And the answer is... Not Harry, but Hip Hop! What counts is cool. I hop, therefor I am. Nothing so washed out as hope, no existential angst; lots of loud music and all that counts is making the right moves. These people were such fun to photograph.

Serendipity, a happy confluence of circumstances. It sounds so cheerful. The glass half-full view of the world. There is a dark side to it. If everything around us is just serendipity where do we find any meaning in it. It is the ultimate emotional argument against evolution. If we're just an accident, why bother?

This is a picture of a philosopher's stone (think "Chinese Mandarin", not "Harry Potter"). The literati would keep one on their desk to remind them of the significance of randomness and disorder. Perhaps for them, randomness and disorder were a source of inspiration and innovation, necessary but something to be kept within bounds. I think we face a darker (and possibly much funnier) question: Is Harry Potter all there is?

Serendipity raises the question of what is there that is not serendipitous? How much is there to read into this image?

Is it like the Lincoln-Kennedy connections - there's always something there if you look hard enough? Maybe the pictures are about nothing at all.

This is Gilbert, the nicest dog you could ever hope to meet. Gilbert hotly pursued by a nameless mutt.

What a great photograph. I can say this without prejudice as I claim no merit in the matter at all. It's a pebbles on the beach phenomena, pick up enough and you're bound to find the odd good one. I couldn't have chosen to take this photograph no matter how I tried. The serendipitous focus of the camera (exactly on the mutt’s eye), the way Gilbert is a blur of happy motion as a result, the wonderful juxtaposition of the mutt’s eye and the ball (he literally has his eye on the ball), the fact that the ball is hanging out of that side of Gilbert’s mouth - I could go on.


One of the great things about the image is the almost meditative look on Gilbert's face compared with the maniacal look on the mutt. There is such a contrast between the two.

No doubt, we should all cultivate our inner Gilbert. Unfortunately the world we live in is more aligned with the mutts. Let’s not disparage the mutt too harshly, someone has to chase the ball, keep their eye on the prize, reach a little further, try a little harder. Speaking for myself, life would be pretty boring if there were no balls to go after. Oddly enough, I believe this photograph is one of my Gilbert moments. Doing something for the pure joy of it.

I imagine this is getting rather familiar by now. Here's another image.

Rather like yesterday, there is almost no original image in it, it is all reflections and reflections of reflections. Even where you are looking at something directly, you can't be sure that is the case.

One could just dismiss this sort of thing as simply being annoying, but I really believe there is more going on. The appeal of this type of image is that in some ways it is an image of what is in my mind when I look at the scene, not of the scene itself.

Bu Fu's master asked, "What are you painting?"

He considered this for a moment and replied, "I am painting what is."

"No, no," the master replied, "you mustn't paint what is. You must paint what isn't."

This is a picture of what isn't.

I ask myself, "why this picture?" It's out of focus, the camera juddered while the shutter was open, the composition is a bit odd with the line of the lamp seeming to distort her left shoulder, but I love the picture. Quite apart from loving the subject of the picture, I love the picture itself. Strange, I was thinking about what I should say here and I realize I have jumped ahead of myself. I meant to talk about abstractions first and then get on to people. Never mind, it is people that count, perhaps it's good to start with a person. Here she is:

Literally, back home again. This is an evening view from our lounge across to the east side of Lake Washington. Those houses are a long way away, but the light is so saturated that they seem very close. The whole spectrun is lit up, giving a richness and depth to the color that is typical of the Seattle area.

I grew up in the tropics and never left Africa till after I was 21. I so clearly remember arriving at Portsmouth. England for the first time, taking a train up to London, being visually stunned by the richness of the colors in the countryside. In Africa everything is washed out or simply black, saturated colors are a rarity. Here in the north, ghosts come out in the dark in the middle of the night; in Africa, they come out in the light in the middle of the day.

Heading back to Seattle - an airport photograph. I am closly related to the person in the photograph, though I'd get a smack in the eye if I mentioned who it is (the hair you know). We have two blondes and one not blonde in the family (among the ladies, that is). We were all vastly amused by an article I sent round recently that discussed some survey or other that had discovered blondes are aggressive and assertive, others are meek and compliant by comparison, "Yeah, right" I hear everyone mutter.

