Motivating myself to keep things going after 1,000 days is not helped by being on (for me) a reasonably long run of time just in Hebden Bridge and Manchester. From 16th May until 15th June this is basically where I am. Hard to find new scenes, but I don’t think this one has made it before — the entrance to the occasional Saturday craft fair (which has been pictured from inside in the past, but never from here).
My hosts/friends at the Moscow School (the organisation that is the reason I come to visit Moscow so comparatively frequently) invited me to come to this event at the Russian Army Theatre this evening. Lots of folk dancing and its associated benefits like beautiful women, beautiful costumes and manly men doing manly things with swords, like these guys. And not done for the tourists either — in fact Russia is one of the few places in the world where this kind of cultural event is still seen as a normal evening’s entertainment, there were lots of families here tonight.
I still can’t quite grasp the nature of the Cossacks, are they a separate ethnic group, something one is born into, or a cultural choice one makes, sort of like declaring oneself a Celt or a Gaul? Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m sure most of us would like an excuse to pull a face/pose like these two guys now and again.
And, by the way, I have one week left until day 1,000.
Impossible to get a shot that was both photographically interesting and which captured the drama of today’s events at the City Ground, Nottingham. This picture is as good as I could manage to capture the tension that was released by Leo Ulloa’s 92nd minute goal, one already burned into the memories of all Brighton & Hove Albion fans I am sure. If you want to read more about that, go to this page. I am too drained. Seagulls!!
A bit out-of-focus but everywhere I went today it was throwing it down with rain so no really decent pics today. This is posted firstly because it’s a nice pic of someone just doing his job well, but secondly (and mainly) because this guy looks exactly like Walter White Jr (aka Flynn) from Breaking Bad.
OK, so that’s two pictures in a row taken in a pub of people drinking beer. But the light was right. The Gas Club — on Gas Works Road — man, that’s unreconstructed North. Final score — Huddersfield 1, Brighton 1. The play-off dream is still on.
The first act of my Easter break has been spent in London, and the first part of that, in Camden Town, shopping; it does happen, you know. Was keen to get a shot that got beyond the ‘Google Street View’ aesthetic and thus save the blog from deteriorating into the everyday banality that I suspect is never far away.
I observed this guy for a good 20 minutes while having a pint in the pub nearby, he was handing out flyers and holding a placard for a nearby tattoo parlour — like most people make a snap decision to go and have a tattoo. Perhaps for this reason he looked thoroughly fed up with his job, but I do like this one moment, with his eyes closed and earphones in he looks momentarily off in a world that is more his own.
OK, so I’m taking candid photos of attractive women again, but the light fell just right so I kinda had to.
Cafe ‘København’ (and all its menus have the quotation marks on them) resides in Copenhagen airport, where I changed planes on the way home from Norway.
I have to work all five days this week in Manchester and that happens very rarely. So I am making a point from Monday – Friday this week of having all my photos be of the city. It gives me a mini-challenge within the broader one. This is taken toward the end of the working day; as I took it I thought the guy had busted me, but whatever it is he’s noticed, it’s not me.
The signboard puts me in mind that these two are Withnail and I on their 40-year reunion trip, returning to where they demanded cake, and fine wine, the finest wines available to humanity.
Joe and I went to York today, which is certainly the most interesting place easily reachable from my house (we have a direct train), and ranks up with Edinburgh and Oxford as one of Britain’s best and most attractive (but also busiest) cities. Today there was some kind of medievalist festival on, and these guys were going through their paces for the cameraman and director to the right. I would like there to be better light on this shot but I think it captures their movement pretty well.
Being 42 