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Archive for the ‘photography’ Category

Bonnieux.

Posted in from the dark room, photography on March 21, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Looking up towards Bonnieux. There are hundreds of lovely hilltop villages in France. I think the Mistral-driven wisps of clouds above Bonnieux made this view particularly lovely.

Down in the fields below the hilltop villages in the South of France there are typically lots of vineyards. At this time of year the vines look small and wizened but they’ll soon flourish!

One thing which struck me here was how higgledy-piggledy (oh dear, I’m sure that’s not a real word!) the village is. There seems to be no order, just buildings on top of each other, crowded together in irregular streets. Really a chaotic and apparently random pattern. And yet, it was built by human beings. It didn’t just grow. Then down in the valley the order imposed on nature shows the straightest, most even lines of vines you could imagine.

So, here’s my dilemma. Why have people imposed such order on plants, but not on the buildings and streets they live in? (I mean the people responsible for these two views of course!)

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Engagement – the importance of social interaction

Posted in from the dark room, life, photography, tagged engagement on March 21, 2008| 6 Comments »

I think you can understand what health is by considering the three main characteristics of healthy organisms – adaptability, creativity and engagement. In France, probably every town and every village has its “boulodrome” – a patch of sand where people play “petanque”. It seems completely informal. Just a space to use by whoever wants to use it. I think it’s a great example of designing social engagement into the spaces where people live.

Look at these guys enjoying themselves. It’s not hard to understand the importance of social engagement for human beings, is it?

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Creativity – weaving threads differently

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, life, photography on March 21, 2008| 3 Comments »

I came across two very different examples of weaving yesterday

and, then, further on, outside a shop

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The colour of water

Posted in from the dark room, photography on March 20, 2008| 1 Comment »

I took a boat trip today from Cassis into Les Calanques. I thought I’d just share these photos of the water. Aren’t the colours amazing?

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Mont St Victoire

Posted in art, creativity, from the dark room, photography on March 19, 2008| Leave a Comment »

From the driveway up to the place where I’m renting an apartment in Provence I can see Mont St Victoire –

And just down the road a little I can see it more clearly –

Mont St Victoire was a huge inspiration to Paul Cezanne. Take a look at this lovely (silent) video of some of his paintings of this spectacular mountain.

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sunset

Posted in from the dark room, photography on March 18, 2008| Leave a Comment »

sunset, originally uploaded by bobsee.

This is the sunset from the living room window of the place I rent in the South of France. Different from the sunsets I see over Ben Ledi.
I like the difference, and how the same sun setting in a different country can look so different. Of course the trees, as opposed to the great hills, background the sun, whereas the setting sun lighting the hills somehow lifts the sun out of the background.

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The creative environment

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, photography on March 17, 2008| 3 Comments »

I was walking around the village of Lourmarin, in Provence, today, and it struck me that all around there were examples of peoples’ creativity. That creation above was quirky but really quite fun. It was hanging on the shutter of a first floor window. A little further down another set of shutters caught my eye.

I don’t know if the lady who lived in this house had this tile made especially, or if one of her relatives gave her it as a gift, but I did like it!

At the end of the next narrow street my eye was captured by this incredible blue –

Then round on the main street leading down to the main square I did some window shopping (that’s the only kind of shopping you can do on a Monday in French villages – everything is closed on Sundays and Mondays…..civilised! Maybe they use the time to paint!)

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Blossom

Posted in from the dark room, photography on March 17, 2008| 1 Comment »

white blossom, originally uploaded by bobsee.

The fruit trees are further on in the South of France than they are in Scotland. Look at these lovely blossoms in the middle of March

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first thing this morning

Posted in from the dark room, photography on March 14, 2008| 6 Comments »

first thing this morning, originally uploaded by bobsee.

this caught my eye when I stumbled out of bed this morning……

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Heroes Not Zombies – the book of the blog

Posted in creativity, from the reading room, photography, writing, tagged blurb.com, book publishing on March 11, 2008| 9 Comments »

I’ve just taken delivery of my first attempt to use blurb.com to produce a book. It’s fabulous. It was so easy to do and the quality of the hardback book I’ve received is way beyond my expectations. And for any fellow bloggers, it’s a real treat to be able to page through a hard copy of your blog. I really do recommend it.

I am SO thrilled with the result. Click here to go and see for yourself.

What I wanted to do was produce a hardback copy of my first year of blogging. The blurb service has a program to download called “booksmart” and you use this to create your books. Included in the program is a great tool called “blogslurp” which downloads a complete copy of your blog into a template on your hard drive. You can then edit every single page, choosing different page layouts, upgrading low resolution photos for higher resolution copies from your photo library, and deleting or adding any text you choose. You then hit “upload” and that’s it. If you want you can preview the book as a pdf but I didn’t bother. I chose the largest format hardback book they do.

I am delighted with the quality of the printed copy and it got to Scotland in less than 10 days from the time I hit the upload button.

Here are some photos of the book to give you an idea what it looks like.