119 - Nightclub Stairs

119 - Nightclub Stairs
Originally uploaded by gingerpig2000

Another city, another bar-in-a-cellar. These are not 19th century squared-off basements, these are your arched storage cellar from 200+ years ago, and often exist as a second level of basement. The steps down are not in front of the building, they go straight down under the building, and since the cellar is so deep the steps are very steep.

I wanted to create a night club feel, even if the picture was taken in the morning with sunlight streaming down the steps. There were some difficult choices to be made and it took some work not to lose all the information I wanted to keep. This is also one of those images which look better when larger - when you get closer what you see changes.

I often watch people trying to deal with painting exhibitions, especially if the exhibition follows some kind of timeline where the first pictures you see are the oldest. When face to face with some form of modern art which shows little recording-like resemblance to a distinct subject, people tend to shy away, uncertain. I like to drag people closer, to see the more three dimensional qualities that many of them have, to break down the feeling that one should say 'oh, yes, it's a bowl of fruit' but rather to engage in how the picture makes you feel, for example.

118 - Freedom

118 - Freedom
Originally uploaded by gingerpig2000

Nothing is as it seems.

I caught Ania stretching after a picnic down near the border with Ukraine, on a track between the fields of a former state farm.

All the pixels have been wiped around, some areas removed completely. The sky is from another image, while the cloth is hand added.

Freedom comes in many different forms: Ania no longer has to live ina communist state, she and I can come here to the border and it only takes a few hours. We can have chairs to sit on, foriegn types of food to eat.

Freedom

117 - Truck Light

117 - Truck Light
Originally uploaded by gingerpig2000

Just when I thought I had said everything I could about road pictures, along came this opportunity to show trucks in the setting sun.

Trucks spend their time carrying the things we want or need, before we are even ready to obtain them. Maybe more could be carried by rail, but are we yet ready to switch paying for road upgrades to rail upgrades?

My cat likes trucks, the sound and the moving wheels fascinate him who has spent his life far from the roadside. At 12 years old he has discovered there are more unimagined pleasures yet to be had.

In the meantime here is my simple pleasure in our amazing ability to keep so much on the move.

116 - Krakow Merryacki

116 - Krakow Merryacki
Originally uploaded by gingerpig2000

Remember the 'god is light' image of a few blogs ago? This was my next attempt to say something about religious iconery. I have taken a picture of part of the main church overlooking the main square in Krakow old town, and played around with it.

In Krakow at Christmas time there is a tradition where locals make hand-portable religious scenes based around a church image, using lights and coloured papers and foils. Here I have the aspiring to heaven, the colour, and the simple pleasure of believing.

115 - Delivery van

115 - Delivery van
Originally uploaded by gingerpig2000

Some days you simply want to do something different.

Mornings in breakfast began after breakfast with a coffee in the main square of the old town. It was always very busy with delivery vans and thin on the ground in terms of clients. I like vans because I like what they represent in terms of that endless shuffle of trying to get the goods in the right place at the right time. People talk endlessly about the pros and cons of different kinds of shops and other types of retail outlets, or about the kind of farming or other manufacture. What gets ignored is the intricate system of vans that bring these two pieces together.\

This is my stake in the ground - vans are worthy of mention beyond in terms of 'white van drivers'.

I also consider this a warm up for the rather delayed series on the locally made Zuk vans - from 1958 to 1997.

114 - Krakow Kowboy

114 - Krakow Kowboy
Originally uploaded by gingerpig2000

An experiment in colour composition and data handling. You should be able to see that I have not used the wipe technique here, but this image was an experiment in colour and the use of a tool on Gimp that gives you your choice of image information in black and white. I later images I have replaced the colour with the wipe technique, and I guess one day I will add the colour back in after the wipe technique.

Photos allow us to try out our feelings pretending to be someone else - we can be in the position/location for only enough time to take the image - but then we can return to that moment and explore it by using the photo as the memory trigger.

This was my birthday, and my wife had arranged an excellent place to have a meal in a side street in the old town of Krakow just across from the old university building, right in the window.

113 - MIG

113 - MIG
Originally uploaded by gingerpig2000

Museums in eastern Europe are a subject in themselves, let's just say that never has so much been collected and poorly displayed by a state institution.

The funny thing about the aviation museum in Krakpw is that I could see many things I could only dream of when interested in such things as a child. Here is the front end of a 1950s MIG fighter, with the pink added by myself. This was an era when production techniques often lagged far behind the technology of the aircraft systems - here you can see quite a bit of hand worked panel beating and a landing light probably not too dissimilar to a tractor headlight faired in behind a bent perspex sheet.

It remind me of the cars of the 1950s - dreamboat styling on running gear not that much different to that of the 1920s.

What I mean to say is that it is not even close to being essential that your manual skills be close to the level of your ideas as long as your ideas are at or beyond the cutting edge. Manual skills only become important once enough people understand what is going on and can standardise the processes.