999?
5:06 am Saturday, 18 October, 2008
Actually the thought struck just now, that makes two years running I’ve done well in 24 Hours Of Flickr. Last year was a book, this year is postcards!
Next year??
Archive for the 'photography:' Category
‘Roos
11:37 pm Friday, 17 October, 2008
Patrick has just emailed me with the tip that I made my debut on the Flickr Blog today!!
Hurrah!!
Now if I could only get a photo of mine that I really liked included up there!!
Let’s see how far we can amble
11:34 pm Sunday, 10 February, 2008
Note: From Wednesday February 6th.
I’m sat in the departure lounge in Heathrow waiting for my flight to Dublin to board. I have at least another 30 minutes to wait. I’m not really sure why I ended up at the airport so early but it had to be done, or at least I thought it did.
For the first time BMI are checking bag weights. Now in fairness to them I was 25% over but they just pointed out that now I can carry two pieces of hand luggage and there is no weight limit on them so why don’t I just do some repacking. So I did and it all worked out fine though I could do without having to carry so much shit. That’s going to come back to haunt me but more on that later.
So Dublin. I’ve been staying at my sisters a bit recently. It’s not been ideal (air mattress in a one bedroom studio) but it’s worked out much better than I expected it to. This last weekend though I was down in County Kerry for some music, drinking and of course some photos. It didn’t help that it lashed rain for most of the weekend but it wasn’t too bad and I ended up with a few shots I liked.
Now I’m not sure what I really wrote about Egypt, I’m not even sure I wrote anything. So lets go for a very quick recap on that. There isn’t really very much that I can add to the hundreds of thousands of people who have written or commented about seeing the temples at Karnak, Luxor, Philae, the jaw-dropping Abu Sembel or walking in the tombs in the Valley of the Kings or seeing the collection in the Cairo museum from Tutankhamun’s tomb. If you really want to know anything about these all I can actually tell you is that they are beyond amazing, the colours deserve to be seen and they look a thousand times better than any photo or video you have ever seen (yes even mine!).
Two things which I will single out, one because I don’t care how many people have talked about it, I did it and it was instantly one of the highlights of my life to date and I suspect will be one for the rest of my life too. I am, of course, talking about going into one of the Pyramids of Giza. Now as it happens, I have typed something out about this so I’m just going to paste that in here.
***
There is nothing inside but a simple stone sarcophagus and blank walls. There is no oxygen, it’s stupidly hot and the only way for someone of my size to get in and back out is to get down on hand and knee and crawl, sometimes in close to pitch black. It’s sore, I left several pieces of skin along the corridor (though thankfully I did not crack my head at any stage). The walls are blank save for a simple name and date from the early 1800’s in French. It is in fact nothing compared to the sights of the temples of Luxor or Kom-Ombo or Abu Simbel, just blank walls. It doesn’t matter, nothing at all matters but for the fact that you are standing inside one of the Pyramids of Giza. Nothing else matters. It’s beyond words how amazing an experience it is, how profound the feeling is as you scramble through the dark in a monument built (we don’t even know how it was built) over 4000 years ago. I was crawling from the very first metre of the passage way but way more importantly I was smiling (if not grinning like a loon) from the same point. Just amazing.
***
Now the second was a little more mundane but it was absolutely nothing like what I had expected and is now something I’m very keen to do again. I went on a hot air balloon ride over Luxor and the Nile (not the valleys of the Kings or Queens unfortunately) but still it was awesome. I didn’t take that many photos because I was simply there enjoying the ride. Great fun and I’m totally going to do one again the next time I get a chance.
Alright so that’s pretty much that on Egypt, you can take a look through the photos for more of the story.
So Dublin. Few reasons for heading there. The main one being the lack of a flat in London. I’m not doing anything until the second week of March and I’m not crashing around at people’s places for that long when I can just stay in my old room at my parents in a real bed. So that’s the big one. That really leads up to the second one which is that I’m going travelling in March for a while and I don’t really need to be paying rent into a flat and so my stuff is in storage.
