk through the little town still offers a look at the 1920s’ idea of exotic luxury.
The building is at the intersection of Fisherman Street and Sherazad Street, about two blocks from the current (modern) city hall; the old city hall is clearly visible from the new one. There is ample free parking in the Sherbondy Park lot.
Credit for the data above is given to the following website:
The Nightmare is a 1781 oil painting by Swiss artist Henry Fuseli. It shows a woman in deep sleep with her arms thrown below her, and with a demonic and apelike incubus crouched on her chest.
The painting's dreamlike and haunting erotic evocation of infatuation and obsession was a huge popular success. After its first exhibition, at the 1782 Royal Academy of London, critics and patrons reacted with horrified fascination and the work became widely popular.
The Nightmare simultaneously offers both the image of a dream—by indicating the effect of the nightmare on the woman—and a dream image—in symbolically portraying the sleeping vision.
Contemporary critics were taken aback by the overt sexuality of the painting, since interpreted by some scholars as anticipating Jungian ideas about the unconscious.
We're here visiting Copycats
As you will have noticed from the previous two photos, I hadn’t planned to spend the rest of the day dressed as little Miss Demure. Of the many (too many?) new clothes I have bought in the last year, I wanted to try out this dark green leather dress first. The colour, the cut and the length mean that it is sexy , but not overtly so. It looked great when I first tried it on at home, but, as you can see, here I am giving it careful consideration.
This image is worth including here because someone with some photographic imagination took it. Getting a good photograph out of my camera phone seems to very difficult at the moment, and a large number of gloomy or fuzzy photos were deleted pretty quickly.
But I do think it is a nice dress, and I’ll post another, clearer photo of it soon.
MR SL ♛ Lebanon is excited to bring you his take on this second runway challenge. It's no mistake that many of the best men's colognes include the scent of leather. Good leather broadcasts sensuality - soft, warm from the wearer's skin, its fragrance mixing with their pheromones to attract and seduce, tempting the animal in us.
MR SL ♛ Lebanon's outfit for the special occasion of today's challenge is inspired by the most overt expression of the sensuality of leather - fetish attire. There are so many ways to wear leather, but the most exciting, unique and playful is the combination of leather, latex, metal and your body. All dressed up and ready to play!
Item List:
.Shi + TheMessiah : L'chaim Vest / V1
Cubura Arcangel Shorts
A&Y Deuz Boots Metallic
tram MF912 hair
CerberusXing Chin Pointer
CerberusXing Crux Piercing
CerberusXing Crux Septum
CerberusXing Scarred Bridge
CerberusXing Skull Ring
CerberusXing Zip Up Bracelet
Id4You - Arm Band 6-4
the.sanguine.tree - Gianni Black Polish
Backdrop: FOXCITY. KPOP STAR - Run Devil Run
Fashion&Beauty - Pole Dance Men
Pure symmetry is often an illusion – our perception of complex objects tends to “even out” the differences, unless they are overtly obvious, like the top branch of this snowflake. But why is that one different from the rest?
There’s a “scar” on this snowflake, a diagonal line right before the changes in symmetry occur. In most cases, this happens when something gets stuck on the surface of the snowflake during formation – another crystal or fragment of a snowflake is most likely, affecting the way the rest of the branch formed. There’s nothing that links the growth of the six branches of a snowflake – there’s no architect’s drawings to follow; there is, however, near-identical growing environments. Change the variables even slightly, and you can see the change in the pattern.
This particular snowflake has two additional fun features: a clue into the mysteries of “spoke” formations, and inward crystal growth. The inward growth is easy to see, with the lines radiating from/to the center. These are on the reverse side of the crystal, backfilling in the snowflake towards the center, increasing the thickness in waves.
Those spokes – the thicker lines pointing to each branch tip – carry with them some very interesting details. It’s easiest to see at the bottom and bottom-right branches, and here’s a close-up of what I’m talking about: donkom.ca/bts/DKP_8192-BTS.jpg . It appears as if this heightened feature might actually begin forming as two separate ridges, which then get filled in with molecular accumulation between them. This process is not always solid, allowing for bubbles to occasionally form as it fills in. On these two lower branches, it’s easy to see the pockets of air forming on the edges of this growth.
I don’t like this. This doesn’t follow the standard model of how snowflakes grow. I do not have the knowledge to explain why two separate ridges form and then fill in the gap, all the while happening internally compared to the outer footprint. These two separate ridges, however, would explain the often-seen parallel bubble lines which this crystal also features; they must be related. I don’t like it because I can’t explain it. There’s an answer, obviously, but it escapes me. Maybe I should just embrace the fact that no matter how much we understand about one of the basic elements of life – water – some things are still a mystery.
Want to explore these mysteries yourself? Grab a copy of my latest edition of Macro Photography: The Universe at Our Feet: www.routledge.com/Macro-Photography-The-Universe-at-Our-F... - they gave me a special code for 20% off if ordered direct: 25SMA4
In a city where the town hall is a sheik’s palace, the Chamber of Commerce is a Turkish harem, and the train station is a mosque, you would probably expect to be somewhere in the Middle East. But no, this is Opa-Locka, Florida, a diminutive city northwest of Miami with the nation’s largest and strangest collection of Islamic Revival architecture.
Opa-Locka was built during the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s, when films like Rudolf Valentino’s orientalist fantasy The Sheik and Douglas Fairbanks’ The Thief of Baghdad had harnessed the sultry and romantic appeal of the Middle East into a full-blown cultural fad.
Florida was hot and tropical enough to feel exotic, so when developer Glenn Curtiss built Opa-Locka, he did so around an overt One Thousand and One Nights theme. In addition to the orientalist architecture, the streets were given names such as Ali Baba Avenue and Sabur Lane.
Though the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 destroyed a number of Opa-Locka buildings, several of the Moorish buildings survived and have since been added to the National Register of Historic Places. The crowning jewel is the former Opa-Locka City Hall building, an onion-domed and minaret-sporting marvel inspired by the description of the palace of Emperor Kosroushah in One Thousand and One Nights.
Opa-locka is currently in a state of advanced decay as the cash-strapped city faces financial collapse. Many of the Arabian-inspired buildings are falling apart, and the former City Hall itself is boarded up and in a state of advanced disrepair, but a walk through the little town still offers a look at the 1920s’ idea of exotic luxury.
The building is at the intersection of Fisherman Street and Sherazad Street, about two blocks from the current (modern) city hall; the old city hall is clearly visible from the new one. There is ample free parking in the Sherbondy Park lot.
Credit for the data above is given to the following website:
A little more overt than most of my politically and socially motivated images. But you can only post so many pretty macro bugs and flowers while the world burns. I originally created this when Trump was running the first time. I reworked it though as I was never happy with the fabric texture I had used. Made this 100% in Photoshop. I’m sure I will lose some friends over this one but so be it. What he and his cronies are doing to our country is too disturbing. I really do love so many things about this country of mine but I can’t say I feel proud of it too much these days. I guess that’s all I’ll say and I’ll just let the image speak for itself. Week 11 of 52
We made Turkey, Bacon and Avocado wraps for our weekend lunch today. We've had them a couple times this Summer. Great when the weather is overtly hot & humid.
Our house
Knoxville, Tennessee
Sunday, September 14th, 2025
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A single view split in two.
The Mediterranean sea is visible lower right.
Activities in a series of key late prehistoric sites (at key points on the greater vista) would be visible from this vantage, offering persons in the Can Cananyes cluster a certain local omnipotence and redistribution. The joy and solidarity of signalling back and forth with tall smoke or localised flashes of fire torch.
Below this view is the vivid Cova de Can Cabanyes with its interesting associated late cup and canal rupestre (probably Iron age).
With the greater Can Cabanyes site high into steep and wild hills inside a ragged protected portion of coast, one must expect overt signalling to have stopped during the Celtiberian wars with Rome (200 on and off years to unthread and leach a people). Here a strategy of visual silence would protect the greater position from attention and it might be argued that the cup and canal configuration describes this silence.
As a montage, several modern additions have been removed. The cork oak trees arrived with the Mesolithic, by the Bronze Age many will have been felled, so the forested vision above may be a little too wild for this period of prehistory. There are ruines of a bronze age village tucked into the steep hills lower right. Difficult to find and thus for the moment I have no photographic documentation.
AJ 27.09.18
Ronda is a municipality of Spain belonging to the province of Málaga, within the autonomous community of Andalusia.
Its population is about 35,000. Ronda is known for its cliffside location and a deep canyon that carries the Guadalevín River and divides the town. It is one of the towns and villages that are included in the Sierra de las Nieves National Park.
In the fifth century AD, Ronda was conquered by the Suebi, led by Rechila, being reconquered in the following century by the Eastern Roman Empire, under whose rule Acinipo was abandoned. Later, the Visigothic king Liuvigild captured the city. Ronda was part of the Visigoth realm until 713, when it fell to the Umayyad troops, who named it Hisn al-Rundah ("Castle of Rundah") and made it the capital of the Takurunna province.
After the disintegration of the caliphate of Córdoba, Ronda became the capital of a small kingdom ruled by the Berber Banu Ifran, the taifa of Ronda. During this period, Ronda gained most of its Islamic architectural heritage. In 1065, Ronda was conquered by the taifa of Seville led by Abbad II al-Mu'tadid. Both the poet Abu al-Baqa ar-Rundi (1204–1285) and the Sufi scholar Ibn Abbad al-Rundi (1333–1390) were born in Ronda.
The Islamic domination of Ronda ended in 1485, when it was conquered by Rodrigo Ponce de León, Duke of Cádiz after a brief siege. Subsequently, most of the city's old edifices were renewed or adapted to Christian roles, while numerous others were built in newly created quarters such as Mercadillo and San Francisco. The Plaza de Toros de Ronda was founded in the town in 1572.
The Spanish Inquisition affected the Muslims living in Spain greatly. Shortly after 1492, when the last outpost of Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula, Granada, was conquered, the Spanish decreed that all Muslims must either vacate the peninsula without their belongings or convert. Many people overtly converted to keep their possessions while secretly practicing their religion. Muslims who converted were called Moriscos. They were required to wear upon their caps and turbans a blue crescent. Traveling without a permit meant a death sentence. This systematic suppression forced the Muslims to seek refuge in mountainous regions of southern Andalusia; Ronda was one such refuge.
On May 25, 1566, Philip II decreed the use of the Arabic language (written or spoken) illegal, required that doors to homes remain open on Fridays to verify that no Muslim Friday prayers were conducted, and levied heavy taxes on Morisco trades. This led to several rebellions, one of them in Ronda under the leadership of Al-Fihrey. Al-Fihrey's soldiers defeated the Spanish army sent to suppress them under the leadership of Alfonso de Aguilar. The massacre of the Spaniards prompted Phillip II to order the expulsion of all Moriscos in Ronda.
In the early 19th century, the Napoleonic invasion and the subsequent Peninsular War caused much suffering in Ronda, whose inhabitants were reduced from 15,600 to 5,000 in three years. Ronda's area became the base first of guerrilla warriors, then of numerous bandits, whose deeds inspired artists such as Washington Irving, Prosper Mérimée, and Gustave Doré. In the 19th century, the economy of Ronda was mainly based on agricultural activities. In 1918, the city was the seat of the Assembly of Ronda, in which the Andalusian flag, coat of arms, and anthem were designed.
