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Scene from a delightful classic children's book about a little duck named Ping in China who gets separated from his family.
The Story about Ping.
by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese
Published by Macmillan (1939)
Bare strobes on each side of subject (walls limited space, so modifiers wouldn't fit), beauty dish high and slightly camera left.
„Five months ago, I came from China for postgraduate studies. I want to increase my chances for a good job. Whether I end up in China or Germany or somewhere else doesn't really matter to me.“
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After finishing my 100 Strangers Project, I continue to photograph strangers based on the principles of the Project. Find out more about the project at the group page 100 Strangers.
The outbound Illini slides by Ping Tom Park on its way downstate. This view will be changing in the near future with upcoming construction.
Incense burning in the courtyard of the Ngong Ping Buddhist monastery near the Tian Tan big Buddha on Hong Kong's Lantau Island.
Copyright © Mal Ogden Photography. All rights reserved. Please don't use without my permission
The accordion band is the most popular ensemble of folk instruments on the island of Dominica. In recent times, it has been referred to as the Jing Ping band - the name being an onomatopoeia resembling the finely textured sound that is produced by this ensemble:[4]
I’m dying to dub someone ‘Dr. Ted Nugent.’ I like to be cold when I sleep. I have an unhealthy love for George Peppard. I once decided to call all strangers ‘Jack’ in the manner of Sinatra. No one found it amusing. Maybe I’ll just call everyone ‘Darling’ like Audrey Hepburn. I hated Vanilla Sky. My house smells of mold and incense. I’ve been known to dislike people for mispronouncing one word. I’m far too critical. I’m craving reruns of MST3K. I’d like to work on a cruise ship for a year. Sometimes I forget the places I’ve been and the things I’ve done - it’s how I keep my life interesting. This is how I categorize my faults, of which there are many. I’ve decided I have far too many shoes for one person with only two feet. I leave Japan in two weeks and four days. One of my eyes is larger than the other…I think. My students think it’s funny I can touch my toes without bending my knees…they’re easily entertained. I'm drinking Coke for breakfast. I’ve listened to the Mosquito Song by QOTSA twelve times all ready today. I’m a ping pong failure.
"... Doce pingos bien domaos,
todos de una mesma alzada,
una tropilla envidiada:
mis alazanes tostaos.
Antes muertos, que cansaos,
como lo dice el refrán;
con doce pingos que están,
presentes en mi memoria,
y que, conmigo, a la historia,
de lo gaucho, pasarán ..."
Fragmento de "Mis alazanes tostaos", de Evaristo Barrios
Fuente: gauchoguacho.blogspot.com
San Antonio de Areco, Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Richard Wright, keyboard player and founding member of legendary British band Pink Floyd, a gentle, modest, kind-hearted man, passed away yesterday September 15th 2008, "after a short struggle with cancer". He was aged 65. I cannot accurately quantify how much the music of this band has meant to me all through my life. Let me just tell you I may be falling pretty short if I say it has meant a tremendous lot; it still does and it most likely will remain so in the years to come. Yesterday good-old Rick died - the soul of Pink Floyd - and, as the BBC put it, "with Wright's passing, a hugely important chapter in the story of British music has closed." Since Richard Wright's input in the band's music and entire work has been immense which makes difficult to single out one particular composition. "Us and Them", "The Great Gig in the Sky", "Shine on you Crazy Diamond", or "Echoes" are but four pieces were Wright's contribution was of paramount importance. "Echoes" in particular, one of the earliest masterpieces of the band, had a major impact on me, a song built from and around a single piano note, a simple, effective, and distinctive "ping" (amplifying a grand piano and sending the signal through a Leslie rotating speaker) that only a musical genius could devise and develop. What follows next is some related text I once wrote (back in 2002) in a blog I used to run. It is my humble little homage.
Once upon a time, when I was fourteen, I bought my first record ever - I'm explicitly leaving out singles which I was mostly given away - my very first one, after a meditated decision. That record was The Wall. When my daughter turned fourteen she bought her first CD ever, her very first one, after what was, perhaps, a meditated decision. That record was whatsitsname by teenage idol Britney Spears. The similarities start and end here. Let us see: should I be worried? Of course I mean, should I be worried about myself?
In retrospect, I have frequently wondered what would have been of my life hadn't I bought The Wall. For one thing it would have been very different. Certainly I'd not be writing about it now. But, would have it been a better life - whatever that means - a more enjoyable one, or a sadder and wearier one? Well, I have no idea. Whatsoever. But, however biased I can be in my answer, I'm inclined to think that it'd have been way, way, way worse. Meaning by that it'd have been more empty.