While I was in Egypt I had some quiet time for thinking and I believe the correct term is self-reflection. I came to a few conclusions and I decided that while I didn’t know what I was going to do next but I was certain it wasn’t going to be a job (sorry mom, dad).
Most of the thoughts and conclusions and indeed realisations were about me and I’m going to take some time and work with them. I decided that I have a once in a lifetime chance to get out into the world and take a good look. I’m not going to have the money or the time off again so I need to do it now.
So in a fit of something that I’m not really sure is like me, or at least wasn’t like me but is now, I am going off around the world. I leave from London on March 10th and I’ll be back at some stage early next year. It’s all booked and paid for (my bank account isn’t looking as good as it was a couple of days ago!) and will take me through around 20 countries spread over 5 continents. I’ll put some more details up on that over the coming weeks and will probably switch over to some sort of travel blog assuming that I have time (read am bothered) to set something up and it’s of course based on the assumption that I’ll get online a bit while I’m away. One thing I have to be careful about is that some countries seem to have a nasty habit of canceling place tickets if they find out you have been to come places that they don’t like.
Anyway I’m pretty conflicted over the trip. I am extremely nervous about what it will all involve and what it all could bring (and how much it’ll cost when it’s done!!) and I’m so excited about heading out to see what there is to see and experience a little, or a lot more. As one close friend said to me when I told him the news “Man, that’ll change you!”.
Now I guess I should back up a little and spill some other news. Not the ideal way but I guess it’s now slowly doing the rounds but I’m back to the world of singledom. The travel plans above kinda become plans after that athough the travel was certainly a factor. Before anyone rushes to jump on that one, it wasn’t the only one and wasn’t really the important one. It brought some conversations forward and well those conversations went different ways. So that’s that and indeed probably more than I had intended to say. Oh well.
So yes around the world. Hurrah! I have two things to work through now (aside from mountains of preparation of course). The first being I need a laptop for travel. I think that my Macbook is too heavy. I am loving the idea of a Macbook Air but I need to get one into my hands for a good look first and I need to have a think about the cost. Several sorts of handhelds (Sony have a couple of nice Vaio’s) look like they might do the job for half the price. The next and this is the one that I’m more worried about is camera kit. I currently have 3 lenses that I would use for this covering 10-200mm between them for a total cost of about $2000. Now to get a single lens of better quality which would replace all three of them and do me 28-200 would cost me about $3000….hmmm
And that’s where they called my flight and I stopped typing.
There is no turning back, there is no turn
7:51 pm Sunday, 21 October, 2007
It’s Sunday evening and I feel like shit.
On Tuesday night KG, a friend of hers, my sister and I went to Water Rats in Kings Cross to see King Rat. It was always going to be an odd evening, we were there to play wingman/accompany KG’s friend as she took a look at a fella. The band were okay, the music was ok but the lead singer I didn’t think fit very well. Anyway it didn’t work out and we left fairly early on. KG and I went for a quick drink and I decided that I was in the mood for a bit of a walk and that I really wanted to buy the next book in the series I’m reading. So I walked down to Borders on Charing Cross Road (open till 11 6 nights!) and picked it up. It had been a odd day and indeed evening and so I was enjoying the walk but it was a little damp and I think that was when I picked up this cold. It’s been growing since then and really hit me on Saturday. The walk itself was good though, I enjoyed it. The soundtrack for it was Fur and Gold by Bat for Lashes which I’ve very much gotten into recently. Oh and I got my books so that’s good. Scroll down for more on that.
Anyway right so Wednesday was work drinks which was quite good. Lots going on and good to finally have a chance to catch up with some people I hadn’t seen in a while. I had some holidays to use up so I was off Thursday and Friday. This meant a nice lie in the morning after and then a little while assembling some furniture. All good. Then off into town for McKitten’s Suburban Glamour signing and of course drinks afterwards. Lots of people out for the evening but wasn’t really in the right mood and I didn’t stay too late, I suspect I left around 9.30 or so.