Ronda's Romero family—from Francisco, born in 1698, to his son Juan, to his famous grandson Pedro, who died in 1839—played a principal role in the development of modern Spanish bullfighting. In a family responsible for such innovations as the use of the cape, or muleta, and a sword especially designed for the kill, Pedro in particular transformed bullfighting into "an art and a skill in its own right, and not simply ... a clownishly macho preamble to the bull's slaughter".
Ronda was heavily affected by the Spanish Civil War, which led to emigration and depopulation.[citation needed] The scene in chapter 10 of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, describing the 1936 execution of Fascist sympathisers in a (fictional) village who are thrown off a cliff, is considered to be modeled on actual events of the time in Ronda.
Ronda is situated in a mountainous area about 750 m (2,460 ft) above mean sea level. The inner relief is gentle and includes areas of pastureland and vegetable and cereal growing areas. The Guadalevín River runs through the city, dividing it in two and carving out the steep, 100-plus-meter-deep El Tajo canyon above which the city perches. The Spanish fir is endemic to the mountains surrounding Ronda.
Three bridges span the Tajo canyon: Puente Romano "Roman Bridge" (also known as the Puente Arabe "Arabic Bridge", as the foundation is Roman and it was rebuilt above in the Arabic Period); Puente Viejo "Old Bridge" (also known as the Puente San Miguel "St. Michael's Bridge"); and Puente Nuevo "New Bridge". The term nuevo is something of a misnomer, as the building of this bridge commenced in 1751 and took until 1793 to complete. The Puente Nuevo is the tallest of the bridges, towering 120 m (390 ft) above the canyon floor. The former town hall, which stands next to the Puente Nuevo, is the site of a Parador and has a view of the Tajo canyon.
Outside the Ronda Bullring
The Corrida Goyesca is a bullfight that takes place once a year in Ronda in the Plaza de Toros de Ronda, the oldest bullfighting ring in Spain. It was built in 1784 in the Neoclassical style by the architect José Martin de Aldehuela, who also designed the Puente Nuevo.
Inside the Arabic baths
The partially intact Baños Arabe ("Arabic baths") are found below the city, beside the Puente Arabe (also known as the Puente Romano) and date back to the 13th and 14th centuries. They can be visited, but are no longer in use as baths. The Arab Baths used to fulfil the function of purifying the visitors who came to the city of Ronda. They are the best preserved Arabic baths.
Plaza del Socorro
The Plaza del Socorro is the modern political centre of Ronda. It was here that Blas Infante showed the Andalusian flag and coat of arms for the first time in 1918. The parish church of Socorro (Parroquia de Nuestra Señora del Socorro) was only built in 1956. The building known as the Casino and Circulo de Artistas (Artists' Society) is located on the north side of Ronda's Plaza del Socorro.
Palace of the Marqués de Salvatierra
The Palace (palacio) of the Marqués de Salvatierra opens irregularly as a small museum of Renaissance art and artefacts. The palace is an 18th-century renovation of an earlier 16th century building gifted to the family of Don Vasco Martín de Salvatierra by the Catholic Monarchs when they redistributed the spoils of the Reconquest. In 1994, Madonna obtained a permit to shoot inside the palace for the music video of "Take a Bow".
Casa del Rey Moro
Despite the name, the Casa del Rey Moro was never the home of a Moorish king. It was built in the 18th century, when Moorish Spain was already a distant memory. Its apparently Moorish gardens are even more recent, having been designed by the French landscape gardener Jean Claude Forestier in 1912. The house does incorporate one genuine and important relic of Ronda's Moorish era: the so-called Water Mine, a set of steps down to the river carved into the cliff wall.
Serranía de Ronda is filled with pueblos blancos which are approachable by car. The position of the town of Ronda provides views over the mountains of Serranía de Ronda.
from Wikipedia
Uhh...Daisy darling? I don't mean to alarm you....but you appear to have something stuck in your mouth! 😜❤️️
When we were through with our lingerie photos, I decided it was time to remind maid daisy who the boss is around here. She's been having it just a little too easy lately in my estimation....and a little refresher course in proper attitude and discipline was in order. Not that she has been showing any overt signs of backsliding....but you can never be too careful.
And since she was looking so lovely in her pretty lingerie....I decided she would forego her maid dress for the day as well. Oh, and did I mention she had to "wear" (is that the word for it?) her vibrating butt plug for the day also? Oh yes, that way if I need her, I don't have to bother shouting....just press the little button on the phone app....and the maid comes running. Or whatever she can manage with that ankle chain, anyway. 😘
Channel Pickering Townsley (1867-1921)
Oil on board
Signed lower left: Townsley; titled and variously inscribed in pencil, presumably in another hand, verso
10" H x 14" W
Provenance:
Gifted to the Los Angeles Municipal Arts Commission, November 1937, by Elizabeth Black, Esther G. Beekman, and E. H. Moorhouse. Inscription on reverse misidentifies scene as “Brest, France.”
Exhibition: Likely shown or retained in association with the 1912 William Merritt Chase European Summer School, which Townsley helped organize.
📷 Subject and Setting
The painting depicts a tranquil canal view in Bruges, Belgium, looking south along the Bakkersrei, a narrow offshoot of the Reie River. At mid-distance stands the Beguinage Bridge (Dutch: Begijnhofbrug), a modest yet elegant triple-arched span of pale stone. Rising beyond it, softened by humid summer haze, is the soaring brick tower of the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk (Church of Our Lady), whose construction spanned from the 13th to late 15th centuries and whose spire—at 115.5 meters—is one of the tallest in Europe.
The waterway, calm and reflective, occupies nearly half the vertical composition. On the right, trees press in with lush foliage, richly textured and layered in emerald, viridian, and umber. At left, built façades emerge—modulated by warm reds and muted ochres—set back from the water behind a low quay. Architectural details are handled economically: Townsley is concerned with rhythm, atmosphere, and tonal unity, not draftsmanship.
Stylistic and Formal Assessment
This painting is a superb example of late-plein-air tonal Impressionism, executed by a technically confident painter at the height of his observational acuity. Townsley applies oil in short, firm, loaded strokes, sometimes impastoed, creating a surface alive with optical vibration. The palette is muted but not subdued—greens and browns dominate, offset by pale sky, mirrored water, and vermilion notes in brick.
Key compositional choices:
The bridge arches are rhythmically spaced and anchored by vertical reflections.
The spike of the spire bisects the canvas subtly off-center, lending balance and verticality.
The eye is invited inward by the water’s diagonal recession and the foliage’s embrace—this is a painting about depth and enclosure.
There is no overt anecdotal or figural content, a hallmark of Chase-influenced plein air painting: mood and place supersede narrative. This work resonates tonally with pieces by Childe Hassam, Edmund Greacen, or early Guy Wiggins—American Impressionists influenced by both French plein air work and Chase’s teachings.
Contextual and Artistic Significance
Painted during the summer of 1912, this piece is tied directly to Townsley’s role as co-director and administrative organizer of the William Merritt Chase Summer Art School in Belgium, headquartered that year in Bruges. A listing in The International Studio confirms Townsley was accepting applications and facilitating the program, and thus would have spent the season immersed in the city's architectural and atmospheric riches.
This places the painting at a particularly rich junction in his career:
Post-London: Having worked earlier as co-director of the London School of Art alongside Frank Brangwyn, Townsley was by 1912 a seasoned educator with a cosmopolitan eye.
Pre-Pasadena: His later period would be rooted more deeply in Southern California, especially around the Stickney Memorial Art School in Pasadena and the California Impressionist scene. This Bruges work stands at a midpoint between European refinement and the plein air boldness of the American West.
The choice of Bruges itself speaks volumes: a city that offered atmospheric richness, Gothic silhouette, and light modulated by water and weather. It was an ideal subject for a painter invested in depth, tonality, and quiet monumentality.
Conclusion: Place in Townsley’s Oeuvre and the Broader Movement
This painting represents:
One of the clearest surviving links between Townsley and the European summer sessions of the Chase circle, and
A rare plein air work with a precisely datable location and moment in Townsley’s career.
Its formal restraint and tonal sophistication show a mature artist fluent in the aesthetics of American Impressionism, yet still deeply attuned to European architectural harmony and northern light. As such, it belongs to the final flowering of transatlantic plein air painting before the First World War disrupted many of these itinerant communities.
In summary, this painting is not just a refined canal view. It is:
A document of American expatriate pedagogy,
A record of Chase’s legacy through his students and collaborators, and
A meditative, painterly evocation of Bruges at the edge of modernity—caught in reflection just before the world changed.
This text is a collaboration with ChatGPT.
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I had to stand on my toes, and hold my camera up to get this shot, hahaha...
Speaking of head...I think? Although I love the head I use, I've been increasingly frustrated with make-up and other customization options for it being nearly impossible to find.
When I first game back SL, options for it seemed to be everywhere. Almost no third-party designers are actively making new things for the one I prefer.
Sooooo...I may be switching to another designer(s)' system soon.
I like them both. But I have to wonder if the system ( I'm currently using ) designers' attention is lost or just can't keep up with the overt push of competition and marketing on the often short-attention-span of customers(?). Perhaps the team is only preparing to fall out of it, and just coast to the end of their run?
Who knows? But it sure seems like everyone ( except I ) knows the answer to this. I'm pretty oblivious to such trending in SL or RL. And never really cared to play the "How do I keep up with this particular endless pop-culture conveyor belt?" game.
Oh, well. Such is the way of marketing and consumerism.
<3
This is another action series from earlier this summer at Huntley Meadows Park near Alexandria, VA.
As pool levels in the marsh got lower in August, greater numbers of Great Blue Herons and Great Egrets appeared. I saw more than a dozen of each on multiple visits. Though it seemed like there was plenty of space for everyone to me, there was more than a little bit of squabbling as the dominant ones wanted their favorite places for themselves. On the morning documented in this series, one particular Great Blue Heron seemed to want to fight everyone else at the marsh. I was surprised by the overt aggressiveness, but even more so by the fierce fighting that took place.
The action in this series took place in a mere 30 seconds, but it must have seemed like an eternity to the one that barely escaped with its life. I'm convinced the aggressor was doing its best to kill the other one, not just get it to move along. Very early in the skirmish the aggressor speared the other (I'll refer to it as the victim) through its mouth, fully penetrating it so I could see it on the other side of the victim's beak. Once it had the victim under its control it tried (and finally succeeded) to force the victim's head under the water ..... and hold it there (Pic 4).
I guess it was pure desperation that allowed the victim to finally lift its head from the water and then break free.
Zoom in on the shots to get a better idea of the intensity of the fight and particularly on the last one where you can see the hole in the victim's jaw where the other one had speared it.
Mixed media on board
90 x 90 cms
Here is the colourful abstract landscape the man in the previous picture was contemplating. There is something in the way this South Australian artist has interpreted a familiar Tasmanian landscape that opens new perspectives of vision.
Here is what Karen Hammat says about the work:
"My abstract landscapes depict the imprints left in memory by a particular place. These imprints are as much emotional and kinaesthetic as visual. The feeling of a place that persists even when its visual memory fades."
This short description says an awful lot that ties in with what I was saying in the previous photo description about the relationship between art and the spiritual. It reminds me of something: "A feeling of absolute dependence is an immediate self-consciousness of being in relation with God."
That sentence came from the pen of German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). Now before you say I draw a long bow, remember that Schleiermacher was one of the first people to recognise the intimate links between spirituality and art in a modern sense. He was the first theologian to overtly present a series of lectures on aesthetics, where he maintained that art is as of its very nature a collective expression of religious feeling. plato.stanford.edu/entries/schleiermacher/
This little interview with Robert Adams actually makes clear what is meant here by "feeling":
Now there's something you don't see every day: Snowdon without a thick blanket of cloud.
