Can you believe that Christmas is already upon us again? I swear November failed to show up this year... one night I was going to bed and it was October, the next morning I was waking up and it was December.
As each year passes there seems to be less and less Christmas spirit too. I haven`t seen that many houses lit up this year, nor as many stores decorated... are you wearing your Christmas cheer?
Happy Christmas and all the very best for a blessed 2009
Setting up a Photography Portfolio is not such an easy task. The guidelines I was given were - 5 images with set themes and then 5-10 of the photographers choice. Considering that on a 3 week stint around New Zealand at the start of the year I took in excess of 2000 photos, you can imagine how narrowing this down to 15 shots, over my whole LIFETIME, has been a challenging task!
Then, of course, there is the decision of your own categories. Say, for example, you choose 'Landscape' as one of them. Having travelled to 22 countries you can imagine how easy that task is!
Plus you have to worry about give and take for personal likes and dislikes. Given there are 7 people looking over them, you still have to wonder about your amateur eye versus their professional eye. Are you making a big mistake by using that one with the shot from under the bridge? How about the other one that you can either use in black and white or colour? Which one is best?
Taking a photo is so different to writing in that you have one shot on a 2D piece of paper to convey something that you can describe with a thousand words. The shot has to be more than just a point-at-the-subject-and-click shot. You have to capture the emotion in the shot, you have to allow the viewer a little peek into a world, and just as with writing, you have to give it to them from an angle that allows room for the imagination to explore and delve and conjure up the magic.
None of these made the final cut, but I like them anyway. Now I just have to catch that elusive lightning!
Like a photograph overexposed, the sunlight seemed too harsh on the surrounding, washing it in light that caused her eyes to close a little from the glare. The air was hot, but pressed down even more than usual, the warm breath of the breeze making her body twitch, uncomfortable at it’s touch, like an unwelcome stare from a leering stranger.
Her head felt heavy, as it if would roll from her shoulders at any moment, implanting itself into the soil with a dull thud, making a crater like some meteor crashing down from the heavens. The thoughts that circulated it were lazy, swimming through the darkness in slow, struggling strokes. Nothing was clear. Nothing penetrated the stagnant waters. Even the harsh sunlight was unable to dig its burning fingers through the stench and thick, slimy grime of congealing waste that had gathered over time.
At night fear had begun to clasp its icy fingers around her throat, the skin clammy and lifeless. The shadows that had long comforted her in her knowledge of their identity, transformed into black beasts who snarled and whispered in her ear words which instantly turned her blood cold in her veins.
Her outside mask smiled, covering the warm salty tears that carved their rivers down her cheeks. She tried not to move too much, for fear that they would notice her soul dragging on the floor behind her, fingernails clasping the heels of her feet to hold on.
And they smiled back at her, not noticing the sparkle had left her eyes.
The talk of money is never far from anyones lips, especially at the moment with all the crashes occuring around the world and the belts being tightened around the home. But I wonder if money really is as bad as what people make out it is, or whether its more about who's hands it falls into and what those people do with it.
I know poor people who are rich in happiness, but I also know poor people who are miserable and spend their lives worrying about where their next dollar will come from. Then again I know grossly rich people who are happy - they don`t splash their money around, live within the means of their working class neighbours and help out a few stragglers whom they meet along the way. Then I also know grossly rich people who spend their who lives worrying about protecting their mounds of gold and spending ridiculous amounts of money on things that have to be kept in vaults, shoes that remain in their boxes and clothes that have never seen the light of day
Genetic Memory is something which has always intrigued me. What is it? Some call it instinct, but what exactly is instinct? Some say that it`s memories that are innate, already coded into our DNA. But how can you have a memory of something you have never experienced? I suppose it begins the argument of what came first – the chicken or the egg? It has to have started somewhere back in time.
Reading ‘McCarthy’s Bar’ (Pete McCarthy ISBN 978-0-340-93637-5) recently, he writes
I know that I`m supposed to be writing travel blogs but I just don`t have the time these days so I just have to write a post for this blog which will be in line with some of my flashes of memories posts where there is no punctuation or capitalization to confuse things just the raw writing of words and the flow of thoughts when it comes to travel which is something deeply close to me
travel opens the mind and allows the traveller to rest their weary head against the rickety wooden seat of the train which is rocking gently or the plane that is speeding across lands where people point and still to this day wonder what it must be or depending on where you are above the earth wonder what it must be like to fly in one
I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and New Years. Thanks for the messages and apolgies for taking so long to get back.... seems life took hold and went cantering off at a very fast pace. Am I the only one who is glad the kids have gone back to school?
Hope 2009 brings all the happioness and love to overflow your cups
Kids of today... or should I say parents of today... coz it`s the parents who have allowed the kids to be in the situation that they are in.
Kids have too many liberties these days, they have too many helplines and excuses to bail them out. These things were put in place to genuinely help kids who are being abused and who are in need but have, instead been taken over by 'woe-is-me'....
Give them a good hiding and send them to their room... if he is like this at the age of 4 imagine when he is 16 or 17??
Well after much deliberation and many hours spent at the printers the Bee one, the tyre one and the building one made it in... but the others were shafted I have some that are similar but not quite the same and others that are totally different for my 15 total. Will post for my next post for sure.
I love life behind the lens... I should have done it a long time ago... but hey, sometimes we don`t have the encouragement we need! That`s something good to come from Orble (seeing as there seems to be a lot of negativity out there from it!)
Thanks... I`m really excited about it. We should be hearing soon... so fingers crossed! I`m a bit annoyed that i didn`t have as much time to work on my folio as iw ould have liked but hey... c`est la vie!!!!
ahhh I love to travel and that`s where most of my pictures come from - although you would be surprised what you can photograph from your own backyard... there is a whole world in there that many people don`t take advantage of
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Comment by Ash
on Componenets and Locations of Buildings ~ Q & R
Australian Traveller
Flashes of memories