This is a leaving Seattle picture rather than a coming home. It's difficult to say which is harder, leaving or being left; thinking of them being in London without me, Atlanta on their own, Seattle wet and empty is just too hard. Work is such an easy escape. 

When I first saw this, my immediate reaction was to ask, "What month is it? June, it's June, not April. It's the middle of the month, not the 1st." I assume everyone understands a solicitor is a sort of low-grade brit lawyer. A terrible thing to say. I'm sure there are many fine, important people out there who are also solicitors. I am prejudiced. When I was 5 years old, my family was swindled by a solicitor who took us for everything we had, leaving my parents with debts that it took 11 years to pay off blighting particularly my mother's life in the process.

Anyway, made me laugh. I was glad to see that Navarino Estates and FLATS TO SELL & TO LET, keep themselves segregated from Shaidy & Co up on the third floor. Low-end real estate in London is another bed of iniquity. When my wife and I first moved to London (fresh from Africa after a brief spell in Cambridge), we got taken by a smarmy Frenchman who could only look for a property if we first gave him a deposit, of course we never saw him again.

Shaidy indeed! He's a lawyer, can't he change his name or something? What am I missing here?

On a more cheerful note, a view from my sister's garden. She and her husband live with a very talented dog in the heart of England's green and pleasant land, Gomshall in Surrey. No doubt some would dispute the "heart of" idea but look for yourself, both at the picture and where it is on the map (southern-most house). Could anything be more idyllic (for an anglophile anyway). 

I don't remember when I first saw a picture of Rodin's Burgers of Calais (Les Bourgeois de Calais - there you are, my little nod to the European Community), it must have been when I was around ten years old and I do remember being very struck by the group of figures and the story that goes with it. It was the 1300's, the Hundred Years War, Calais had been under seige by the English for a year, the people were starving and forced to surrender. The English king agreed to spare the city if six of it's leading men would come out naked with ropes around their necks. Calais' wealthiest resident volunteered and five others joined him. The group of figures shows them just as they are leaving the city, a group of men surrendering themselves to death.

There are a number of castings of the group around the world, apart from the original in Calais. This one is rather ironiclly located outside the Houses of Pairliament. I wonder, does the occasional MP or PM gaze upon them as they are whisked away in a limousine and reflect on the latest vote on Afghanistan or whatever else is troubling them at the time? Probably not.

The Victoria and Albert Museum seems to contain almost every imaginable type of artifact. It is overwhelmingly full of things. Some are strikingly personal. How could anyone refer to this image without reference to gender and personality? As much as any other individual I have ever photographed, she is a real person. I find the very idea of referring to her as "it", profoundly offensive.

Despite the concerts, the services, the choirs, the school and all the other aspects of the institution, Ely Cathedral is a relic. It is a monument to the past as much as a testament to the future. I'm sure many people involved with it would say it is the future as well as the past. Be that as it may, given that the Cathedral is something of a relic, it brings some very awkward questions to my mind when a visit to the cathedral is closely followed by a visit to one of the great London museums.


I took this picture from a gallery overlooking a section of the Victoria and Albert museum where pieces were being staged, ready for movement in or out of the museum. Wonderful images, incredible juxtapositions of ideas and things that represent them. I went back twice and must have spent a couple of hours just mesmerized by all there was to see.

In this case there are two pietas with figures from one mixed up with figures from the other. The terracotta figure on the right seems to me to belong with the Christ on the left. The obscured figure on the left seems to be ignoring the Christ in its group, addressing its attention to the Christ in the other one. Where does one start and the other begin? I don't know, and the uncertainty spills over to the Cathedral and the museum. Where does one start and the other begin? Is everyone in the Europe living in a museum lost in a futile attempt to understand which group of figures they belong to?