It'd be hard to mistake these as other than the peaks at the heart of Snowdonia, more spiky and overtly mountainous than elsewhere in Wales and certainly England.
Furthest away (11.2 km), on the left, is Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon), the highest UK peak outside Scotland, at 1,085 m. the 'bottomless' tarn of Glaslyn is hidden on the near side, whilst the combined Watkin Path and Miners' Track climb the arête on the left.
From the summit, the ridge curves to the rightmost peak, Garnedd Ugain (1,065 m, 10.9 km away), then back left to the middle peak, the near end of Crib Goch's knife-edge summit (921 m, 9.4 km).
The 'twin' lakes of Llynnau Mymbyr (really one lake with a constriction in the middle), in the foreground, occupy the floor of Dyffryn Mymbyr, the valley between Moel Siabod (off the left of the image) and the ridge rising past Y Foel Goch to Y Glyderau (off the right). The viewpoint is the footbridge over the lake's outlet at Plas y Brenin.
[Image reached no. 429 in Flickr Explore on 18/05/24! Thank you!]
Facing southward, and taken from just about the northern end of the bridge proper.
The pedestrian figures at left are those of two of my fellow tin-can midshipmen aboard the USS Hollister.
In this last installment of my Golden Gate posts, I find myself waxing nostalgic again as I look at those period-piece automobiles crossing the bridge. In my previous description I called them gas-guzzlers, which they certainly were. At the time, however, we were made to think, through the ceaseless brainwashing of our corporate overlords, that they were the very latest thing in Space Age elegance. Now, though, their clunky and rust-prone forms take me back to my university-student days, the Early Seventies.
Still, if you let it off its leash, hindsight can be a nasty, snarling thing. For example, when I turn away from the traffic and look at that hillside marching down to the bridge at right, I bitterly wish I'd gone over there, examined its Jurassic or Cretaceous Franciscan Complex exposures, and maybe even collected a rock or two for me to place on my desk, fifty years later, and dote upon in my old age.
But then I reel my resentment in and realize that, when I took this photo with my trusty Instamatic, I wasn't even a geology major yet. On top of that, the amazing plate-tectonics story of the accretion of California, including this place now known as the Marin Headlands Terrane, had not been discovered in anything like its current depth and richness of detail.
So it turns out that the time to be studying what this picture contains is right now. My photos, of very little interest to anyone else, are overt magic to me. They aren't just depictions of scenes; they're golden gates indeed, and ones that open wide into the landscapes they portray.
This is a very important point. However many hours I actually spent on this bridge in the fullness of my actually being there—the cool sea breeze on my face, the low hum of the tires on the roadway—ultimately meant less to me than the many more hours of research and reflection spent in the greater plenitude of the bridge regarded later.
In other words, the act of being there is essential only because it later leads to the memory of being there. And to the joyful and sustained embellishment of that memory. This to me is the miracle of photography, of freezing fragile time into a robust and active timelessness.
The other photos and descriptions of this series can be found in my Love of Bridges album.
Sunrise over an extremely remote and stunningly beautiful location deep into the Sierra. Shot on day 4 of an 8-day, 100-mile trip, much of it far from trails, this creek is not named and the falls and tarns I photographed this morning do not appear on any map. I was simply wandering around the area from a trail 4 miles away and found these mountains so stunning that I knew I had to get a closer look. When I found this cascade, I knew I had found my home for the night.
All I could do, then, was hope that the promised storm would indeed roll in the next morning. It did, and the sky and peaks lit up 360 in one of the most amazing shows I've ever seen. I also have several images from a tarn just above this lake, in this direction as well as with the amazing display of pink monsoon clouds in the other direction. But you don't get to see those yet. ;)
Hope you enjoy! All kinds of feedback are highly welcome.
- Jeff
Want a print? www.landESCAPEphotography.com
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please, pretty please, don't use this copyrighted image without my permission. if you're interested in prints, licensing, or just being extra awesome, check out my profile.
acrylic on canvas, 2014, 70 x 100 cm
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Jan Theuninck is a Belgian painter
www.boekgrrls.nl/BgDiversen/Onderwerpen/gedichten_over_sc...
www.forumeerstewereldoorlog.eu/wiki/index.php/Yperite-Jan...
www.graphiste-webdesigner.fr/blog/2013/04/la-peinture-bel...
www.eutrio.be/expo-west-meets-east
www.e-architect.co.uk/architects/le-corbusier
The Stasi perfected the technique of psychological harassment of perceived enemies known as Zersetzung – a term borrowed from chemistry which literally means "corrosion" or "undermining".
By the 1970s, the Stasi had decided that methods of overt persecution which had been employed up to that time, such as arrest and torture, were too crude and obvious. It was realised that psychological harassment was far less likely to be recognised for what it was, so its victims, and their supporters, were less likely to be provoked into active resistance, given that they would often not be aware of the source of their problems, or even its exact nature. Zersetzung was designed to side-track and "switch off" perceived enemies so that they would lose the will to continue any "inappropriate" activities.
Tactics employed under Zersetzung generally involved the disruption of the victim’s private or family life. This often included psychological attacks such as breaking into homes and messing with the contents – moving furniture, altering the timing of an alarm, removing pictures from walls or replacing one variety of tea with another. Other practices included property damage, sabotage of cars, purposely incorrect medical treatment, smear campaigns including sending falsified compromising photos or documents to the victim's family, denunciation, provocation, psychological warfare, psychological subversion, wiretapping, bugging, mysterious phone calls or unnecessary deliveries, even including sending a vibrator to a target's wife. Usually victims had no idea the Stasi were responsible. Many thought they were losing their minds, and mental breakdowns and suicide could result.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
We defeated the Soviets, meanwhile a Stasi culture engulfs Europe... (Jan Theuninck, August 14, 2009)
Nonconformity and Freethinking Now Considered Mental Illnesses
theunboundedspirit.com/nonconformity-and-freethinking-now...
the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence
Although it has the feel of a carefully composed set piece, this photo was shot out of the side window of a car flying down a county highway. To my eyes, the landscape passed in a complete blur. There was no way to compose shots or even exert much control over the content. It was simply a matter of trying to steady the camera and press the shutter. As with other photos in this series, I've come to love the utter randomness of the shots. There's no telling what you will get. To be fair, it generates a great number of throwaways. Most of the photos show good views of terrain or some sort of scene, but don't give off any particular feeling. But inevitably, I come up with one of these dark ones. Don't know if it's simply a trick of the light, coincidence, sheer luck, or, as I prefer to think, a channeling of some dark energy. Sort of like holding a seance. You might get nothing, or you might get something. I think we've all seen this at one time or another. You take a photo somewhere, maybe not even a haunted or sinister place. But when you look at it later, it gives off a dark vibe, as if something just isn't right. No way to know for sure, but I've really come to appreciate these images and go out of my way to cultivate them. Even still, I never would have imagined I could divine them by simply shooting at random from a moving car. This image is a classic example. There's nothing overtly menacing or sinister here, just a typical rural scene. But it definitely has a tone, no doubt enhanced by the corn rows and heavily layered clouds. I feel a sort of premonition here, of something about to happen, something unpleasant. I often think about scenes like this after the fact and wish I had done this or that, had spent more time, tried different angles. But not here.
In a city where the town hall is a sheik’s palace, the Chamber of Commerce is a Turkish harem, and the train station is a mosque, you would probably expect to be somewhere in the Middle East. But no, this is Opa-Locka, Florida, a diminutive city northwest of Miami with the nation’s largest and strangest collection of Islamic Revival architecture.
Opa-Locka was built during the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s, when films like Rudolf Valentino’s orientalist fantasy The Sheik and Douglas Fairbanks’ The Thief of Baghdad had harnessed the sultry and romantic appeal of the Middle East into a full-blown cultural fad.
Florida was hot and tropical enough to feel exotic, so when developer Glenn Curtiss built Opa-Locka, he did so around an overt One Thousand and One Nights theme. In addition to the orientalist architecture, the streets were given names such as Ali Baba Avenue and Sabur Lane.
Though the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 destroyed a number of Opa-Locka buildings, several of the Moorish buildings survived and have since been added to the National Register of Historic Places. The crowning jewel is the former Opa-Locka City Hall building, an onion-domed and minaret-sporting marvel inspired by the description of the palace of Emperor Kosroushah in One Thousand and One Nights.
Opa-locka is currently in a state of advanced decay as the cash-strapped city faces financial collapse. Many of the Arabian-inspired buildings are falling apart, and the former City Hall itself is boarded up and in a state of advanced disrepair, but a walk through the little town still offers a look at the 1920s’ idea of exotic luxury.
The building is at the intersection of Fisherman Street and Sherazad Street, about two blocks from the current (modern) city hall; the old city hall is clearly visible from the new one. There is ample free parking in the Sherbondy Park lot.
Credit for the data above is given to the following website:
In a city where the town hall is a sheik’s palace, the Chamber of Commerce is a Turkish harem, and the train station is a mosque, you would probably expect to be somewhere in the Middle East. But no, this is Opa-Locka, Florida, a diminutive city northwest of Miami with the nation’s largest and strangest collection of Islamic Revival architecture.
Opa-Locka was built during the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s, when films like Rudolf Valentino’s orientalist fantasy The Sheik and Douglas Fairbanks’ The Thief of Baghdad had harnessed the sultry and romantic appeal of the Middle East into a full-blown cultural fad.
Florida was hot and tropical enough to feel exotic, so when developer Glenn Curtiss built Opa-Locka, he did so around an overt One Thousand and One Nights theme. In addition to the orientalist architecture, the streets were given names such as Ali Baba Avenue and Sabur Lane.
Though the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 destroyed a number of Opa-Locka buildings, several of the Moorish buildings survived and have since been added to the National Register of Historic Places. The crowning jewel is the former Opa-Locka City Hall building, an onion-domed and minaret-sporting marvel inspired by the description of the palace of Emperor Kosroushah in One Thousand and One Nights.
Opa-locka is currently in a state of advanced decay as the cash-strapped city faces financial collapse. Many of the Arabian-inspired buildings are falling apart, and the former City Hall itself is boarded up and in a state of advanced disrepair, but a walk through the little town still offers a look at the 1920s’ idea of exotic luxury.
The building is at the intersection of Fisherman Street and Sherazad Street, about two blocks from the current (modern) city hall; the old city hall is clearly visible from the new one. There is ample free parking in the Sherbondy Park lot.
Credit for the data above is given to the following website:
I was clearing out some old Memory cards and found a collection of ortiginal shots from cramond. This one is very similar to one I posted before (about a year ago), but it is slightly different. The processing is very different, and actually much prefer this now .
So - merged in phtomatix and then tinkered with the fill and exposure to get the lighting right. Increased the temperature a bit to get rid of the overt blueness in the sky. Quite like this now - and whetting my appetite for when we start to get some sunsets!!