Since, let's put it that way, that record woke me up and made me start thinking, so to speak. Or at least this is how I remember it. But let's get a bit humbler here for a while: I was only fourteen for goodness' sake and therefore I must have considered my choice less than what the previous "after a meditated decision" may imply. This probably means that, at that time, I was mostly captivated by the music - those little sounds on the dense background, almost too thick to see anything, all that insane and weird collage of sounds, that distinctive atmosphere, already present in the Floyd's early work but fine-tuned to extremely accurate levels later on. It was simply much too shocking for a high-school kid. Roger Waters' excellent lyrics came later, not much though. And boy, then I quit everything else.
The Wall was, how to put it, it was something that I hardly could control. At that time it was constantly present in my everyday life, like a friend you've just discovered and you try to stick to hoping to get to know him better. I used to listen to it, well, at anytime, but mostly at night with the lights off and the headphones on, and the volume up and the body down, lying on the bed, supinely. And I still remember how the music made me shiver every now and then, bringing me close to tears sometimes. Curiously enough, The Wall was the door I opened aged fourteen to enter "a room of musical tunes" which soon became firmly attached to myself, familiar to the extreme. Yes, I became a Pink Floyd freak back then - in some sense, some tragicomic sense, I still am nowadays. I used to know all the lyrics, all the songs, every guitar riff and every drumroll that good old Mason performed at any time and in any song. And believe me, this is not an attempt at being unmodest. This is strictly true. Period. Remember, I was a real freak. Let me give you an example: when the disturbing movie based upon The Wall album was finally shown in my hometown I went to the theater to see it five times in a row, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I stole - well, just unglued - an advertising poster of the film from a wall close to the theater and ran home like Hell with it (I can still see it today everytime I enter my old bedroom at my parents' apartment). Needless to say, as soon as it became available, I bought the video tape.
The road to freakiness was paved away by The Wall, certainly. But there was even a greater achievement, an even more significant highlight, a well-deserved milestone: a concert they showed on TV (a special purpose program conducted by a guy called Carlos Tena), the band's famous and acclaimed concert - the weirdest among the weird - Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii. Well, that was a revelation. Some people claim, poker-facedly, that they have the power to see the Virgin Mary. I've never seen her but perhaps the closest I've been to such kind of episode was when I saw this gig on TV. It really shocked me. It was incredible, the music, the venue. On the day after, at school, still under the effects of that experience, I tried in vain to convey my excitation to some classmates, but nobody seemed to have been so seriously infected as I was. I remember that some time before the TV show my father greatly surprised me with a present. He bought me a Spanish music magazine called Popular 1. That issue happened to be a special one on Pink Floyd. I don't really know why he did that since, for one thing I'm quite convinced I was not all that explicit about my fondness for Pink Floyd. Nevertheless, for whatever reason he bought it and such a decision - perhaps trivial - had important consequences: it focused my upcoming musical likings a good deal, whose early roots were being deeply settled at that time and it acted as an unexpected catalyst. His present largely contributed to increase my knowledge of the band and the music. And records started to be bought, slowly - I didn't have that much money - but steadily, to complete the entire discography, with quite some local highlights here and there, some intermediate pinnacles towards a final culminating summit, most notably the first listening to The Dark Side of the Moon. Since then the lunatic is indeed in my hall.
As the years went by I started to understand the lyrics better, something which gradually began providing the greatest pleasure. My interest for songs with high quality lyrics as well as for those so-called "conceptual albums" rose, but its roots can be traced back to those days. For the sake of its significance and for its faithful presence - since time gives a solid and unambiguous measure to what we like and dislike - I think I would choose "Echoes" as the band's most paradigmatic song. But sure enough there could be dozens filling the slot. The song is strange, nice and melodic - even mellow - on the one hand and weird and ragged on the other. Countless nights were smoothed out with that song filling the air of my bedroom, with Wright's bizarre synthesizer paraphernalia in the middle - my favorite part - bouncing back and forth in my head.
And many, many years later, while walking towards his school, my son told me he would like to see the Pink Floyd video I was watching the other day, at night. Insistingly he made it clear I should turn the VCR on as soon as I came back from work. Then and there I felt absurdly proud of the boy. For no good reason I had been watching the Pompeii concert again. During such occasions my son was also at the living room, doing other various things - playing with toys, painting, gameboying - and apparently also taking notice of the music and the pictures on the TV screen. Later he's even told me he wants a guitar like that of Pink Floyd's guitar player - with "thorns" - for Christmas, and a drum kit like Pink Floyd's too. At his own request I put the tape on the VCR once again. I told my wife how lovely it is that the kid likes watching that concert and listening to Pink Floyd. With little emphasis she says that it is just OK. Lowering my excitement even more, my daughter claims that he likes that video as much as he enjoys dancing to a stupid music hit called La Bomba. Fair enough, I suppose, but there stands the objective fact: he explicitly asks for the Pink Floyd video Live at Pompeii. Out of his free will. And boy, that's more than enough to make my day.