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Archive for the ‘photography’ Category

Red White and Blue

Posted in from the dark room, photography on July 25, 2007| Leave a Comment »

french family, originally uploaded by bobsee.

Here’s a variation on my Five Days, Five Colours idea.
I was in France on the weekend of Bastille Day so I thought I’d go out and photograph red, white and blue.
Here’s the set of photos I took

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traces…..

Posted in books, from the dark room, from the reading room, health, life, photography on July 21, 2007| Leave a Comment »

ripples in the sand, originally uploaded by bobsee.

Then the long trail of her footprints, stretching back towards the sea, became slowly indistinct as each one filled with water and edged in upon itself; and in a matter of minutes, as darkness began to fall, the shape of the foot was lost at every place until the last vestiges of her presence were washed away, the earth closing over as though no one had passed by.

Sebastian Faulks. Human Traces

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Raindrops on a spider’s web

Posted in from the dark room, photography on July 19, 2007| 2 Comments »

web water 1, originally uploaded by bobsee.

As i walked to my front door this evening something sparkly caught my eye.
Look at this!
It’s raindrops lying on a spider’s web! I’ve never seen a range of water droplets of such varying shapes and sizes before. This is SO different from how dew or frost looks on a web.
Isn’t it beautiful?

There were a number of other webs with raindrops caught in them today. You can see them on my flickr page

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Water reflected on water

Posted in from the dark room, photography on July 13, 2007| 2 Comments »

clouds over water, originally uploaded by bobsee.

I find water so fascinating. In all its forms.
Clouds are lovely. They manage to look solid and soft and substantial and impermanent all at once.
Here’s a photo I took looking down on the clouds as I flew over the French coast.
What’s really amazing here is how you can see the shadows of the clouds on the surface of the sea.
Water reflected on water
Water moving over the face of the water.
Shadows of heaven on earth

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The beauty of water

Posted in from the dark room, photography on July 6, 2007| 2 Comments »

raindrops on leaves, originally uploaded by bobsee.

I can’t stop myself photographing water! I love to see drops of water like this on a leaf or a petal. The perfect shapes, the way water sits in droplets on leaves reflecting the light of the world. You can see whole worlds in there. You can see LIFE in there.
It’s beautiful

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Choose hope

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, health, photography on July 6, 2007| 2 Comments »

rainbow over castle, originally uploaded by bobsee.

What’s the significance of a rainbow? Is there a pot of gold at the end of it? In this case it looks like the pot of gold must be in Stirling Castle!
The rainbow is a hopeful symbol isn’t it? This beautiful one which I saw on wednesday made me think of the two states I often see as a doctor – hopelessness and hopefulness.
Some doctors tell people how long they’ve got to live. Usually these are people with cancer. But these prognoses are just based on statistics. For this individual who sits with me today I have no way of telling how they’re life will progress let alone of telling when they’re going to die. More than once I’ve told patients that having a disease doesn’t give you knowledge of when you’re going to die.
Pretty much in every condition a doctor will see someone who gets worse, someone who doesn’t get better and someone who does. The proportions of people in each of these categories changes with different diseases. But there are ALWAYS people who defy expectations. Look at Stephen Hawking. He has Motor Neurone Disease and most people with this disease die within a couple of years of diagnosis. Stephen Hawking has had this disease over 40 years now.
Patients with any disease have a choice about how to live their lives. They can choose to give up in despair, or they can choose to hope. A doctor’s job includes helping patients to choose hope – realistic hope, not crazy hope!

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Antony Gormley’s Event Horizon

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, photography on June 28, 2007| 1 Comment »

Blind Light1, originally uploaded by bobsee.

I went to the Hayward Gallery in London last week to see Antony Gormley‘s Blind Light Exhibition. I’ve always been enormously impressed with his work, ever since I first saw The Field in Inverleith House in the middle of Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Gardens.
This is a fabulous exibition. It really makes you experience the issues of separateness, of how we all live all lives inside our bodies and how we connect from there to the outside world, how we fit and how we change the world we live in.
The exhibition starts as you walk to the Hayward which is on the South Bank. On the buildings far and near you begin to become aware of standing figures. These are all casts of Antony Gormley’s body. The more you see of them the more you see of them! Echoing each other into the distance, some near and looming large, some tiny and in the distance, and always, always they make you appreciate the scale of the urban landscape and the scale of a single person.
Stunning. Come and see.

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Horizons and the size of a life

Posted in from the consulting room, from the reading room, health, life, photography on June 28, 2007| 2 Comments »

I’ve just started reading Sebastian Faulks’ Human Traces. On page 21 this sentence struck me

Do we already possess all we need to stop feeling the world as the sound of footsteps and the ache of our backs and to look up – to the woods and the hills and the oceans that stretch out in their immensity, just waiting to be seen?

I’m in the habit of drawing simple little diagrams to explain things to patients. I draw one which is just a circle. I say “This circle represents your life”. Then I draw a much, much smaller circle inside the first one and I say “When we have chronic pain, or sadness, or breathlessness, or stiffness, or whatever, our life becomes much smaller. Maybe we can’t go out so much. Maybe we can’t face other people. Maybe everything loses its joy. It’s necessary to do this to survive sometimes. We all need to feel safe before we can grow. If the treatment I’m going to give you works it’ll reduce your symptoms and stimlate your body’s natural healing processes and so let you begin to look up and start to see that you can move outside of this constricted, safe zone, and as you do, your world will start to get bigger and more enjoyable again. Then we’ll know you are getting well.”

We don’t grow with our heads down. We grow when we look “to the woods and the hills and the oceans that stretch out in their immensity”

These are the hills I see from my bedroom window

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A site called TED

Posted in education, life, photography, science on June 28, 2007| 2 Comments »

If you haven’t discovered it yet, take a look at http://www.ted.com

There are loads and loads of interesting, educational and entertaining videos of presentations and talks.

Start here.  This is a talk by Frans Lanting, a wonderful nature photographer. It’s a slideshow of his own photos that he’s put together and narrates to tell the story of LIFE, of evolution, of how LIFE is about continual becoming (see that “becoming not being……” byline at the top of my blog? You can see why this talk appeals to me).

The photos are just stunning.

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Five Days Five Colours

Posted in from the dark room, photography on June 18, 2007| 7 Comments »

purple day, originally uploaded by bobsee.

I decided to think of a colour each day for a week and take my camera with me everywhere.
Each day I’d have one particular colour in mind and if I noticed anything that was that colour I’d photograph it.
Here are the results. Five Days, Five Colours.
What do you think? Why not try it for yourself?

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