Was at it again this weekend, shooting random photos out the side window of a truck while racing down country highways. It's become a weird sort of ritual; reminiscent of conducting a seance in hopes of conjuring some sign from the spirit world. In this case the goal is to tap into whatever darkness exists just beyond the shoulder of the road. I've always imagined that great energy exists along the corridors formed by roads. So many people's energy being channeled over the exact same pathway for years on end. How could it not be? Happy people, sad people, sick people; grieving people, all sorts of emotions play out. It's not something you can readily discern while driving; I tend to feel it more while walking along roadways. And even more so if I simply stop and stand. I wonder at times if this energy is what I'm synching with during these completely random, point and shoot photo sessions. The compositions are totally happenstance; I decide when to press the shutter but the rest is up to fate. Yesterday's session yielded about 60 ho-hum shots, evocative of nothing. And then there was this frame; the last of the series. The proverbial dark one, I always seem to capture at least one of these. This one presents a lonely farmhouse with nothing overtly sinister, yet the entire image seems to say otherwise. The photo is flawed, but in a way that seems to enhance rather than detract. There's a motion blur in the foreground while the distant house is in focus. It's a weird effect that I actually also notice with my eyes while driving. Closeup objects blur while distant ones remain sharp. The photos conveys that perfectly. The image also captured the strangeness surrounding the mail and newspaper boxes. Tilted, crooked, and what in the world is that draping on the newspaper box? Had I an hour to spend here with full access to the property, I'm not sure I could have developed a better overall composition. Or one that conveyed the sinister feel of this one.
Bianca Beetson
‘Candy Coated’ 2021
The artist is a Gubbi Gubbi/ Kabi Kabi (Sunshine Coast) Waradjuri (NSW) woman, born in Roma, Queensland.
Beetson’s Candy Coated is made from materials taken from toys and references the possum and kangaroo skin cloaks worn by Indigenous people from the east coast of Australia. The cloak critiques the hyper consumeristic habits of colonial markets and draws connection to the overt consumption of Australia through invasion.
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however we are at Glynes, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie. Lettice is visiting her family home after receiving a strongly worded instruction from her father by letter to visit without delay or procrastination. Over luncheon, Lettice was berated by her parents for her recent decision to decorate the home of the upcoming film actress, Wanetta Ward. Lettice has a strained relationship with her mother at the best of times as the two have differing views about the world and the role that women have to play in it, and whilst receiving complaints about her choice of clients, Lettice was also scolded by mother for making herself unsuitable for any young man who might present as an eligible prospect. Although Lettice is undeniably her father’s favourite child, even he has been less than receptive to her recent choices of clients, which has put her a little out of favour with him. After Lady Sadie stormed out of the dining room over one of Lettice’s remarks, Viscount Wrexham implored his headstrong youngest daughter to try and make an effort with her mother, which is something she has been mulling over during her overnight stay.
Now Lettice stands in the grand Robert Adam decorated marble and plaster entrance hall of her family home as she prepares to take her leave. Outside on the gravel driveway, Harris the chauffer has the Chetwynd’s 1912 Daimler ready to drive her to the Glynes village railway station for the one fifteen to London. She has bid farewell to her brother Leslie and her father. Now there is just one final member of the family whom she needs to say goodbye to.
“Thank you Marsden.” Lettice remarks to the liveried first footman as he carries the last of Lettice’s luggage out to the Daimler.
“I hope you have a safe journey back to London, My Lady.” Bramley, the Chetwynd’s butler remarks as he walks into the entrance hall to see Lettice off.
“Thank you, Bramley,” Lettice replies. “Oh, I’m glad you are here. Do you know where my Mother might be?”
Considering her question, the old butler looks to the upper levels and ceiling of the hall before replying knowingly. “Well, it is still mid-morning according to Her Ladyship, so I would imagine that she will be in the morning room. Shall I go and see, My Lady?”
“No thank you Bramley. You have more than enough to do I’m sure, managing this old pile of bricks, without doing that for me. I’m perfectly capable of seeking her out for myself.”
Turning on her heel, Lettice walks away from the butler, her louis heels echoing off the marble tiles around the entrance hall in her wake.
“Mamma?” Lettice trills with false cheer as she knocks with dread on the walnut door to the morning room.
When there is no reply to her call, she considers two possibilities: either her mother is still in a funk with her and not speaking to her after the scene in the dining room yesterday, or she isn’t in the morning room at all. Both are as likely as each other. Taking a deep breath, she turns the handle and opens the door, calling her mother again as she does so.
The Glynes morning room is very much Lady Sadie’s preserve, and the original classical Eighteenth Century design has been overlayed with the comfortable Edwardian clutter of continual and conspicuous acquisition that is the hallmark of a lady of her age and social standing. China cabinets of beautiful porcelain line the walls. Clusters of mismatched chairs unholstered in cream fabric, tables and a floral chaise lounge, all from different eras, fill the room: set up to allow for the convivial conversation of the great and good of the county after church on a Sunday. The hand painted Georgian wallpaper can barely be seen for paintings and photographs in ornate gilded frames. The marble mantelpiece is covered by Royal Doulton figurines and more photos in silver frames. Several vases of flowers stand on occasional tables, but even their fragrance cannot smother her mother’s Yardley Lily of the Valley scent. Lady Sadie is nowhere to be seen but cannot have been gone long judging by her floral wake.
Walking over to the Eighteenth Century bonheur de jour* that stands cosily in a corner of the room, Lettice snorts quietly with derision as she looks at the baby photograph of Leslie, her eldest brother, which stands in pride of place in a big silver frame on the desk’s serpentine top, along with a significantly smaller double frame featuring late Nineteenth Century younger incarnations of her parents. Lettice, her sister Lally and brother Lionel have been relegated to a lesser hanging space on the wall, as befits the children seen as less important by their mother. Everything has always been about Leslie as far as their mother is concerned, and always has been for as long as Lettice can remember.
Lettice runs her fingers idly over several books sitting open on the desk’s writing space. There is a costume catalogue from London and a book on Eighteenth Century hairstyles. “Making plans for the Hunt Ball.” Lettice muses with a smile. It is then that she notices a much thicker book below the costume catalogue which has a familiar looking worn brown leather cover with a gilt tooled inlay. Moving the catalogue Lettice finds a copy of Debrett’s**
“Oh Mamma!” she exhales with disappointment as she shakes her head.
As she picks it up, she dislodges a partially written letter in her mother’s elegant copperplate hand from beneath it. Lettice knows she shouldn’t read it but can’t help herself as she scans the thick white paper embossed with the Wrexham coat of arms. Its contents make her face go from its usual creamy pallor to red with frustration.
“Ahh! Lettice!” Lady Sadie’s crisp intonation slices the silence as she walks into the morning room and discovers her daughter standing over her desk. “Heading back to London, are we?” she continues cheerily as she observes her daughter dressed in her powder blue travelling coat, matching hat and arctic fox fur stole. She smiles as she indicates to the desk’s surface. “I’m making plans for my outfit for the Hunt Ball. I thought I might come as Britannia this year.”
Lettice doesn’t answer her mother immediately as she continues to stare down at the letter next to her mother’s silver pen and bottle of ink. Remembering her father’s request, she draws upon her inner strength to try and remain civil as she finally acknowledges, “How appropriate that you should come as the all-conquering female warrior.”
“Lettice?” Lady Sadie remarks quizzically.
“Perhaps you might like to reconsider your choice of costume and come as my faerie godmother, since I’m coming as Cinderella.”
“Oh, now that’s a splendid idea! Although I don’t…”
“Or better yet, come as cupid instead!” Lettice interrupts her mother hotly, anger seething through her clipped tones as she tries to keep her temper.
“Now you’re just being foolish, Lettice,” Lady Sadie replies as she walks towards her daughter, the cheerful look on her face fading quickly as she notices the uncovered copy of Debrett’s on her desk’s surface.
“Not at all, Mamma! I think it’s most apt considering what you are trying to do.”
“Trying to do? What on earth are you talking about Lettice?” the older woman chuckles awkwardly, her face reddening a little as she reaches her bejewelled right hand up to the elegant strand of collar length pearls at her throat.
Lettice picks up the letter, dangling it like an unspoken accusation between herself and her mother before looking down at it and reading aloud, “My dear Lillie, we haven’t seen you at Glynes for so long. Won’t you, Marmaduke and Jonty consider coming to the Hunt Ball this year? Do you remember how much Jonty and my youngest, Lettice, used to enjoy playing together here as children? I’m sure that now that they are both grown, they should be reacquainted with one another.” She lowers her hand and drops the letter on top of the edition of Debrett’s like a piece of rubbish before looking up at her mother, giving her a cool stare.
“It isn’t ladylike to read other people’s correspondence, Lettice!” Lady Sadie quips as she marches up to her desk and snatches the letter away from Lettice’s reach, lest her daughter should cast it into the fire cracking peaceably in the grate.
“Is it ladylike to arrange the lives of two strangers without discussing it?”
“It has long been the prerogative of mothers to arrange their children’s marriages.” The older woman defends herself. “And you and Jonty Hastings aren’t strangers, Lettice. You and he…”
“Haven’t seen each other since we were about six years old, when we played in the hedgerows together and had tea in the nursery with Nanny Webb after she had washed the mud off us!”
“Well, all the better for the two of you to become reacquainted then, as I’m suggesting to his mother.” She runs her fingers along the edges of the letter in her hands defiantly. “And I am going to send this letter, Lettice,” Her voice gathers a steely tone of determination. “Whether you like it, or lump it.”
“Yes, Pappa told me after you,” she pauses for a moment to consider her words carefully. “Left, us at luncheon yesterday, that you had been making some discreet enquiries about inviting some eligible young bachelors for me to the ball this year.”
“And so I have, Lettice.” Lady Sadie sniffs. “Since you seem incapable of finding yourself a suitable match even after your successful debut London Season, I have taken it upon myself to do some…”
“Matchmaking, Mamma?”
“Arranging, Lettice. Tarquin Howard, Sir John Nettleford-Hughes…”
“Sir John is as old as the hills!” Lettice splutters in disbelief. “You surely can’t imagine I’d consider him a likely prospect!”
“Sir John is an excellent match, Lettice. You can hardly fail to see how advantageous it would be to marry him.”
“Once I look past the twenty five, no more, years age difference. No, better he be chased by some social climbing American woman looking for an entrée into the society pages. Perhaps I should ask Miss Ward to the ball. I’m sure she would love to meet Sir John.”
Lady Sadie’s already pale face drains of any last colour at the thought of an American moving picture star walking into her well planned ball. “Well, if you won’t countenance Sir John, I’ve also invited Edward Lambley and Selwyn Spencely.”
“Selwyn Spencely?” Lettice laughs. “The guest list just gets more and more implausable.”
“What’s so implausible about Selwyn Spencely, Lettice? The Spencelys are a very good family. Selwyn has a generous income which will only increase when he eventually takes his father’s place as the next Viscount Markham. He inherited a house in Belgravia from his grandfather when he came of age, so you two can continue to live in London until you become chatelaine of Markham Park.”
“Can you hear yourself, Mamma?” Lettice cries as she raises her arms in exasperation, any good will she tried to muster for her Mother quickly dissipating. “Do you want to pick what wedding gown I am to wear too?” Lettice laughs again. “Selwyn and I haven’t laid eyes on each other for almost as long as Jonty and I.”
“Well, he’s grown into a very handsome young man, Lettice. I’ve seen his photograph in The Lady.” Her mother bustles across the end of the floral chaise where a pile of well fingered magazines sit. “Look, I can show you.”
“Oh, please don’t Mamma!” Lettice throws her hands up in protest. “Please don’t add insult to injury.”
Lady Sadie turns around, a hurt look on her face. “How can you say that to me, Lettice? I’m only trying to do right by you, by securing a suitable and advantageous marriage for you.”
“But what about love, Mamma?” Lettice sighs. “What if I don’t wish to marry at all? What if I am happy just running my interior design business.”
