Posted in from the dark room, photography on May 24, 2010| 3 Comments »
I walked past the old Borders store in Glasgow the other day and had to stop when I saw all the windows lined with hundreds of sewing machines. The shop is being converted into a clothes store. I don’t know if the sewing machines will stay, or if they’re just a screen while they set up the store.
Posted in from the dark room, from the viewing room, music, photography, video on May 22, 2010| 1 Comment »
What’s that I hear?
Stop.
Look up.
Zoom in.
Bird song……..little birds, big sounds, instantly……..I hear this…….
Sometimes when the past comes crashing into the present it’s a wholly pleasant experience.
Posted in from the dark room, photography on May 22, 2010| 1 Comment »
Do you ever look up for a moment and watch a bird flying?
It’s amazing how fast some of them can fly…..
If you can capture one midflight with your camera you can see the incredible positions of their wings as they beat the air..
Then, look at this one, HOVERING! Just hanging there way above the waves, those tiny eyes keenly spotting the movements of the fish under the water, ready just to plummet instantly like a stone, and capture its prey…
Now, look……..see how they look when they fly together…
Take a look today. You’ll be amazed
Posted in from the dark room, photography on May 13, 2010| 1 Comment »
I know…..it’s an odd concept to actually see the light. We see what the light illuminates, but it’s quite hard to say we can actually see the light itself. C S Lewis wrote a story about a blind man who begins to see and goes around asking people to show him the light he’d kept hearing about when he was blind. Nobody can show him the light, only the sources of the light. Lewis used this idea to illustrate the difference between two forms of contemplation when he wrote about noticing a beam of sunlight coming in through a crack in his shed door, and stepping into that light to look along the beam itself. Nice image, interesting idea.
I took these two photos through my kitchen window the other evening because I was struck by just how different the light appeared. There’s definitely something about experiencing a different light.
Posted in from the dark room, photography on May 12, 2010| 1 Comment »
That pesky Icelandic volcano’s ash might be causing huge and recurring disruption of air travel, but it’s bringing us some spectacular sunsets.
Here’s one
Posted in from the dark room, photography on May 11, 2010| 1 Comment »
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, photography, tagged synchronicity on May 4, 2010| 4 Comments »
As I walked through Ueno Park in Tokyo on sunday morning this shrine caught my eye –
I went for a closer look once this young woman had moved on.
Goodness, isn’t this just amazing? I looked more carefully at the flickering flame –
I had no idea what this was all about but I found it completely captivating. At the base of the shrine was marble onto which the shadows of the overhead leaves played looking for all the world like fleeting reflections of the kanji letters below the dove with the flame.
Yesterday I asked the students if they knew what this was, and they told me that it was to commemorate those who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that the flame was a continuous flame which stretched right back to the fires in those cities after the bomb fell.
Then this morning, outside my hotel room door, I find the Daily Yomiuri and look what’s on the front page –
Posted in creativity, from the dark room, neuroscience, photography on May 2, 2010| Leave a Comment »
I’ve been thinking about imagination.
I’m updating my knowledge of neuroscience at the moment and learning a lot about brain function and the mental processes from the perspective that a definition of mind would be “an embodied, inter-relational process of regulation of energy and information flow”. That’s a wonderfully dynamic and holistic model of the mind. The brain in this model is the organ which produces the mind, and on which the mind acts, and we can see how energy and information flows around the brain, between the brain and the rest of the body, and between brains.
Given that the brain has 100 billion neurons and that each neuron has up to 10,000 connections, the number of distinct brain states (where each neuron is either “on” or “off”) is as great as the number of known stars in the universe!
Each brain state represents an act of remembering, perceiving and imagining – all at once!
So, what’s this imagining process? I’ve been wondering if it’s the process of making connections – of putting elements together to make a pattern. Those patterns might represent what we’ve already experienced, what we are currently experiencing, or, perhaps even more astonishingly, ones which nobody has ever experienced…..not even ourselves!
Remembering is a creative act. Perceiving is a creative act. Both involve focusing the imagination. In the former, we focus it on the past, and in the latter, we focus it on the present. But when we focus imagination on either the future, or use it to play with the patterns inside our own minds, then we make new connections – like seeing these feathers on this plant and imagining a feather-plant……ah that’s where feathers come from! That must be why we find birds in trees and bushes so often….they’re collecting feathers to cover their bodies and make their wings so they can fly!
See how easy it is to get your imagination flowing when you make connections?
Posted in from the dark room, photography on May 2, 2010| 1 Comment »
I had a stroll around Ueno Park in Tokyo this morning and went to the Paeony Garden.
The plants grow shaded by parasols and the combination is stunningly beautiful.
Here’s one of the gardeners at work.
…and one of the many keen photographers…
Here are some of the ones which especially caught my eye.
Posted in from the dark room, photography, Uncategorized on April 24, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Isn’t this beautiful?
Here’s an idea – look out for some water today and notice just how amazing it is – take a photo and share it!
Heroes Not Zombies 