View allAll Photos Tagged theshining
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Estes Park, CO - This is in the Stanley Hotel, the place that inspired "The Shining". It apparently is haunted, especially the 4th floor. I didn't hear or see anything, however the plumbing sometimes sounded possessed and these 'fun house' mirrors at the end of the hallways added a visual snack.
The floors creaked and dipped as you walked down the halls, you could hear the muffled murmurs of people talking through the thin walls. Then at times everything went quiet and all I could hear was my breath, it was a slight shutter of rhythm. A single drop of sweat made it's journey down the side of my temple and submerged into the whiskers of my beard. It was unseasonably humid outside. I had forgotten my room number and my key had no markings on it. Which room is mine? I walked slowly trying to hide the panic, looking for anything that looked familiar. I then heard a sound, was it footsteps? No, it sounds like something being dragged. Yup, it's my tripod.
The hotel was opened in 1909 and it's first reports of haunting occurred in the early 1970s. The only spirits I dealt with were the assortment of whiskeys available on the ground floor. The bar offers over 500 whiskeys, and I'm perfectly fine with that. I sampled three and found a new favorite, Breckenridge Bourbon. It was like meeting an old friend again, for the very first time.
VanDusen Garden in Vancouver, Canada carries on the tradition with one of only six Elizabethan hedge mazes in North America. The maze is made of 3,000 pyramidal cedars -- Thuja occidentalis 'Fastigiata' to be specific -- all planted in the autumn of 1981 and slowly grown into the form of the maze one finds today.
Top-left panel: an old Remington typewriter, abandoned and weather-beaten. Essentially a junk now.
Bottom-left panel: my three year old HP Pavilion notebook. Hopefully, it wouldn't become junk anytime soon.
Right panel: well, this is what Jack typed all day in "The Shining"
Hit 'F' if you like
Something is up with me. I've been trying to recreate scary movie scenes lately.
I tried doing a Here's Johnny from The Shining. I must say it came out really well. Actually it came out so well I decided not to put it up anywhere. I was scary. So, instead we have this today. Not one of the most original ideas I've had.
The blur in the hand is intentional (just in case you are wondering..)
These scary pictures (if you may) are just a build up to my Magnum Opus (ha ha!) that I've been planning for some time now.
Hope you had awesome Sunday. I'm too tired to type anything else today.
Do check out -->
P.S.: Clicking links would open pages in new windows. So go crazy.
02/11/09
I've been hiding away writing a novel, do you like how it's coming along... ?
...now where's that axe gone?
As some of you may have guessed I've been rather busy recently, and whilst I've been taking a shot a day...but finding time to process and upload it has been a struggle. Life is calming down this week so I wont get behind again... I promise ;D
...and yes I really typed this out...and yes there were mistakes if you look closely you might be able to see the tipp-ex!
Lightroom: crop, white balance, brish tool to pick out text , sharpen, save to JPG.
No getting around it, We have large hotels in this town. As with other hallway shots I've done, it's always nice to see that I can hand hold a 1/2 second exposure and still get a halfway sharp image. I guess it's the thrill of the hunt.
Posters featuring Jack Nicholson as he appeared in "The Shining" advertise a Stanley Kubrick exhibit at the Seoul Museum of Art
I wondered if my lone Lilith (Smoke and Mirrors whose twin, Trouble, I have never owned) might be a good twin to my new Eden (Not Pretending) who for now at least doesn't have a matching sister! I decided to dress them in matching dresses and once I did this they suddenly reminded me of the Grady twins in The Shining. So that meant I had to create a suitable diorama... Anyhow I think they look quite good together, what do you think?
I got up early one morning during my stay at the Timberline Lodge. With the hallways empty on the second floor, I took this photo, looking down to Room 217. I felt the empty hallways had a hint of danger since a kid on a small bike, two girls or whatnot could turn the corner up ahead...
You’re scared of room 237, ain’t ya?
A longtime and diehard fan of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and a bona fide Yosemite junkie, I’ve always viewed the interior of the Ahwahnee Hotel with a mixture of awe and dread. One can be forgiven if—upon first entering the grand hotel—he feels as though he’s just stepped from what John Muir called “the great temple,” into the lobby and great hall of the horrible Overlook Hotel. In fact, if there is a break in the illusion, it is that the common spaces of the Ahwahnee, rather than pregnant with foreboding silence, are overflowing with visitors.