“Oh what nonsense, Lettice! The younger generation are so tiresome. All this talk of love! I blame those moving pictures your Ward woman stars in that you and your friends all flock to slavishly! Your Father and I had our marriage arranged. We weren’t in love.” She emphasises the last two words with a withering tone. “We’d only even met a handful of times before we were married. Love came naturally in time, and look how happy we are.” She smiles smugly with self satisfaction. “And as for your business, you aren’t Syrie Maugham***, Lettice. You’ve always been told, from an early age, that your duty as a daughter of a member of this great and noble family, even as the youngest daughter, is to marry and marry well.” She sinks onto the chaise. “This foolishness about interior design,” She flaps her glittering fingers distractedly at Lettice. “Will have to end when you get married. Whether it be Jonty, Nicolas or Selwyn, you’ll have to give it up. No respectable man of position and good breeding will have his wife working as a decorator! He’d be ashamed!”
At her mother’s harsh words, Lettice abandons any attempt to try and make an effort with her. She looks up to the ornate white painted plaster ceiling and crystal chandelier hanging in the middle of the room as she clenches her hands into fists. “Well,” she looks angrily at her mother. “We wouldn’t want my future husband to be ashamed of my success, now would we?”
“What success, Lettice?” her mother scoffs. “You were only able to decorate Gwendolyn’s small drawing room because I asked her to allow you to do it.”
“I’ve plenty of clients now, no thanks to you, Mamma!”
“Dickie and Margot don’t count, dear,” Lady Sadie replies dismissively as she fingers the edges of a copy of the Tattler distractedly. “They are your friends. Of course they were going to ask you to decorate their house.”
Lettice gasps as though her mother just punched all the air out of her chest. She stands, silent for a moment, her face flushing with embarrassment and anger. “You’ve always been so cruel to me Mamma, ever since I was little.”
“And you’ve always been so stubborn and obstinate, ever since you were a child! Goodness knows what I did to deserve a wilful daughter. Lally was so lovely and pliable, and certainly no trouble to marry off.” She folds her hands neatly in her lap over her immaculately pressed tweed skirt and looks up at her daughter. “I don’t mean to be harsh, Lettice, but someone has to make you see sense. Goodness knows your Father can’t, what with him wound around your little finger! You will have to marry eventually, Lettice, and preferably soon. It’s a foregone conclusion. It’s what is expected of you, and as I said yesterday, you aren’t getting any younger, and you certainly don’t want to be left stuck on the shelf. Just think of the shame it would bring you.”
“More think of the shame it would bring you, Mamma.” Lettice spits bitterly. “To have a daughter who is a spinster, an old maid, and in trade to boot!”
“Now there is no need to be overtly nasty, Lettice.” Lady Sadie mutters brittlely. “It’s unbecoming.”
A little gilt clock on an occasional table chimes one o’clock prettily.
“Mamma, however much I would love to sit here and share bitter quips and barbs with you all day over a pot of tea, I really do have to leave!” Lettice says with finality. “I have a train to catch. Gerald and I have a reservation at the Café Royal**** tonight.” She walks over to her mother, bends down and goes to kiss her cheek, but the older woman stiffens as she averts her daughter’s touch. Lettice sighs as she raises herself up again. “I’ll see you in a week for Dickie and Margot’s wedding and then after that for Bonfire Night*****.”
“Hopefully you’ll have come to your senses about marriage and this ridiculous designing business by then.”
Lettice raises her head proudly and takes a deep breath before turning away from her mother and walks with a purposeful stride across the room. “No I won’t, Mamma.” she says defiantly. As she opens the door to leave the morning room, she turns back to the figure of her mother sitting facing away from her towards the fire. “Pappa asked me to make an effort at the Hunt Ball, and I will. I will dance and flirt with whomever you throw in my general direction, be they old, blind or bandy-legged.” She sees her mother’s shoulders stiffen, indicating silently that she is listening, even if she doesn’t want to acknowledge that she is. “However, be under no pretence Mamma. I am doing it for him, and not you.”
“Lettice…” Lady Sadie’s voice cracks.
“And,” Lettice cuts her off sharply. “No matter who I dance with, or charm, I will not marry any of them. Goodbye Mamma.”
Lettice closes the door quietly behind her and walks back down the hallway to the entrance hall. She walks through the front doors with her head aloof, and steps into the back of the waiting Daimler. Marsden closes its door and Harris starts the engine. The chauffer can sense the tension seething through his passenger as she huffs and puffs in the spacious rear cabin, dabbing her nose daintily with a lace edged handkerchief, so he remains quiet as he steers the car down the sweeping driveway. As the car pulls away from Glynes basking in the early afternoon autumnal sun, Lettice can almost feel two sets of eyes on her back: one pair from her father looking sadly out from the library and the other her mother’s peering critically from behind the morning room curtains.
*A bonheur de jour is a type of lady's writing desk. It was introduced in Paris by one of the interior decorators and purveyors of fashionable novelties called marchands-merciers around 1760, and speedily became intensely fashionable. Decorated on all sides, it was designed to sit in the middle of a room so that it could be admired from any angle.
**The first edition of Debrett's Peerage of England, Scotland, and Ireland, containing an Account of all the Peers, 2 vols., was published in May 1802, with plates of arms, a second edition appeared in September 1802, a third in June 1803, a fourth in 1805, a fifth in 1806, a sixth in 1808, a seventh in 1809, an eighth in 1812, a ninth in 1814, a tenth in 1816, an eleventh in 1817, a twelfth in 1819, a thirteenth in 1820, a fourteenth in 1822, a fifteenth in 1823, which was the last edition edited by Debrett, and not published until after his death. The next edition came out in 1825. The first edition of The Baronetage of England, containing their Descent and Present State, by John Debrett, 2 vols., appeared in 1808. Today, Debrett's is a British professional coaching company, publisher and authority on etiquette and behaviour. It was founded in 1769 with the publication of the first edition of The New Peerage. The company takes its name from its founder, John Debrett.
***Syrie Maugham was a leading British interior decorator of the 1920s and 1930s and best known for popularizing rooms decorated entirely in shades of white. She was the wife of English playwright and novelist William Somerset Maugham.
****The Café Royal in Regent Street, Piccadilly was originally conceived and set up in 1865 by Daniel Nicholas Thévenon, who was a French wine merchant. He had to flee France due to bankruptcy, arriving in Britain in 1863 with his wife, Célestine, and just five pounds in cash. He changed his name to Daniel Nicols and under his management - and later that of his wife - the Café Royal flourished and was considered at one point to have the greatest wine cellar in the world. By the 1890s the Café Royal had become the place to see and be seen at. It remained as such into the Twenty-First Century when it finally closed its doors in 2008. Renovated over the subsequent four years, the Café Royal reopened as a luxury five star hotel.
****Guy Fawkes Day, also called Bonfire Night, British observance, celebrated on November the fifth, commemorating the failure of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Guy Fawkes and his group members acted in protest to the continued persecution of the English Catholics. Today Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated in the United Kingdom, and in a number of countries that were formerly part of the British Empire, with parades, fireworks, bonfires, and food. Straw effigies of Fawkes are tossed on the bonfire, as are—in more recent years in some places—those of contemporary political figures. Traditionally, children carried these effigies, called “Guys,” through the streets in the days leading up to Guy Fawkes Day and asked passersby for “a penny for the guy,” often reciting rhymes associated with the occasion, the best known of which dates from the Eighteenth Century.
Cluttered with paintings, photographs and furnishings, Lady Sadie’s morning room with its Georgian furnishings is different from what you might think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my collection.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The books on Lady Sadie’s desks are 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. Therefore, it is a pleasure to give you a glimpse inside two of the books he has made. One of the books is a French catalogue of fancy dress costumes from the late Nineteenth Century, and the other is a book of Georgian hairstyes. To give you an idea of the work that has gone into these volumes, each book contains twelve double sided pages of illustrations and they measure thirty-three millimetres in height and width and are only three millimetres thick. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. The 1908 Debrett’s Peerage book is also made by Ken Blythe, but does not open. He also made the envelopes sitting in the rack to the left of the desk and the stamps you can see next to the ink bottle. The stamps are 2 millimetres by two millimetres each! Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter. I hope that you enjoy this peek at just two of hundreds of his books that I own, and that it makes you smile with its sheer whimsy!
On the desk is a 1:12 artisan miniature ink bottle and a silver pen, both made by the Little Green Workshop in England who specialise in high end, high quality miniatures. The ink bottles is made from a tiny faceted crystal bead and has a sterling silver bottom and lid.
The Chetwynd’s family photos seen on the desk and hanging on the walls are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frames are almost all from Melody Jane’s Dollhouse Suppliers in the United Kingdom and are made of metal with glass in each. The largest frame on the right-hand side of the desk is actually a sterling silver miniature frame. It was made in Birmingham in 1908 and is hallmarked on the back of the frame. It has a red leather backing.
The vase of primroses in the middle of the desk is a delicate 1:12 artisan porcelain miniature made and painted by hand by Ann Dalton.
The desk and its matching chair is a Salon Reine design, hand painted and copied from an Eighteenth Century design, made by Bespaq. All the drawers open and it has a lidded rack at either end. Bespaq is a high-end miniature furniture maker with high attention to detail and quality.
The wallpaper is a copy of an Eighteenth Century blossom pattern.
ALL IMAGES ARE BEST seen On Black, yours too!
Persian buttercups (Ranunculus asiaticus) is a perennial plant that can grow to be a foot and a half tall. They have blooms that resemble roses, with simple or branched stems.
The basal leaves are three-lobed, with leaves higher on the stems more deeply divided; like the stems, they are downy or hairy.
The petals are often highly lustrous, especially in yellow species.
Some species are popular ornamental flowers in horticulture, with many cultivars selected for large and brightly coloured flowers.
What got me 'in' to 'flower-photography', was that I wanted to know more about lighting... That was 35 years ago, flowers seemed the perfect subject matter, because of their different colours, shapes, textures, great variety and 'characters', I'd had many a garden, grown my own, so, I started out with an advantage, I knew about flowers...
I found a niche in the market, for overt 20 years now people have been 'raving' about them, asking me how I 'do' it?
There is NO magic formula, each flower is unique and treated as such! I do NOT consider myself a 'flower-photographer' but a a photographer who knows how to use lighting well...
Glad you enjoy them.
Thank you for your visit, so very much appreciated, Magda, (*_*)
For more of my work visit here: www.indigo2photography.com
IT IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN (BY LAW!!!) TO USE ANY OF MY image or TEXT on websites, blogs or any other media without my explicit permission. © All rights reserved
Ranunculus bunch bouquet bud full bloom lighting flowers design yellow orange studio black-background colour square "magda indigo"
*am not overtly religious but this quote seems apt for this picture :)...
This is taken in a park in Malmo, it is the 1st time ever I've seen such warmth, colours everywhere I turned my head, no words could describe the awe I felt (maybe that's why the quote above)...I love autumn...maybe 1 day I can live in a 4 season country.. this is one of those days I feel blessed that I am lucky enough to experience such amazing sight... Happy weekend my friends ;)
Marine Court in St Leonards-on-Sea in East Sussex was constructed by South Coast (Hastings & St Leonards) Properties company. On 30 November 1936 the foundation stone was laid by Robert Holland-Martin, Chairman of the Southern Railway and the building was completed in 1938. Marine Court is fourteen storeys high, and from basement to roof, measures 170 ft/49 metres in height; east-west 416 ft/127 metres in length.
When viewed from the east or west Marine Court is very tall and slender, from the beach (south) or north, the full expanse of the building dwarfs all those on the seafront. Marine Court was an early pioneer of steel-frame construction, like the earlier De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea.
