July | 2014 | Heroes Not Zombies

Archive for July, 2014

Every picture tells a story

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, narrative, photography on July 21, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Some scenes seem to brim over with narrative potential.

I think this is one of them.

The A to Z of Becoming. Part 2. C for Connect

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, narrative, perception, personal growth, photography on July 20, 2014| Leave a Comment »

In the A to Z of Becoming, the second “C” is CONNECT.

We connect all the time. This week, think of two ways in which we connect – connecting to others – we are highly social creatures; who could you connect with the week, and what kind of connection would you like to make with them?

Secondly, we connect up our experiences and our perceptions. This is one of the ways we make sense of our lives – by creating narratives of connections which help us to make sense of life.

This photo is of a labyrinth carved into the prison wall in a chateau in the eighteenth century. As we connect this labyrinth to others we know, as we think of other castles we have visited and we think of the person who might have created this particular labyrinth we create many stories.

Have you a story to tell from the connections in your own life to this labyrinth?

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Spectacular – le miroir d’eau

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography on July 19, 2014| Leave a Comment »

In Bordeaux there is a spectacle well worth waiting for – le miroir d’eau. It’s a large area which fills periodically with a thin layer of water and once the movement in the water settles down it make a giant mirror. The absolute best time to see it is just after the lights are turned on in the streets and surrounding buildings.

Really, it qualifies for the adjective “spectacular”

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Little tripods

Posted in from the dark room, photography on July 18, 2014| 1 Comment »

Here’s a wee photography tip today – I always carry a tiny, flexible tripod in my bag so in a really low level lighting situation like this I can pop it on, sit on the ground and get a nice clear image like this. Without the tripod, I end up with very blurry photos in this light.

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One step at a time

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on July 17, 2014| Leave a Comment »

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Rockecology

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, photography on July 16, 2014| Leave a Comment »

This little rock easily fitted into the palm of my hand but look at it! The rock itself has many layers of different colour and probably of different elements, then on top, there is layer after layer of different types of lichen and sea plants. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were little creatures living in there too, at least at one time, if not now.

I enjoyed looking at it, turning it this way and that, wondering about the incredible diversity I could see, and how all the elements of this little ecosystem might have interacted over the weeks, months and years gone by.

In some ways this is what our stories must look like, as we interact with others, live with others, and are changed by the events which occur in our lives.

If there is this degree of complexity in one little rock ecosystem, then the complex uniqueness of an individual life must be astonishing.

So why do we treat people as if they are not unique?

Why do we think we can isolate just one aspect of a complex life and influence that exclusively, and predictably?

That doesn’t make sense to me.

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The changing light

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, perception, personal growth, photography on July 15, 2014| Leave a Comment »

As I watched the fireworks for the July 14th celebrations at Chateau d’Oleron, the moon began to rise over the horizon.

As it rose, the light it cast over the sea grew stronger…

And slowly changed from gold to silver….

As well as being beautiful, this fascinated me. Moonlight is reflected light, even though it looks like the moon is shining with its own light. Then the reflection of that reflected light on the water stretched for miles an miles.

The fireworks were spectacular too! But the constantly changing moonlight was completely amazing.

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