More sleeping in on Friday before assembling some more furniture and stocking most of what had been put together before going into town for the night out with KG. We had a nice dinner in Kettners before heading around to the Gielgud theatre where KG had gotten us third row tickets for Macbeth as it was my birthday. The play was amazing. I know that I’ve not seen a massive amount of shows but it was miles above anything I’d ever seen before in every single way. The cast were truly astounding, it’s sometimes easy to forget that Patrick Stewart is such a great actor or to dismiss him for the genre work he’s so famous for but he’s a long time stage and in particular Shakespearean actor. I have seen him on stage before in Mamet’s A Life In The Theatre in which he was excellent but in this he’s truly phenomenal. The rest of the cast by the way are almost without exception fantastic, in particular Kate Fleetwood as Lady Macbeth and Michael Feast as Macduff. Wonderful stuff all around. Of particular note is the scene at the banquet when Macbeth see’s the ghost of Banquo. This is acted out twice for us, once going into the interval and then again straight after. Once the scene is shown from Macbeth’s viewpoint and the second from the others present. It’s a powerful piece of work. Anyway I cannot recommend it highly enough. It’s had five star reviews all over the place and I strongly urge you to see it if you have the chance.
I must, must, must get into the habit of seeing more theatre. I have several plays booked over the next few weeks and I need to keep that going. Though I doubt that I will see anything as good as that performance was again.
We’ll skip the part about then getting home and waiting for my sister to get home from her slightly drunken adventures at Disney on Ice and move straight ahead to Saturday morning. It was fairly lazy, I was starting to feel a lot worse by then but It wasn’t so bad because I was pleased to have made it through Friday night without coughing or wheezing the entire time. So after a quick run out for some fresh croissants, I cooked breakfast and then we went out for a walk on Hampstead Heath which was lovely. It was quite a nice day and I was pleased with some of the photos.
Saturday evening, well I was feeling a little better and knowing that Neil, Doug, Alasdair and Jamie were all heading to Derek’s party and that it was pretty much just down the road I figured I’d stop by for a little while. A little while turning out to be from eight thirty until two am. Oops. I was mainly sober for the evening, I wasn’t in the mood for massive amounts of drinking with my cold and stuck to vodka and cokes. Though thinking back, there may have been quite a few of them. I successfully avoided tequila which was good. Odd evening really. Lots of drama going on all over the place it seems, at times I thought it might even end with blows. Luckily it did not though everytime I though the evening was going to be sensibly called a night, someone would always change their mind and go to the bar. So not a bad evening, just odd, exceptionally odd really.
Today I have mainly stacked shelves and vegged. I have emptied all of my book boxes onto shelves and all of my dvd boxes. I look forward to getting time to sort them properly soon. I have also watched a huge amount of stuff! House season 4 is entertaining, it’s nice to see some changes to the status quo and I really like the group of applicants house is fucking with. Heroes is hugely disappointing. I do keep reminding myself that I turned off the second episode of the first season in disgust and only went back because so many people talked of the noticeable increase in quality from the end of episode four. As I recall the first two were terrible, the third was okay and the fourth was pretty bad until the first “holy shit” moment when future Hiro arrives. Then with only a couple of missteps the rest of the season was awesome. I’m really hoping for something like that soon in season two. It’s really odd how season one was at it’s best when Hiro or Peter was on screen and without spoiling at, when neither appear in episode 4 of season 2, it’s quite a relief. I’ll give it a another few and see how it does.
I’m almost up to date with Weeds now too. I have one more left to watch. It’s kinda all over the place. It’s a shadow of it’s season 1 self but it’s still a bit funny and Mary-Louise Parker is always always watchable. So I’ll watch that next with some toast and some hot chocolate. I really should go out to Tesco for some nice hot chocolate but I just don’t feel up to it.
Oh yes I had no idea that volume II of Absolute Sandman is out already. I wasn’t expecting it for another few weeks. I have huge objections to paying £65 for the Titan edition that FP want for it when it’s an entire $62 for the proper edition on Amazon.com. To be fair Amazon.co.uk do have it for £46 but again, the Titan edition. I’m trying to figure out if it’ll get through customs or how much I’d be charged if it doesn’t. Not sure how that works for books. I really want it though, and I want it now, the first one is absolutely beautiful. It’s kinda moot point though, I’m pretty much skint till payday. The deposit for the last flat still hasn’t come back and so I’m down a large chunk of change for longer than I expected. I really really don’t want to go into my overdraft but seen as I’m in need of a quiet enough week till then it should be all okay.