The building was designed by architects Kenneth Dalgleish and Roger K Pullen, with overt references to the Cunard White-Star Line Queen Mary, which had entered commercial transatlantic service in 1936. The east end of Marine Court is shaped to imitate the curved, stacked bridge front of the Queen Mary; the eastern restaurant served to imitate the fo'c'sle deck of the ship.( Modernist Britain)
Saint Helena is a community of five or six thousand people in the heart of Northern California Wine Country. The town was in the vicinity of the recent conflagration that burned approximately 5,500 houses and killed 42 people, but Saint Helena itself was spared. Main Street is one of those old fashioned affairs, with quaint shops and art galleries. What better place to take an evening stroll for a little window shopping?
Yesterday We’re Here! plumbed the depths of negativity and hopelessness. Today our group has “Only one rule: Photos must be overtly optimistic and positive in some way.”
Our unwitting host is The Glass is Half Full.
Les Bourgeois de Calais - Auguste Rodin
Nées d'un conflit de succession pour la couronne de France, qu'Edouard III revendique à son cousin Philippe VI de Valois, les hostilités ont débuté en 1337. Edouard III a porté l'affrontement sur le sol du nord de la France. Lorsqu'il entame le siège de Calais à la fin de l'été 1346, le roi est fort de la victoire remportée avec éclat à Crécy en 1340 sur les armées françaises. Privée de sa source de ravitaillement par la mer, puis du soutien des armées de Philippe VI escompté au printemps 1347, Calais sombre dans la famine et le désespoir ; le 3 août, le capitaine Jean de Vienne négocie la reddition. Froissart a livré la réponse brutale du souverain anglais : « […] La plus grande grâce [que les Calaisiens] pourront trouver en moi, c’est que partent de la ville six des plus notables bourgeois […]. De ceux là, je ferai à ma volonté, je ferai miséricorde au reste. » Six bourgeois volontaires se sacrifient pour le reste des habitants.
Les bourgeois se tiennent debout, sans contact physique, mais individualisés par une gestuelle propre à chacun. Ils correspondent à la description des Chroniques de Froissart, « tête nue, sans chausses, la corde au cou, les clefs de la ville et du château en leurs mains », c'est-à-dire dans la tenue déshonorante des condamnés. Au premier rang, le vieillard à l'allure vénérable et résignée représente Eustache de Saint-Pierre ; sa position centrale est une allusion à son statut de chef du groupe. À droite, Jean d'Aire tient fermement dans ses mains les clés de la ville qui doivent être remises à Edouard III. À gauche, Pierre de Wissant encourage d'un geste de la main Jacques de Fiennes, qui semble hésiter derrière lui. À côté, Jacques de Wissant, frère de Pierre, s'avance en vacillant, tandis qu'Andrieus d'Andres cède au désespoir en se tenant la tête entre les mains.
Ces six personnages incarnent la variété des réactions humaines face à une mort annoncée. Par ailleurs, Rodin apporte une innovation dans le genre du monument commémoratif en rompant avec la composition pyramidale traditionnelle, qui répondait au sentiment d'exaltation propre à la célébration officielle. A contrario, le sculpteur place tous les personnages au même niveau, comme un cortège en mouvement. En ne privilégiant aucun personnage, il oblige le spectateur à tourner autour du monument pour en apprécier tous les angles et toutes les nuances. Ce choix répond à la conception de la sculpture selon Rodin, qui critiquait vivement les œuvres faites pour être vues sous un angle unique.
Source: histoire-image.org/etudes/bourgeois-calais
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The Burghers of Calais -
Auguste Rodin
In 1346, England's Edward III, after a victory in the Battle of Crécy, laid siege to Calais, while Philip VI of France ordered the city to hold out at all costs. Philip failed to lift the siege, and starvation eventually forced the city to parley for surrender.
The contemporary chronicler Jean Froissart (c. 1337 – c. 1405) tells a story of what happened next: Edward offered to spare the people of the city if six of its leaders would surrender themselves to him, presumably to be executed. Edward demanded that they walk out wearing nooses around their necks, and carrying the keys to the city and castle. One of the wealthiest of the town leaders, Eustache de Saint Pierre, volunteered first, and five other burghers joined with him. Saint Pierre led this envoy of volunteers to the city gates. It was this moment, and this poignant mix of defeat, heroic self-sacrifice, and willingness to face imminent death that Rodin captured in his sculpture, scaled somewhat larger than life.
Rodin's design (...) was controversial. The public felt that it lacked "overtly heroic antique references" which were considered integral to public sculpture. It was not a pyramidal arrangement and contained no allegorical figures. It was intended to be placed at ground level, rather than on a pedestal. The burghers were not presented in a positive image of glory; instead, they display "pain, anguish and fatalism". To Rodin, this was nevertheless heroic, the heroism of self-sacrifice.
Basalt Columns, Lichen, Autumn Plants. Devils Postpile National Monument, California. October 9, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell - all rights reserved.
Autumn plants and lichen lend color to basalt columns, Devils Postpile National Monument
Quite honestly, this photograph was at least partially the product of laziness! We were recently in the eastern Sierra Nevada for a few (more) days of autumn color photography. We had driven up late the previous day, and by the time we got settled in to our lodgings the idea of getting up again at "oh-dark-thirty" to head out and make dawn photographs was not appealing. Rather than overtly cop out, we sort of agreed to maybe not set alarms and instead just sort of see when we might wake up. Needless to say, on the morning after a very long drive that ended late at night... we did not get up at the crack of dawn! In fact, we wandered out for breakfast at perhaps 7:30 or so, and only then returned to our room to get ready for photography.
With no prior planning at all, we made a more or less spontaneous decision to visit Devils Postpile National Monument — close by, since we were staying in Mammoth Lakes. I've been in that area many times, but always in conjunction with backpacking trips, and most of those simply headed out from Agnew Meadow. This time we figured we would head to the site that give the national monument its name, and we finally got down there in the middle of the morning. It turns out that this is actually a very good time to photograph this geological structure, as the sun is behind it, producing beautiful soft shaded light on the details of the basalt columns. To make a series of photographs from which this image comes, I used a very long lens, which allowed me to isolate and compose photographs out of small areas of the much larger wall of basalt columns.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, "California's Fall Color: A Photographer's Guide to Autumn in the Sierra" is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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Escort attire (back in the days when my girls and I could do escort work!!) is all about making the client feel ten feel tall!
As a call girl, you want your client to feel that he is squiring the hottest, sexiest woman in the world around town. Escort attire should be as overtly sexy as possible, and yet discrete enough to allow admittance into the most refined (i.e. snooty and stuffy) gentlemen's clubs. We working girls need to have free access to the places where our rich clients like to spend their nights when they are in town - and far away from the prying eyes of family and other encumbrances!
This is the kind of dress I would choose to wear when escorting a new client for theatre, dinner - and then back to his club or hotel afterwards. Form-fitting and shaping bodycon and bandage dresses such as this one put all the goods shamelessly on display - without creating problems with maître d's, concierges, and the porters and doormen of exclusive clubs. I wore this particular dress to escort Lord Redcar around the West End, a week or two before lockdown began.... and he was most appreciative of my efforts.
Love and Kisses to All!
xxxxxx
Lady Rebecca Lyndon
Duchess of Basingstoke
The territorial male Common Loon (Gavia immer) shows off his strength and prowess with a standing wing flap. Its mate and three other intruders were circling and dipping their bills, a common part of social interaction. It ended without any overt aggression and the intruders flew off leaving the mated pair with “ownership” of the lake. Taken in Lincoln County, Wisconsin on June 26, 2019.
Maybe I’m alone with this but I have noticed when I dress up as a woman I find myself constantly checking out my look. I think a number of factors contribute to this. The big one being, since I was a young boy I have always wanted to become a girl. As I have grown older the desire to spend time as a woman has strengthened and not diminished in any way. As a young man I always believed I would ‘get over’ my desire to spend time as a female but that proved to be delusional. I enjoy spending time as a woman more and more, and it connects with me on deeply emotional level. I have regrets now that I was not brave enough as a young man to embark on the journey to becoming a woman. I took a different path that I now like and value and would not change. I do sometimes become consumed with the desire to be female but I do not wish to jeopardise my family and income by being too indulgent of my own desires.
Moving on from that current reality, my embracing transvestism saved me and enabled true self expression. I rarely become a woman and adore the precious few hours I am able to cross-dress and adopt a female appearance. When I have undergone the process of male to female transformation, something that is lengthy and requires much planning in my situation, I am thrilled and euphoric to cease being male for a few hours.
I have a deep need to try and pass completely as a woman, I have no desire within me to look like a man but as I am a man I find myself challenged in trying to achieve my inner dream. I do find big psychological changes occur as I work on myself physically to try and look female. As I pluck and shape my eyebrows, shave off my body hair and see my legs, chest and arms become smooth and hairless I felt a deep joy surfacing and a more relaxed sense of self emerging. Tucking away my male genitals and having no bulge really boosts me, I love how it makes me feel more female.
Typically at this stage I will apply my make-up at this point and an urgency begins to take root, the awareness I am committing to try and be more feminine than masculine grows exponentially and I have to force myself to be patient and take things steadily. I adore the moment I finally disguise my beard shadow with make-up and this induces a considerable confidence boost that pushes me forward to complete my transformation. I will admit a big thrill courses through me at this stage and I can at times, feel rather light headed. I often need to calm myself before proceeding.
In recent months I invested in an airbrush make-up application kit which, though tricky to use at first, produces smooth flawless looking coverage without looking thick on the face. It’s another huge confidence booster. I can recommend it for your foundation application, especially if you require a lot of coverage and want to venture out in public. You will get great smooth coverage and look more natural. Applying eyeliner, mascara and lipstick literally sends me in raptures of pure pleasure! I adore wearing make-up and love how it makes me feel.
Once the make-up is on my face I find I urgently have to don my wig, pull on my knickers (panties) and put on a bra and fill it with my breast forms, suddenly I feel I am more woman than man. I next enjoy taking my time sitting in my lingerie, in my make-up and with my feminine hair, and painting my nails.
If you are a male to female cross-dresser you will know what comes next. The moment has arrived to pull on tights (pantyhose) and pull on a dress before then slipping on a pair of high heels. I always love the moment of standing up as a woman at this point and enjoy the fact the man within has gone. Adding a dash of perfume and attaching ear-rings is the final touch beard a moment of sheer emotional intoxication takes over. Again, I find myself so suffused with inner joy at finally escaping my male self and embracing my female self that I need to take awhile to calm and settle into my female persona.
That’s the background to what occurs next and which I’ve compiled into this brief video. The video captures my own joy at being a closer to presenting myself as a woman and how I can hardly believe I have actually just transformed myself away from beg a male. I think vanity and obsession kick in and I find myself looking at myself in the mirror a lot and taking lots of photos to remind myself I did actually do this.
For many years photos were all I had of myself as my female alter-ego when, inevitably, I began to wonder do I actually look female? Personally, I always see my male self in my female appearance, which is a bit crushing emotionally, but I see some potential that if I work on it i may just one day pass as a woman and never be perceived as male.
As I became more curious about my efforts to look like a woman I came across a video on Flickr by Michelle Bennet in America. This, along with her patient encouragement as we corresponded, resulted in me recording my first video as a woman in June 2010. Video proved very revealing and far less forgiving than choosing the ‘good photo’ which is the way I used to do things. Most of the photos I took were deleted and only certain images where things were captured right were retained.