This resemblance is no accident of course. Mr. Kubrick designed his set (especially the Colorado Room and the lobby) to mimic the Ahwahnee, and indeed, I have a hard time seeing the chandeliers, rugs, tables and windows of this hotel without imagining Mr. Torrance clacking away upon his Adler upon one of the long, sturdy tables. Smiling menacingly amidst the tourists and hikers come to catch a few moments rest by the enormous fireplace. All work and no play …
The great coup of The Shining was its replacement of Stephen King’s extensive backstory with a brooding atmosphere and a churning sense of doom. Mr. King allegedly hated it, but the rest of us fell in love with the film. No other film adaptation of Mr. King’s work risen to the mark that Stanley Kubrick set.
Now, Mr. Kubrick was a hell of a still photographer in his own right, and, for my money, it is no coincidence that he possessed a preternatural capability for creating mood. The greatest trick in still photography is to create a sense of place, to render a three-dimensional, flesh and blood world in the rectangular space of an emulsion or a computer screen replete with a taste of the subject’s emotive power. Now, there can be no argument that Mr. Kubrick achieved at least that throughout the film.
For my own part, I am fascinated with the reality that serves as the foundation for imagination and dreams. I’ve spent considerable time photographing The University of Chicago both because it served as the backdrop for a decade my own adventures and because it carries with it a germ of Oxford, one of many templates for Hogwart’s.
I can be forgiven then for long planning to shoot the Ahwahnee interiors. “But,” I always asked myself, “how to capture the silence and desolation that so defined the film?” How could I turn The Ahwahnee into The Overlook?
The answer came with a winter bug that laid me low. Feeling feverish and fortunate enough to be a guest, I sneaked out of bed late one night, closed the door gently behind me, and stepped into the long, carpeted hallways of The Overlook Hotel.
The main staircase in the Stanley Hotel sits directly across from the main doors and takes hotel patrons ("Guests Only please", as the sign says!) up to the second floor.
Directly behind the staircase is another set of stairs leading to the basement and the employee tunnels. Beyond that is the exit the courtyard and on the left hand side you can just make out the entrance to the hotel bar (a favorite destination).
The hotel is said to be haunted not only by the spirits of its builders, F.O Stanley and his wife Flora Stanley, but also by the ghost of the man who owned the land before the Stanleys, a Lord Dunraven.
Being an Irish peer and non-American, it was illegal at the time for Lord Dunraven to own any land in Colorado under the Homesteaders Act. This didn't stop Dunraven from acquiring most of of Estes Park - 15,000 acres - through... lets say nefarious means. His plan was to turn the park into a hunting ground for himself and his friends, which he effectively did. In the process he hunted into near extinction all the native elk, wolves, bears and other large animals.
Dunraven built an English Hotel (not the Stanley) which became the first tourist facility in Estes Park. Adding to his somewhat disreputable reputation, Dunraven went about hiring women from the local towns to staff it and act as Ladies of the Evening for his various friends. Once he had essentially exhausted the supply of willing ladies, it's said he would often be seen in the local towns proposing prostitution to any lady he happened upon and fancied. He used a little trick whereby he would take their left hands and introduce himself. Then, being an expert pick-pocket, he would remove their wedding rings without them knowing and ask if they would act as prostitutes in his hotel. When the lady he propositioned complained (usually loudly and with some slapping I've no doubt) she was married and her husband stepped in, Lord Dunraven would apologize and point out the lady was not wearing a wedding ring so he couldn't know she wasn't single. According to the stories this often lead to a fight between wife and husband, and several women were left without homes to return to... in which case Lord Dunraven was fortuitously available to help them!
Women who visit the Stanley Hotel still report encountering Lord Dunraven. Many feel someone take their hand. Others discover jewelry missing and some even report being felt in "inappropriate places" upon their person. The staircase, oddly, is one of the places where many of these encounters take place. Seems Lord Dunraven has set up a screening spot to survey the hotel's female guests.
In the end Lord Dunraven's hunting preserve and land grab plot came apart. The influx of new settlers brought demands for land and put pressure on him to sell, particularly as the local population had no interest in seeing Estes Park remain his private hunting grounds, or indeed of having Dunraven and his friends in Estes Park at all.