The Pfeiffer Chapel inspires me to go off on a bit of a religious tangent. This is a picture of the porch of Ely Cathedral. Ely doesn't have the grace of Salisbury or the sheer power of York Minster; a piece of it fell down a few centuries back and they never bothered to replace it; Cromwell shut it down for a while and used it to stable his cavalry. Despite all this, Ely is something on its own. It dominates the surrounding countryside. You can't get lost anywhere northeast of Cambridge because the cathedral is always there. It is built on the Isle of Ely that at one time was truly an island for much of the year. The fens have been drained, but are still as flat as a pancake. The Isle and its Cathedral stand out above all else.

It seemed appropriate to me that there was a phantom in the photograph, hovering around the door, watching us as we come and go. The cathedral itself stands above all that. Unlike the Pfeiffer Chapel, the cathedral is purely and simply a monument to God. Whether it contains a thousand people or no one makes very little difference (so it seems to me anyway). Incidentally, don't read this as denigrating the Pfeiffer chapel, they are simply different buildings with different raison d’être.

If you're ever lucky enough to get to Ely, try if you can, to hear some music performed in the Lady Chapel. It is acoustically one of the most beautiful spaces in Europe.

Frank Lloyd Wright was 67 when he designed the The Pfeiffer Chapel at the Florida Southern College. He continued to work on the campus for another 20 years. The sheer persistence of it is admirable.

To my vaguely English eye (I say "vaguely" because there is an African one as well, though I'm often confused by it), anyway to my vaguely Anglicized eye, the Pfeiffer Chapel is an odd building, though in some ways typical of Frank Lloyd Wright. Many of his buildings seem to have a closed in feel to them, they present you with just one choice and, for the building, it is the right choice, at least that is what the building seems to say. In the Chapel, no matter where you are, there is a preferred perspective, a right way to look at things. Look any other way and the building oppresses you, holds you down, makes you understand where you ought to look. Entirely appropriate for a Chapel I suppose. Though again, my vaguely English self feels uncomfortable being so directly addressed, especially by a building.

There's no doubt, the man was inspired.

I find it hard to say why I react to some images and not to others. People photographs, I suppose are easier to explain than object photographs, though with people, in some ways it's even more complicated. Reflections, shadows, distortions, illusions, all tend to catch my eye, and given the visual draw, my mind and my emotions sometimes follow.

This is a picture of a part of the Florida Southern College campus which happens to contain the largest accumulation in the world of structures designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (what is the collective noun for buildings?) A beautiful place and some amazing buildings. I'm sure I'll post a few more images before the year is out.

What I find curious is that, looking at the pictures a few days after I took them, this particular image quite took my breath away. Something about the light, the rhythm of the shapes, the depth of the central point left me quite amazed. Amazed in the literal sense of the word; suprised, astounded; suddenly filled with wonder.

Pelican order? How many Pelicans can you...? Perhaps it's like the Pigeon Hole Principle, only this is the Pelican Principle (Biggest Pelican Wins). Or perhaps it's a totem pole - Get off the pole or you'll have a Pelican sitting on your head. Anyway, made me laugh. Lots of things in Daytona made me laugh.

Looking at a scene like this (Tampa Bay, just west of yesterday's bridge), can we honestly say that we appreciate it, truly see all of it? It is a little like reading Dylan Thomas. Looking hard doesn't help. You have to look at it some other way in order to understand it. You can't take it in, it is too large, you can only immerse yourself in it.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

(from Fern Hill, by Dylan Thomas)

Who can pass by a bridge and not think of bridges to another world? I certainly can't. My earliest memories are bounded by bridges, the Birchenough bridge to the west on the road to Umtali and the Mozambique coast, the Otto Beit bridge to the North East over the Zambezi, the Victoria Falls bridge to the South West, again over the Zambezi and Beitbridge to the South over the Limpopo (great, grey-green, greasy and full of crocodiles).

This is a picture of the beautiful Tampa bay bridge, spanning the southern approaches to the bay.

It is like some great mythical beast rising up out of the sea. Unlike the bridges of my early memories, this one seems to me indifferent to the traffic it carries. It is not a bridge to another world, it is a bridge out of this world. I go to Tampa just for the experience of crossing it.