Video was exciting, I was suddenly seeing myself not just dressed as a woman but moving and I realised I had to try harder if I wanted to become a woman during the times I cross-dressed. It was really exciting and I drew on Michelle’s inspiration greatly. also found video was great for opening up about being a transvestite. I found it incredibly liberating to appear as a woman on camera and just chat about all the things I had suppressed for decades. Video has now become my outlet for self expression in regard to my female side.
I Idid notice in my videos that often, before I began to chat on camera, I would be examining myself on the screen. This is partly vanity (well a lot really) and partly the sheer amazement I am dressed as a woman and in make-up. I find since I began using my phone for video I ca see myself clearly on the screen and I keep checking myself out! I find myself examining my make-up and wig and outfits in detail and despite the vanity of such actions, it is good at providing instant feedback on my efforts to look and act as if I am a female.
These days I believe in admitting to all the things I’ve gone through in my quest to become a convincing looking woman when I cross-dress and I think it’s good to embrace your needs, desires and your past. I’ve gone through the whole micro skirts, skyscraper high heels and over the top make-up trying to act overtly sexy so why deny it, it happened and I loved doing it at the time. Go for it I say!
My quest these days is to pass in the real world as a woman. I found that thinking yourself into the gender and making that work unconsciously helps amazingly in your efforts to pass as a woman. Sometimes I surprise myself with the thoughts that I have when I am dressed as a woman. I definitely enjoy leaving the man behind and thinking as a female, its shocking, and exciting and genuinely thrilling when you realise you’ve crossed the line in your head!
Returning to this truly self indulgent video, I’ve compiled a few shots of myself checking out my look and would encourage others to give it a go as it really does help you evolve and improve with your make-up and hair and body movements and it is rather fun! It’s not really very structured as a video but as I am currently not able to cross-dress and become the woman I like to spend time as I am coping with my desire by posting indulgent videos like this one to help me cope and build anticipation for my next opportunity.
Despite being a man I love being a woman!
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Two of Lettice’s Embassy Club coterie of bright young things are getting married: Dickie Channon, eldest surviving son of the Marquess of Taunton, and Margot de Virre, only daughter of Lord Charles and Lady Lucie de Virre. Lettice is hosting an exclusive buffet supper party in their honour, which is turning out to be one of the events of the 1921 London Season. Over the last few days, Lettice’s flat has been in upheaval as Edith, Lettice’s maid, and Lettice’s charwoman* Mrs. Boothby have been cleaning the flat thoroughly in preparation for the occasion. Throughout all of this upheaval, Lettice has fled to Margot’s parents’ house in Hans Crescent in nearby Belgravia.
This decampment however, has not stopped Lettice from continuing to keep a sharp eye on all the arrangements, and that is why, just a few days before the supper party, we find Lettice in London’s busy Regent Street, where she is visiting the Regent Street Flower Box. This up market florist is where she has all the floral arrangements for her Cavendish Mews flat created. Under the deft hands of Monsieur Blanchet, a Belgian refugee who fled the Germans during the Great War and resettled in England, Lettice receives white vases filled with roses and lilies skilfully arranged all year round.
“Oh! How do you do, Miss Chetwynd.” a mature matron in a smart claret coloured suit and matching picture hat says as she exits the Regent Street Flower Box just as Lettice reaches for the door handle.
“Good morning Mrs. Clifford.” Lettice replies politely to her downstairs neighbour as she attempts to slip past her.
“I haven’t seen you as of late, my dear.” Mrs. Clifford replies, deliberately moving her rather large wool clad figure to block Lettice’s way.
“Oh, I haven’t been staying in the flat for the last week or so, Mrs, Clifford.” Lettice tries to brush her off. “I went down to Cowes to stay with friends for the Regatta*, and have been staying with another friend since my return to London.”
“Then I feel I must tell you, Miss Chetwynd, that there seem to be some dreadful noises coming from your flat.” The older woman fixes Lettice with her gleaming green eyes, a stare filling them that she feels her father’s hunting dogs have when they spot their hapless prey. “My pendant lights were positively trembling the other day as noises carried on overhead! It was really quite unnerving.” She fans herself with a black glove clad hand, causing her lace of her old fashioned high-necked jabot to flutter in the breeze. “Is everything alright?”
Lettice supresses her wish to push her meddlesome and nosy neighbour aside. “Oh yes! Didn’t I tell you, Mrs. Clifford? I’m hosting a supper party for the eldest son of the Marquess of Taunton and his fiancée, to celebrate their engagement.”
“A supper party, Miss Chetwynd?” Mrs. Clifford enthuses excitedly.
“Yes.” Lettice smiles sweetly. “I imagine all that noise you heard is my maid and some hired hands moving about some furniture in preparation. I have hired the sweetest little jazz quartet for the occasion, so I need to make room for a dance floor.”
“Oh. A dance floor? Do you… do you have many guests coming, my dear?” Mrs. Clifford leans closer as Lettice tries unsuccessfully to get past her again.
“Not too many, Mrs. Clifford. Only about one hundred and twenty.” Then she smiles as she plays her trump card. “So really quite small and exclusive, but I’ll sure you’ll be able to read all about it in the Tattler, Mrs. Clifford, as I have invited one of their photographers and their society columnist to report on the evening.”
“Well… I…” Mrs. Clifford huffs.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Clifford, I really must see that my floral arrangements are all in order for the party.” Lettice lowers her lids, smiles sweetly and launches at the chance to squeeze past Mrs. Clifford as she moves aside in shock at being overtly snubbed. “Good day to you Mrs. Clifford. I’ll see you sometime, after the party.”
Mrs. Clifford stands momentarily on the footpath outside, staring in shock at the figure of her young neighbour, before charging away with her nose pointed firmly in the air.
The bell above the door releases a cheery tingle as the wood and glass door closes behind her, shutting out the chugs and burbles of the engines of passing traffic on Regent Street. Lettice sighs and allows herself a moment or two to recover from her undesirable entanglement with her ghastly neighbour. The scent of freshly cut flower stems along with the fragrance of roses, daphne and irises clears her nostrils of the dirt and fumes of the city outside, and the quietness of the shop restores her calm.
Lettice beams as she gazes around her. A riot of beautiful colours, pale and bright, burst forth from every side. Buckets containing purple daphne, blue irises and yellow daffodils cluster around the central glass counter where displays of Monsieur Blanchet’s artistic floral creations sit in beautiful vases. Around the shop, banks of roses in every colour imaginable appear on tables in elegant vases or in more silver buckets along the floor. Lilies in vibrant yellow and pristine white spill forth from ornamental jardinières and great branches of spring blossom spring up from pots.
“Ahh! Mademoiselle Chetwynd!” Monsieur Blanchet exclaims in delight from his place behind the glass counter. “You have just missed your neighbour.”
“Unfortunately not, Monsieur Blanchet.” Lettice breathes.
The Belgian man gives his customer a discreet sympathetic look before returning his focus to arranging some spools of ribbon neatly in a small box next to his gleaming cash register.
“Have you been busy today, Monsieur Blanchet?” Lettice asks.
“It’s the Season, Mademoiselle,” the Belgian waves his hands about him at the masses of wonderful blooms, and to the workbench behind him, where shears, florists’ wire and red roses await to be transformed into a wonderous floral arrangement in a white vase. “How can I not be?” He beams at her. “And how may I be of service to you today, Mademoiselle?”
“I just came to check on my arrangements for the party, Monsieur Blanchet.”
“Ah! Oui, the famous soirée for the engagement of Monsieur Channon to Mademoiselle de Virre, n’est pas?”
“Famous, Monsieur Blanchet?” Lettice asks with a satisfied smile curling up her lips.
“Now, don’t tease, Mademoiselle Chetwynd.” Monsieur Blanchet wags a finger at her, before turning around and taking up his shears and cutting an inch from the stem of a long red rose. “You know full well that so much of London’s society around here is talking about your soirée, not least of all Mrs. Clifford.”
“Well,” Lettice blushes. “It did give me just a wee bit of pleasure to see her face turn as red as her outfit when she found out that she wasn’t on the guest list.”
“That was very naughty of you, Mademoiselle.” Monsieur Blanchet scolds, but cannot help but keep a cheeky smile from teasing up the corners of his mouth.
“Is everything still fine for my order for Friday evening, Monsieur?”
“Indeed it is, Mademoiselle!” the Belgian assures his customer. Consulting his order book he recites with a flourish, “You will have vases of blue irises and white asters in tall vases for the hallway, red roses for the buffet table, pink roses for the fireplace and yellow lilies for your dining room console table. Delivery to your flat at midday on Friday.”
“Wonderful, Monsieur Blanchet! You are a brick!”
“Ahh… a… a brick?” the Belgian queries with an unsure look on his face.
Lettice bursts out laughing, her happy peals filling the shop. “I’m sorry Monsieur. It means you are a wonderful man.”
“That is kind of you to say, Mademoiselle.’ He shakes his head as he takes up another red rose bloom and resumes constructing his floral arrangement. “A brick… a brick. I do not think I shall ever quite understand you English and your sayings, however, if you say I am a brick, and that is good, I am glad of it.”
“Oh It is, Monsieur! I assure you!”
“And are you looking forward to your soirée, Mademoiselle Chetwynd?”
“I am, Monsieur Blanchet.”
“And are the happy couple also looking forward to the occasion?”
“Indeed they are Monsieur Blanchet.”
“Then, I am sure that everything will go splendidly, Mademoiselle Chetwynd.”
“Oh I do hope so, Monsieur Blanchet.” Lettice replies, wringing her hands. “I always get so nervous before a party. Don’t you?”
“I do not go to many parties these days, Mademoiselle.” the Belgian remarks a little sadly. “I am too busy running my florist’s shop.”
“That is sad, Monsieur Blanchet.”
“Not at all, Mademoiselle. I have had many years before being here when I was younger, and I used to enjoy parties, very much. I’m quite certain that yours will be wonderful.” He looks at her kindly. “You are a jolie jeune fille, Mademoiselle Chetwynd. When you are young, you should have no cares, so you must make sure that you enjoy yourself whilst you can.”
“You are quite right, Monsieur.” Lettice agrees with a gentle smile of appreciation. “You’ve convinced me. It will be a roaring success.”
“And promise me that you will have a wonderful time?” he wags his finger at her.
“I promise, Monsieur Blanchet.” Lettice agrees.
“Bon!” the older man replies. “Then this is for you.” He reaches down into a basket near his feet, full of blooms yet to be arranged and withdraws a sing white rose bloom, which he passes chivalrously to Lettice.
Taking the proffered rose from the older Belgian man, Lettice puts it to her nose and breathes in its deliciously sweet and delicate fragrance and sighs with pleasure.
“Thank you, Monsieur Blanchet.” she says. “And when the Tattler’s columnist asks me who created the wonderful floral arrangements, I shall happily tell him that it was you.”
“Now it is you, Mademoiselle Chetwynd,” he replies gratefully. “Who is being the brick!”
*A charwoman, chargirl, or char, jokingly charlady, is an old-fashioned occupational term, referring to a paid part-time worker who comes into a house or other building to clean it for a few hours of a day or week, as opposed to a maid, who usually lives as part of the household within the structure of domestic service. In the 1920s, chars usually did all the hard graft work that paid live-in domestics would no longer do as they looked for excuses to leave domestic service for better paying work in offices and factories.
