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Archive for the ‘photography’ Category

Zen garden in the garden

Posted in from the dark room, photography on March 6, 2011| 2 Comments »

zen garden

A zen garden in the garden. So, there’s this post in the garden, and somebody laid a stone on it a few years back, and now the moss has grown and…..well, just look….isn’t it beautiful?

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Nature’s patterns

Posted in from the dark room, photography on March 5, 2011| 1 Comment »

bark patterns

The patterns on this bark look amazing. Not just the underlying pattern of the tree, but the strange markings on the bark itself. I don’t know what made this odd saw-tooth pattern, and I’d be tempted to say it wasn’t made naturally, but, hey, who knows?

Our brains are wired to spot patterns. We look for the connections between things, and we constantly try to match what we see to what we’ve already seen. There’s something wonderful about spotting the unusual, about noticing difference.

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The end of cigarettes….

Posted in from the dark room, photography on March 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

cigs and cemetries

I spotted this the other day……a discarded cigarette packet lying on the wall of a cemetery…..makes you think……so, did this…..

hitting the buffers

at the station the smokers throw their fag ends onto the end of the line…..just beyond the buffers. Wonder if they actually hit the buffers??

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Blue sky

Posted in from the dark room, photography on February 28, 2011| Leave a Comment »

You know that thing that happens where a noise stops and it’s only when it stops that you realise just what a noise it was? Well, I had a similar experience yesterday and today. When I went out for a walk yesterday this is what I saw –

stirling castle

No, I don’t mean Stirling Castle, I see that every day. I mean the blue sky! Look at it! Not a cloud in sight! Then as I walked to the railway station this morning it was so light I couldn’t believe it. I began to wonder if I’d slept in, or if the clocks had changed and I’d missed it. It feels like we’ve gone from weeks and weeks of winter darkness, just suddenly into Spring sunshine….

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Show your love

Posted in from the dark room, photography, Uncategorized, tagged on February 10, 2011| Leave a Comment »

je t'aime

 

Show your love

Don’t just say it. Show it.

And why not do it every day this month…..it is the month of love

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the unpredictability of ice

Posted in from the dark room, photography on January 29, 2011| Leave a Comment »

ice

What I love about something like this, is that if you dismiss it as "just ice", then you miss what's amazing about it. Look closely and you'll see patterns and configurations you've never seen before. In fact, this particular, specific spread of ice crystals will be unique. You will never see exactly this array of crystals of these specific sizes and angles ever again. Even though the ice begins to form out of "just water", it is impossible for anyone to predict which crystals will grow to which size and in which particular places. Isn't that amazing? Something as commonplace as water turning to ice is unpredictable in its detailed outcome. Imagine how much more difficult it is to know the future for something as complex as a whole human being……

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Strange sky

Posted in from the dark room, photography on January 24, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Does the sky ever look exactly the same twice? I don’t think so.
However, yesterday, it looked SO different. I’ve never seen an effect quite like this. It’s almost like seeing clouds through ripples in water….

strange sky

strange sky

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Lovely in white

Posted in from the dark room, photography on January 23, 2011| 2 Comments »

Yesterday, the frost sparkled the whole of Stirling

frosty river forth

frosty stirling castle

frosty gowan hill

frosty wallace monument

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It’s 2011 and I’m back….

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, photography on January 11, 2011| 1 Comment »

Happy New Year! I know, I’m a bit late, but, hey, I haven’t been well. Back to health now, though, so time to start blogging again.
Some time back I was learning a bit of Japanese, and was amazed to discover that the words for the days of the week had the same root as the French words for the days of the week. To cut a long story short, I discovered that in multiple cultures and languages we name the days of the week after the sun, the moon and five planets. Not only, the same five planets, but across cultures exactly the same ones for each particular day (Monday is associated with the Moon, Tuesday, the planet Mars, Wednesday, Mercury, Thursday, Jupiter, Friday, Venus, Saturday, Saturn and Sunday, the Sun – it’s less clear in English as we’ve swapped the planet names for Norse Gods on Tuesday through to Friday). Given the rich symbolism of the planets for human beings I thought it would be interesting to explore how the actual name of the day might influence our experience of that day (I’m not talking astrological influences here, but semantic ones). I then wondered about the months of the year. What’s the naming pattern behind the months? Are they planets too? The answer turned out to be immensely unsatisfying – it’s a mess! Some are named after Greek or Roman Gods, some Roman Emperors and some after a number – and not even the right number out of the twelve possible ones for a year of twelve months!
So, I thought, why not come up with a symbolic, or semantic marker for each of the twelve months? I could then interact with that throughout the year.
Here are the twelve themes.
So we start the year in January, named after Janus, who looks forward and backwards at the same time. Janus, the god of gates and gateways. It’s the month when people reflect on the year gone by, and resolve to do something different in the year to come. In other words, it’s a time for both assessing where you’ve got to and having some thoughts about where you might be going.
Here’s my image for this month.

january goals

It’s a photograph of a sculpture at the Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. The sculpture looks like goalposts, so it made me think about the whole notion of having goals (something I’m pretty ambivalent about to be honest – I see their value, but think they can be overdone). When I took this shot, I was struck by how the sculpture framed the little tree and the idea of planting a seed, and nurturing it to full blooming was an even more appealing image for me.
So here it is, the combined ideas of a gateway, to pause and look back before venturing forth, of goals or targets or hopes, and of seeds planted with a vision to work towards, to nourish, cherish and bring to fruition.
I hope some of these ideas, and this image, might colour your January.

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Moonset at dawn

Posted in from the dark room, photography on December 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I love those days when the moon begins to set as the sun begins to rise and there’s a beautiful co-occurrence of the sun’s dawning rays around the shining moon.

moon at dawn

dawn moon

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