Cars on Black

As well as photographing real cars on real roads, I have a set of four rubbery toy cars on my desk at work which I can also use. In fact I use them for a number of different demonstrations, but mainly they add a bit of color to an otherwise rather bland office.

This image is available for sale at Photo4me, framed and ready to hang!

Poland

This is the 'Poland' version of an image in a previous blog, and done for the same reasons. I wish all my images were this easy to do, but at least I was able to incorporate language on both with no complicated grammar issues!


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Cross Town Traffic

Usually my images have smooth color, but this one has a rougher finish, almost like an oil painting, by leaving in the coarse digital brush finish.

When we travel to work we should try and enjoy it otherwise we are pre-stressing ourselves before we even start work. This junction in Lublin is my favorite - it has no magnificent buildings, no traditional buildings, but pretty standard ones. What is good is that the rising sun shines down one of the streets, filling the whole junction with glorious light, making the tarmac silvery and glowing.

Crossing the junction is a trolleybus, looking here rather like a tram.

This image is available for sale at Photo4me, framed and ready to hang!

Polska Poland

Poland built a reputation for posters in the 1950s and 1960s, and some of the best theatre posters I have seen were made here in Lublin in the 1990s and naughties. Many of my images are rather like posters, and I see this image as moving a step closer to poster art.

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Returning Home

Does the daily commute frustrate you? Do you wonder why you have to do it, and whether there is another route through life that does not involve this? Well, if so, then this image is for you.

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Life is a lonely path

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Life can be a lonely path. But should we follow the path made by others or forge our own? If other people have gone the same way it might lead to safety or success. Or it might be that all that is good has already been discovered and harvested.

Cross Town Racing

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Racing the city streets is a sport engaged by more than young males. Frustrated at work? Be a winner of the road on your way home! Anyone can enter.

On the other hand, I like taking pictures in traffic, and then editing them to show the actions and the emotions I see when it is not possible to wield my camera.

4WD - Snow - Poland

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This is a GAZ, the Russian equivalent of a Jeep, although I am not sure how good they are off road. Here in Poland going off road is much simpler than it was in the UK because the soil is primarily sand-based here - no getting stuck in clay or thumping into large rocks. There are very many interesting gullies cutting through the sandy hills, but most unsurfaced driving is on miles of rather straight, flat field roads - take a look at the satellite images of Poland and you will soon see the very thin and long fields that are still prevalent here.

One of the things that I believe in is actually making the attempt to enjoy what we have and what we do. I get a bit tired listening to people disattisfied with their lives, jobs, partners, etc. and then never do anything constructive about it. Anyone can get trapped in a difficult situation, but the chances are that if you hear someone moaning it is because life has not presented them with the respect that they expected. So, on the left you will see a Soviet era housing block. Not the most magnificent of housing but they can be insulated to higher levels (as has happened here) and if you really do not like living in them there are opportunities to leave and live elsewhere. If you want to. If what you want is not to make sure everyone has to listen to the sound of your voice.

Mall Meeting

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Photographing people in natural settings is hard, and you often end up with an image much different to the one that you planned. That is not a problem if you are interested in art, but it could be if you are interested in skill. For art it is essential to find those ways to slip into the unexplored without a roadmap, while skill is about producing a predefined piece of work. Therefore, for art to end up with the unexpected is the ideal outcome, but in terms of craft skill then you have failed to produce the intended product.

The RAF Roundel 1

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It seems such an alien process for people to use what is around them, the focus of society, education and business is 'a special tool or product for each individual purpose'. This image shows 2 plates and a bowl on a table, and while I could have drawn the lot from scratch it would have ignored one of the uses of a camera - to capture variations in light and shadows.

I am working on another version of this image, with a bigger roundel shape. I am hoping that someone will appreciate an RAF roundel type image that is not the standard type of image found with these things.

Red Shoes & Wine

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I am fascinated by the things that make life good, focusing on those things that suit us rather than what we believe we should suit us by society's standards. To get away from the bland of normality, for normal is the average and if we chase normality we are saying we are nothing special. We need to find us, because it is only by finding us that we can contribute our essential worth to society.

To find us we need to experiment. We need to push those boundaries so that we can discover in which directions we can find us and those which we do not exist. But we need to overcome fear, first to experiment and second to admit the truth that we are something away from the average.

Lady of the Sea

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Where would our dreams take us if we allowed them? Where are we going even if we do not? This was actually taken with the boat sitting on grass, because what we see, what we can imagine, and what we think we see ay be completely unrelated. Sometimes it is best to let the current take us where it will, and instead of trying to control our environment we try to see what is really there.

The Coffee Cup

This is my image on Photos4me, where you can buy it.

In many ways I prefer abstracts simply because realistic art can be a series of traps where only certain expected types of image are popular, rather like what you would find typically on a photographers website like where the above image is hosted. By making an abstract it kind of frees the viewer somewhat from the need to decide whether the image fits a pre-determined category. Of course, whether someone likes and image or not is another question altogether.

175 Zuk and Ania

175 Zuk and Ania, a photo by gingerpig2000 on Flickr.

I created this image for an exhibition I had lined up of Zuk van pictures. I wanted to help break down the barrier you so often see between the elegant idea of life and the mucky bits that many people try to ignore. I also wanted to show the confidence one can feel in conquering such a barrier.