**Cowes Week is one of the longest-running regular regattas in the world, and a fixture of the London Season. With forty daily sailing races, up to one thousand boats, and eight thousand competitors ranging from Olympic and world-class professionals to weekend sailors, it is the largest sailing regatta of its kind in the world. Having started in 1826, the event is held in August each year on the Solent (the area of water between southern England and the Isle of Wight made tricky by strong double tides). It is focussed on the small town of Cowes on the Isle of Wight.
This wonderful florist shop full of beautiful blooms may appear real to you, however it is fashioned entirely of 1:12 miniatures from my collection.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The red roses on the workbench waiting to be put into the vase and the orange, cream and white roses in the baskets are all handmade by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in England. The gleaming cash register in the foreground is also from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures, as is the white vase with dyed pink flowers that stands to the right on the workbench.
The tulips in the box, the daffodils and irises on the workbench are also very realistic looking. Made of polymer clay they are moulded on wires to allow them to be shaped at will and put into individually formed floral arrangements. They are made by a 1:12 miniature specialist in Germany.
The vase of pink, yellow and red roses and the vase of red roses on the workbench are beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium.
The taller floral arrangement in the white vase on the workbench to the right of the photo has also been made by hand by Falcon Miniatures in America. Falcon are renown for their realistic looking 1:12 miniatures, and no effort is spared on their attention to detail.
The glass vase containing dried blue flowers I have had since I was a teenager. I bought it from a high street specialist doll shop. The dried blue flowers came with it, and they are still as colourful today as they were when I first bought them.
The shears with black handles on the workbench open and close. Made of metal, they came from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniature Shop in the United Kingdom.
The tile pattern you can just see in a frieze along the wall at the back is an Art Nouveau tile pattern, which I thought would suit a florist’s shop.
Fragmento 1 de película evangélico "La ciudad será destruida": El mundo religioso ha degenerado en la ciudad de Babilonia
👉 www.kingdomsalvation.org/es/videos/the-city-will-be-overt...
Los líderes del mundo religioso se apartan del camino del Señor y siguen las tendencias mundanas; también cooperan con el poder establecido en su salvaje oposición y condena del Relámpago Oriental y ya han emprendido el camino de la oposición a Dios. El mundo religioso ha degenerado en la ciudad de Babilonia. La Biblia dice: "Y entró Jesús en el templo y echó fuera a todos los que compraban y vendían en el templo, y volcó las mesas de los cambistas y los asientos de los que vendían las palomas. Y les dijo: Escrito está: 'Mi casa sera llamada casa de oracion', pero vosotros la estáis haciendo cueva de ladrones" (Mateo 21:12-13). "¡Cayó, cayó la gran Babilonia! Se ha convertido en habitación de demonios, en guarida de todo espíritu inmundo y en guarida de toda ave inmunda y aborrecible. Porque todas las naciones han bebido del vino de la pasión de su inmoralidad, y los reyes de la tierra han cometido actos inmorales con ella, y los mercaderes de la tierra se han enriquecido con la riqueza de su sensualidad" (Apocalipsis 18:2-3).
Recomendación: Reflexion sobre la fe
Las escrituras tomadas de LA BIBLIA DE LAS AMERICAS® (LBLA) Copyright © 1986, 1995, 1997 por The Lockman Foundation usado con permiso. www.LBLA.com.
Staff Sgt. Brian Alfano, a survival, evasion, resistance and escape instructor with the 103rd Rescue Squadron, 106th Rescue Wing, demonstrates an overt method for marking a drop zone during a bundle drop training flight at Homestead Air Reserve Base, Fla., Jan. 19, 2016. (U.S. Air National Guard photo/Staff Sgt. Christopher S. Muncy)
Shot with LV and the flip screen tilted to be as discrete as possible. Not that I think he would have cared if I'd been more overt!
It's a funny thing the not so long ago it was seen as unladylike for women to wear pant/trousers, with only certain occasions when it was seen to be OK to do so.
Normally some kind of sport or hiking. popping to the shops wasn't one of those occasions. And so women used to get something of a hard time if they wore slacks.
Fast forward to today and they now get grief if they wear dresses for everyday wear.
Just wondering at what point guys can wear dresses? Not that i lake the idea myself. Yes that sounds odd doesn't it. OK put it this way women wear trousers that are designed for females, different cut, styling and materials.
And so a dress for men, and by men i mean non trans Men a dress would have to be less feminine in design so maybe ditch the overtly floral patterns. maybe a little less floaty, the garment would then be a dress for MEN as opposed to something I would wear.
Basically I wouldn't wear a dress designed for men for i see myself as a woman. Is that wrong? And if men could or did wear men's dresses I wonder what would be said if they stared to openly female clothes.
Just a bit of waffle to think aboujt
See the trees from the forest and in this case, see the leaves from the tree!
Or risk getting hopelessly lost.
It’s a curious thing, why some Nikon users typically hate other brands such as Canon and especially Sony so much.
Nikon certainly has a much longer history than Sony so many Nikon users are typically long term dyed-in-the-wool fanatics and some of them tend to associate the Nikon brand to their self worth. These people will spread vicious untruths about other brands while obnoxiously defend any less than positive comments about their brand totem, no matter how factual it is. In fact, the Nikon mirrorless Z mount users in gear forums will even turn against Nikon DSLR F mount users, making cannibals look like saints!
Why such extreme cult-like behavior? Psychologically, these people are likely too deep into their brand totem and cannot accept that other brands have caught up or even surpassed their beloved brand with better features, options and performance. To deal with this internal cognitive dissonance, they can only put down the other brands just to assuage their bruised ego, especially when they lacked the means to switch brands.
It’s hence also clear why Nikon Z-ealot influencers don’t express any dislike/falsehoods against Panasonic or Olympus.
The rampant fallacies that these Nikon Z-ealots have perpetuated over the years;
(1) Sony E mount diameter is too small hence it’s not feasible to make fast f1.2 lenses and IBIS effectiveness is limited as the degree the sensor can shift is also limited by the smaller mount. Yet Sony released the FE 50mm f1.2 GM that is smaller, lighter (by 30%) and cheaper than the Z 50mm f1.2 S. The new Sony A7R5 has 8 stops IBIS, which is impossible and fake news if one believes the Nikon Z-ealots.
(2) Sony has terrible color science, Nikon Z-ealots sprouting this falsehood likely either never shoot RAW or have very rudimentary post-processing ability and
(3) Nikon Z lenses are superior because of the large mount. This has been well and truly trashed because the Z lenses mostly tend to be bulkier, heavier and more expensive without really being better!
A recent incident when the mirrorless Sigma 14-24mm f2.8 DN ($1,400) was shown to be matching the performance of Nikon’s Z 14-24mm f2.8 S ($2,500). Nikon Z-ealot influencers expressed extreme consternation and simply resorted to reject the test outright and tried to discredit the test even though none of them have ever used the Sigma. Those who shot Sony or Panasonic already knew how good the Sigma 14-24mm f2.8 DN is as it has been available in E and L mount since 2019. This shows how biased and delusional these Nikon Z-ealot influencers are, they simply chose to think that their brand totem is superior regardless of how good competitive brands are, such biases and delusion really make their overtly enthusiastic opinions of Nikon products utterly suspect.
Nikon mirrorless Z is rather poor value due to their diminishing market share; flic.kr/p/2kUAhdS. It’s little wonder that their Z-ealot influencers are getting increasingly desperate. This fact has been laid bare when Nikon released the rebadged Z 28-75mm f2.8 with a 50% premium based on the Tamron 1st Gen lens and it’s even 33% more expensive than the current Tamron Gen 2 version!
Update
======
Nikon continues to lose market share, contrary to the claims of Nikon Z-ealot fanbois obviously afflicted with severe tunnel vision sprouting misinformation about other brands at every opportunity.
Digital camera 2021 global market share as reported by Japanese Techno System Research;
Canon. … 45.8% (-2.1%)
Sony … 27.0% (+4.9%)
Nikon … 11.3% (-2.4%)
Fujifilm. … 5.9% (+0.3%)
Panasonic … 4.4% (±0.0%)
Source: vdata.nikkei.com/newsgraphics/share-ranking/#/year/latest...
The same report last year had Nikon losing -4.9% market share. www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/camera-market-share-canon...
Over a span of 2 years from 2020 and 2021, Nikon lost nearly 40% of their market share (from 18.6% down to 11.3%) in a declining market, no wonder the Nikon influencers are desperate! Bear in mind that Nikon still has a fair bit of DSLR in their portfolio, if we subtract this. their mirrorless market share is even smaller!
Such a small market share also means a much less active secondary market.
As expected, Nikon influencers are frantically passing around their Kool-aid, claiming silly pseudo Finance theory that market share doesn't affect revenue or profit. Problem with a small market share and especially a fast shrinking one is that the important fixed and semi-fixed costs such as R&D can't be spread out to enough units and this is likely why we see releases like the rebadged Nikon Z 28-75mm f2.8 at a +50% extra premium!
In Nikon's case, less is worse and as per Warren Buffett; Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked!
i received this email (below) on my website a few weeks ago:
We ran across your website and thought you might be interested in our upcoming Project. We are Art in Hand˙, an arts publisher looking to bring our City Project Decks of cards to the city of Washington, DC. We are seeking 54 artists who are currently living and working in the Washington, DC area to participate in our next City Project Deck.
The Washington, DC Project will be a deck of fully functional playing cards where each individual card in the deck (plus 2 jokers) is rendered in the typical style of the contributing artist. The project will create widespread exposure for participating artists while producing a unique, entertaining, functional and green product for the city of Washington, DC.
We are seeking artists of 2-dimensional art in any style or medium and from as many different neighborhoods and districts within Washington, DC area as possible.
Accepted artists will be assigned one card from the deck and asked to produce an original piece of work that clearly represents their designated card, that represents some aspect (be it overt or subtle) of Washington, DC and that is created in their own unique style.
There will be no fee for participation but accepted artists will be asked to sign a letter of commitment as well as submit a high res TIFF of the image in exchange for a one-time royalty payment in product. Artists are free to keep their original image.
Interested artists should submit an email to info@artinhandcards.com, include a short bio and a link to a website where their work can be easily viewed or 2-3 sample image files representative of their work. Please include the title: Washington, DC Project Artist in the subject line of your email.
If you are accepted to the project, we will contact you asap and send you an information package that should answer all your questions.
For more information or to view other City Projects, please visit our website, www.artinhandcards.com.
Thanks for considering being part of this very fun and unique project.
i replied and was accepted. i was given the QUEEN OF CLUBS as my card;
EXPLANATION OF THIS CARD:
my card is allegorical. it addresses the situation of female political figures (the queen) in the male dominated washington political arena (the clubs). the heads in the corners represents the extremes of the right and left, the physical challenges to women as well as the unreasoned demands and attacks from special interests of all kinds. birds are omens. on an allegorical level, the bird can be seen as either the
embodiment of the disturbing and shattering forces that threaten all female political figures or as a winged messenger of hope. the queen herself lacks any indication of her femaleness (no body, no clothes) – there is too much emphasis on the appearance of female politicians and not enough on their views and accomplishments. and the dancing children-- politics in washington is a game which you need to learn regardless of gender- to be “a player.”
i will, as a surprise (shhhh!), give david a deck or two of cards when it is printed (i think in march). since david is a card player i think he will enjoy this little gift of playing poker with his friends using art cards, of which is mother will be one. don't tell him!
EXHIBITED AT:
Touchstone Gallery
901 New York Ave NW
Washington DC 20001
29 june-29 july 2011
jenniferbeinhacker.com
art outside the edge