Oh, don’t know if I have mentioned it but I’m going to Dublin at the end of the month. I’ll be around for 4 days seeing family and friends. Not entirely sure which friends, been having an odd relationship with one of them for a while now, something seemed to go odd just before I went to the US and now I’m not getting replies to texts or emails. It could just be busyness, in fact it probably is but I shall make a call this week to see what I can find out and hopefully meet up. That would be good, I’d like to clear that up if needs be.
So I mentioned books above. Last week I was in need of a book for a journey home and I was totally in the mood for sci-fi and *only* for sci-fi. I spent the guts of an hour in Borders on Oxford Street looking for something and nothing caught my fancy. I eventually decided that because of the recent updates to trade covers for Gollancz novels that I’d given Dan Simmon’s Hyperion a try. It had never really caught me before but I was desperate at this stage. And well it was excellent, it was one of the most enjoyable reads I’ve had in quite a while. So finding out that there were now 4 books that make up the Hyperion Cantos, I have been acquiring them and I’m coming to the end of the third book. Surprisingly there has been no drop off in quality yet and I’m enjoying the hell out of the series. So that’s pretty good.
I guess that’s where I am at the moment. I have no idea now if I’ll go to work tomorrow. Sitting here no, I don’t think I’ll be in but I’m hoping that a long sleep and lots of calpol will help…though it didn’t last night and I feel so much worse now.
Right, some food and some tv. Thanks to all for birthday wishes.
it’s so fun to relate
2:59 pm Friday, 31 August, 2007
Quiet day today.
Last night I went to see Silversun Pickup’s in Scala and they were excellent. It was my first real gig back in London and it was just nice to get back to seeing some live music like that. There was a quick stop off at the Ship for the usual Thursday evening drinks before a cab ride (fuck it, right?) towards Kings Cross. (Check out the video to their biggest hit to date, Lazy Eye here).
So yeah, excellent gig. I’m still half deaf in one ear so that’s a good sign.
I’m going to have my first ever photographer pass to a gig soon enough and I’m quite looking forward to it. The only down side is that it’s for a band I really like (and would have gone to see anyway). So I’m not sure how that’s going to work out. I know I need to get a 50mm prime for low-light shooting, this may also be the encouragement I need to go out get a proper flash too. More on all this closer to the time.
No plans at all for this evening which is in a small way kinda nice as it’s been all go the past little while and the idea of getting home and having a quiet Friday night appeals.
Of course the flip side to that is spending Friday night at home alone which is, ya know, not the best thing in the world.
And now a meeting.
You gotta learn to live and live and learn
5:26 pm Wednesday, 11 July, 2007
I need to kill an hour.
I’m sat here at my desk slowly going insane. I’ve sought refuge with my headphones. I have nothing on my mind to type about but I really really need to kill this hour.
I spent a little while today looking through a stock photo site. I learnt a few things from it. Firstly and perhaps most importantly I have some photos that would fit in there well and perhaps even someday be sold. So that’s pretty good and is quite encouraging. The flipside is that I really need to work on my camera skills and actually use all of the potential of my camera. There are some times where I use my DSLR as pretty much an expensive point and shoot camera and I need to stop that. I need to get out there and use it’s capabilities and learn and take a higher quality image. I also need to start using photoshop and learn how to use that too.
Most of my photos don’t actually meet their technical specifications. I had a couple that I was going to submit as a trial to see how it went out but when I got into the process, it just wasn’t happening. They’d meet some specs but fail on at least something and that was that.
So some challenges there but also some potential, just think how nice it would be to get some money for a photo. I mean, to get paid for something that I enjoy doing so much and to have someone actually pay to use a photo, that would be pretty nice ya know?
Okay, this isn’t working so well. I killed the next few paragraphs of text, they just weren’t working for me. Actually (and I really hate that word today), none of this is working for me.
This quote from Kurt Vonnegut was used in a presentation I read this afternoon. I shall leave you with it.
Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.