Descent
Celtic Dragon
Moray
Rescue
Here are driftwood photos I've been editing.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
Whispers of Shakespeare
Last night I was asked to photograph a local production at the Eastgate theatre, titled So Long Lives This. It was a collection of songs, sonnets, pieces of drama and dance all connected by a loose narrative about Queen Elizabeth, Will Shakespeare, The Earl of Southampton and various other of the usual suspects. It was a gentle, occasionally dramatic piece performed in the round in an intimate atmosphere with minimal staging and rich costuming.
I've missed this; subtle and imaginative theatre woven around the life and work of Shakespeare. In Auckland I worked with a fine group of young people and dedicated parents to produce an abridged and minimal Julius Caesar, and with various groups in school holidays on some of my own Shakespearean pieces. It's one of things I like best in theatre, and I'm looking forward to doing more of it.
More info here:
http://www.shakespeare-at-traquair.co.uk/
A life in pictures
This week a friend passed on to me a collection of several hundred slides taken by a distant uncle of his over forty-odd years. When the man died his slides and old camera gear ended up in my friend's attic, emerging this week as bin-fodder and intercepted by me.
The slides, mostly taken in Edinburgh, divide into distinct categories. Many are up-close images of flowers, leaves, and a few of trees, clouds etc, all taken in the Botanical Gardens. There's a collection of monochromes of pavements, snow, shadows and various textured surfaces, and the other set is of dressed mannequins in fashionable shop windows on Princes Street.
This last set is what caught my eye; striking and complex images involving the dressed models, the lettering on the window's surface, the reflections in the shop window of Edinburgh Castle and of people passing by. He used high quality lenses so the light and the depth of field is superb, the models are shot to seem animated or engaged in conversation with each other. The reflections show the different layers existing simultaneously, overlaid on to a single static image. The older ones depict 1950s fashions, green Edinburgh omnibuses, people in hats and overcoats.
Looking through them on an old slide projector I tried to picture this man, this distant uncle seeing the finished picture in his head, finding the right angles and setting up all the manual controls of his Contax camera. What was he seeing in these images, what were they for ?
I read an article this week titled 'Don't Die With Your Music Still In You' and I've been thinking about how creativity flows through us. I wonder what he did with his slides, beyond selecting and arranging them in carousels, storing them meticulously in archive boxes. I felt privileged to have seen something of his creativity.
The slides, mostly taken in Edinburgh, divide into distinct categories. Many are up-close images of flowers, leaves, and a few of trees, clouds etc, all taken in the Botanical Gardens. There's a collection of monochromes of pavements, snow, shadows and various textured surfaces, and the other set is of dressed mannequins in fashionable shop windows on Princes Street.
This last set is what caught my eye; striking and complex images involving the dressed models, the lettering on the window's surface, the reflections in the shop window of Edinburgh Castle and of people passing by. He used high quality lenses so the light and the depth of field is superb, the models are shot to seem animated or engaged in conversation with each other. The reflections show the different layers existing simultaneously, overlaid on to a single static image. The older ones depict 1950s fashions, green Edinburgh omnibuses, people in hats and overcoats.
Looking through them on an old slide projector I tried to picture this man, this distant uncle seeing the finished picture in his head, finding the right angles and setting up all the manual controls of his Contax camera. What was he seeing in these images, what were they for ?
I read an article this week titled 'Don't Die With Your Music Still In You' and I've been thinking about how creativity flows through us. I wonder what he did with his slides, beyond selecting and arranging them in carousels, storing them meticulously in archive boxes. I felt privileged to have seen something of his creativity.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
RSS
I'm enjoying RSS feeds. The Mac's Mail programme can subscribe to these via the little orange RSS icon on many websites. Every time the website is updated with new material a descriptive headline (or sometimes the whole article) is downloaded to my RSS reader. I check to see what might be of interest before looking at the website.
Currently I'm subcribed to Curious Read, Lifehacker, Indexed, BBC PM programme, and Zen Habits, amongst others.
You can even subscribe to this blog, and get a note downloaded when I post new stuff. Then again, why would you ?
Currently I'm subcribed to Curious Read, Lifehacker, Indexed, BBC PM programme, and Zen Habits, amongst others.
You can even subscribe to this blog, and get a note downloaded when I post new stuff. Then again, why would you ?
Saturday, March 14, 2009
My, How You've Grown
Bringing the significant changes of the past four years back to old haunts sets the challenge of reinvention. Good old T S Eliot described it in Journey Of The Magi:
"We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,"
The discomfort is in the shifted expectations I have of myself, work, other people. Before we left New Zealand I read some books about repatriation in which a common theme was one of finding a new space to occupy in an old familiar place. Don't get me wrong; it's an exciting and natural process, a confirmation of growth over stagnation, but the four-year gap has had a jarring effect on re-entry. I consciously resist the temptation to say 'my, how you've grown' to friends' children and former students who have doubled in height during our absence, though it is said to me in subtle ways.
My shifted space includes new and interesting friends, changed expectations of old friendships, more enjoyment of the countryside, daily cooking and baking, grappling with procrastination born of autonomy, a stripping back of material things. I wouldn't have predicted some of these.
"We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,"
The discomfort is in the shifted expectations I have of myself, work, other people. Before we left New Zealand I read some books about repatriation in which a common theme was one of finding a new space to occupy in an old familiar place. Don't get me wrong; it's an exciting and natural process, a confirmation of growth over stagnation, but the four-year gap has had a jarring effect on re-entry. I consciously resist the temptation to say 'my, how you've grown' to friends' children and former students who have doubled in height during our absence, though it is said to me in subtle ways.
My shifted space includes new and interesting friends, changed expectations of old friendships, more enjoyment of the countryside, daily cooking and baking, grappling with procrastination born of autonomy, a stripping back of material things. I wouldn't have predicted some of these.
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