Of course, "the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River" (all set about with fever-trees), is where the Kolokolo Bird sent the elephant's child to find out what the Crocodile has for dinner. The discovery very nearly killed him.

Celebration again. Fireworks this time, only this is a picture of the smoke, rather than the fire. I had a grandstand view of the 4th of July display last year. It was a lot of fun to watch and photograph (if you click on it you will see a much larger image).

I would go on about the "rockets bright glare", but as I said this is a picture of the smoke (and the moon). Looking at these photographs I was amazed at how substantial the effects of the fireworks were. How tangible does the insubstantial have to be before we consider it real? Anyway, I really liked smoke and don't require the fire.

Celebration again. The town is a completely artificial environment. An odd place to live in many ways. This is a picture of some roofs in the main street area, looking quite exotic but also very substantial.

A beautiful study in planes and lines on a grey Florida day. I am reminded of Kiplings "old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' lazy at the sea." But his old soldier didn't find a happy end. Better think of something else, though still Kipling calls to us (or me anyway)

I am sick o' wastin' leather on these gritty pavin'-stones,
An' the blasted English drizzle wakes the fever in my bones;
Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,
An' they talks a lot o' lovin', but what do they understand?
Beefy face an' grubby 'and ---
Law! Wot do they understand?
I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin' fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China
'crost the Bay!

I have always been fascinated by optical illusions and was delighted to find this one right outside my front door in Celebration (well, balcony, it's an apartment). The illusion is produced by shadows on the bricks, the shadows coming from stairs that spiral round the outside of the building (you can see the building, courtesy Google Street View here). At least for my eye, the effect is quite startling.

You can only see it at certain times of day and certain times of year. At the moment, for example, the sun doesn't get high enough for the effect to show.

I wonder why these images are so compelling? Perhaps they serve as an ironic reminder of how fragile our grasp of reality is. Plato has us living in a world of shadows, rarely if ever seeing things for what they are. I like Fitzgerald's translation (another shadow) of Omar Khayyam

For in and out, above, about, below,

'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,

Play'd in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,

Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.

Continuing the family theme for a bit, this is a picture of my father and I taken in 1956 at a place called Ramsgate, in what is now Kwazulu-Natal. Note the suit and pipe, both very much his trademarks. All kinds of interesting things about the picture, for example, he was left handed and always wore his watch on his right wrist. A remarkable man, he pursued at least six quite different careers in his lifetime, one of which was dismal failure (tobacco farming) the rest were all spectacularly successful.

Goodbye to Folk-Life till next year (or whenever we can work up the energy to go again). This is the family (at least four of us) heading home past the new Seattle Opera House. Yours truly not in the picture.

More Folk-Life. Note, the guy is wearing the skirt (this is Seattle after all, never mind Folk-Life). They were a lot of fun to watch.

Seattle, Folk-Life Festival, what else can I say? Hey, everyone's having a great time. This was on the way to a country-dance gathering, which just seemed go right along with it. More pictures later.

I just love what I call "cell phone anomalies" - people using cell phones in unexpected or innapropriate places. This is one of my all time favorites. The gentleman in the picture is a Beefeater at the Tower of London. Happily chatting away on his cell phone.

Biggest darned dog I've ever seen. Though camera angle has something to do with it, it really was a huge dog. The mut on the left wasn't that small. I have other amusing images of Dogzilla and the midget exchanging sniffs. Maybe another day.

Trellis

Trellis in the rain.

I count five layers, or at least five different ways of looking at the lines.

Picture of the Day

Picture of the day - New year's resolution is to post a picture every day for 2010. First picture was this one. Taken at a benefit for Seattle Early Dance. I had a fun evening photographing feet and skirts, dozens of wonderful images.

Second picture was taken in the University of Washington arboretum. It is a reflection in water, a low light shot (shallow depth of focus) forcing the focus into the mid-ground so what you see is one twig in focus and a bunch of others both nearer and further away that are out of focus.