In the late 1880s Dunraven gave in and sold a large chunk of his holdings to F.O. Stanley. As Dunraven put it: "People came in disputing claims, kicking up rows: exorbitant land taxes got into arrears; and we were in constant litigation. The show could not be managed from home, and we were in constant danger of being frozen out. So we sold for what we could get and cleared out, and I have never been there since."
Well, he was never back in corporeal form anyway...
Day 8: Book that scares you
The Shining by Stephen King
I ummed and arred about this one because I love horror/ghost stories and have read so many. Once I'd pretty much decided it *had* to be a Stephen King novel there was only one clear choice for me. The Shining is total class and a masterpiece of horror and suspense writing. I have always loved how you're never sure whether the creepy visions and goings on at the Overlook Hotel are real or whether it's really about a man having a MAJOR mental breakdown. There are some scenes that make me break out in goosebumps just thinking about them and it certainly put me off topiary for life, that's for sure! :)
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
Visited the LACMA for the Kubrick exhibit and was able to see some awesome props from many of his films.
While it's considerably different from the book The Shining stands as one of the most memorable and thrilling horror movies ever created. Playing more more on a psychological level than just your average blood and guts piece Kubrick's vision of King's novel has terrified audiences for thirty years and a great deal of that goes to Nicholson's portrayal of Mr. Torrence.
Spooky Empire Ultimate Halloween Weekend
#Spooky15
Hyatt Regency Orlando
9801 International Drive
Orlando, FL 32819, US
Estes Park, Colorado
September 18th, 2018
All photos © Joshua Mellin per the guidelines listed under "Owner settings" to the right.
The famous elevators of blood in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining are almost exact reproductions of these masterpieces in the Ahwhanee Hotel at Yosemite National Park.
Apparently I find hotel hallways intriguing. It's the carpet. It all looks different...yet the same..and just goes on and on same pattern repeated. That...and it all makes me feel like I'm in The Shining ;)
ODC - Patterns
In their early years, Freelan Oscar (F.O.) Stanley and his twin brother Francis Edgar displayed both great intelligence and a lot of mechanical things. To keep them busy, their father gave them carving knives for their birthday when they turned 10. An unusual gift, but their father's wisdom was proved out. The twins promptly turned their attention from carving simple block of wood to creating violins! Eventually their violins sold for thousands of dollars and were widely considered the best after Stradivarious' and still are.
Shortly after this they began to experiment with chemicals. The photography world owes them a debt; in the old days photographers had to mix chemicals and apply them to sheets of glass. Taking a photograph of someone could require as much as an hour's exposure in order to get the image. The Stanleys invented a chemical combination that could be exposed in only 30 seconds. Even better, they were able to apply it in gel-form, thus removing for most photographers long hours of toil in a dark room mixing chemicals. The technique was known as the "Dry Plate technology" and eventually was applied to rolls of film instead of plates. In the late 1880s the boys sold this technology to a man named George Eastman, who founded a little company known as Eastman Dry Plate Company, later better known as Kodak. So instead of Kodak being the name synonymous with cameras, it could well have been the Stanley camera, and "Stanleychrome" instead of "Kodachrome".
Now fairly well off, the boys got involved in the world of steam-powered cars. The famous Stanley Steamers were born, the cars for which they are best known. These vehicles were among the fastest around at the turn of the century and much sought after by race drivers and the rich. In 1906 a Steamer set the world speed record, and while it was exceeded by a gas engined motorcycle in 1907, it remained the fastest steam powered record until 2009.
At this point Wiki and what our tour guides told us part company. According to the tour guides, F.O.'s brother Francis was killed in an accident with a Stanley, and as a result a heartbroken F.O. sold the company. Wiki records that F.E. did die in a car accident, but that it happened a year after the company was sold. In either event, F.O. got out of the market just in time. Gas-powered engine technology quickly undercut steam-power and the company went into a decline.
Pictured here is one of the famous Stanley Steamers which sits in the Stanley Hotel lobby. I believe it's a 1907 or 1912 model. Also I think it can still run and can make it to an impressive 60 mph. Not sure about that though so if anyone knows better please let me know.
Next up, F.O. and his wife Flora go to Colorado and build a haunted hotel!
How Stanley Kubrick's Editing Conveys a Horrifying Supernatural Vision in The Shining
by Adam Polselli
Copyright © 1980 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Awake and can't sleep, thinking of a million things, and 'The Shining'
"I'm sorry to differ with you sir, but YOU are the caretaker. You've always been the caretaker. I should know sir - I've always been here."