My Govt Stinks

Waiting for the ‘Peace in Lebanon’ rally to start last Saturday, this individual probably symbolised the feeling of many a concerned citizen. Pissed off and powerless at the sanctimonious bullshit and sheer arrogance of the Bliar cabal. Many feel reduced to protest for their own sense of self-worth. Yet the events of today are built on organisation of the last 20 years or so. It’s a bit late to have much affect on today, but we can hope to stop disasters for ~20 years in the future.   It’s all about getting organised.

We may be rearranging the chairs on the Titanic of course if we don’t deal with climate change.

Wet silver sand

When the tide comes in, as it retreats there is a moment when the sand is saturated, and the sun glances of it like dull sillver. Here the tide is etching scupltures in the sand, like snow exposing every little ledge of a hillside.

Just bits of nature, all washed up. That’s all it is.

Seaweed and shadow detail

Tasmania’s S.W.Wilderness has visual minatures everywhere, the mark of a great wilderness. Constantly windswept and renewed, it is wild, remote, formidibly natural and intensely peacful.

Aussie etched in eucalypt

Strangely Tassie is missing off this snowgum in Mt. Field national park. But the All Blacks have suctioned themselves on to the East coast.

Snowgums have the most beautiful shifting colours in their bark, like the broad brush strokes of a nursery school with the childrens paintings up to dry.

Reckless and Random

A pink Triton shell (I think), still recklessly pink amongst the washed out beach colours S.W Tasmania.

Photography is a treasure hunt. There’s always treasure, you just have to find it. Best is to enter into the the Situationsit notion of ‘drifting’ or ‘pychogeography’, and let yourself be pulled by whims and spontaneity, and combine this with throwing your senses open to the elements, for it is these that form the basis of working with light.

Snow etching

View from Striding Edge to Red Tarn, Helvellyn.   Etching the hills, flattening the moors, exposing the streams.   Abstract balance in nature is everywhere you look, made overt by light snow falls.   I wish there was a group of walkers to give it perspective, but in an abstract form , it’s pleasent enough

Helvellyn, winter gatherings of Lowry people

Match-stick people and their dogs on top of Helvellyn, the day Pink walked a snowed up Striding Edge in his gumboots. The eye follows the people into the picture.

Inside Widford church

I love this shot. Everything is just a little off-kilter, yet within an austere, formal setting. The fire says modernity, relative to the 11th century exposed painting, though it too is not ‘with it’. The little bunch of snowdrops is the contemporary, an anonymous gift for all those who pass by, leading the eye to the brightness, symbolising hope, outside. In abstract terms it has balance. And perspective beyond the image, -an open doorway casting light from lower left, and a narrow but intense unknown through the whited out window, central to the viewer.

Or at least something like that.

Widford church, misty winter morn

Widford church is very simple, in the middle of a field and has more visitors than congregation.   Some good walks from Widford to Swinbrook along the River Windrush past Unity Valkyrie Mitford gravestone (of the Mitford sisters fame), along the high road and down to Minster Lovell, and back along the Windrush to Widford.

Unity Valkyrie Mitford was “famous for her adulation of Adolf Hitler, shot herself in the head when the Second World War broke out, but failed to kill herself.”, according to Wikipedia.   Of the other Mitford sisters: Diana married British Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley; Jessica Mitford was an anti-fascist activist. Moved to the USA to pursue a career as an investigative writer; and Nancy Mitford was a noted writer and biographer.

Leafield road, springtime

Just after the GCSE exams, taking a breather. The variagated light quality is what makes these Isles, with sweeping frontal weather systems,so famous amongst photographers. It enhances the texture of an already patchwork landscape. See this photo