Don’t you just love misspelled signs or wonder exactly what the sign was trying to say?
would you feel safe chartering a yacht in Thailand from these people?
contrary to what you might think this sign was in a car park at a temple in Sri Lanka, not a zoo. If only decent drivers can park here where are the indecent ones supposed to park?
this sign in India is trying to advertise the production of tie-dye fabrics
whale watching in Sri Lanka anyone?
One day we stopped for petrol at a garage in Rajasthan and saw a guy with “forecoat supervisor” embroidered on the back of his coat. I did take a photo of it but it’s somewhere in amongst 5000 photos and I haven’t found it again yet …..
Cee’s post has lots of links to other interesting signs
Ailsa’s challenge this week is to showcase a photo illustrating “art” in whatever form we choose.
Wikepedia defines Art thus: Art is a term that describes a diverse range of human activities and the products of those activities, but here refers to the visual arts, which cover the creation of images or objects in fields including painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and other visual media.
This installation has always tickled me – monument to the unknown washer women
it was a tottering pile of brightly coloured washing bowls seen in Luxembourg back in 2005.
More “conventional” art, maybe?
collages made by children, displayed in the tunnel in the Grund area of old Luxembourg
and finally, how about some floral sushi?
PS having just come across another day in paradise‘s contribution in which she mentions that her sister is an artist, I thought I would mention that my sister is an artist too.
you can see her work here. Since we live on opposite sides of the world to each other, I guess this counts as travel too.
This week we are challenged to share a picture that captures a fleeting moment on the street
I was in Luang Prabang, Laos, earlier this year and took these pictures in the street:
this is my favourite, don’t you just love the girl’s slippers?
a woman selling flowers for the temple
a broom seller
a couple of cheeky tourists muscle in while I try to photograph these donut sellers
While in Chiang Mai I joined Alan, a professional photographer, for a day of photography out and about in Chiang Mai. I wanted to get away from using the automatic settings on my new dslr camera, learn a bit more about the camera and, hopefully, to get some interesting shots. I got up early and made my way to Wat Phra Singh. As the aim wasn’t to take any typically tourist photos I managed to sneak a few before he arrived.
paper cutwork decorations over an archway
decorations
before the crowds arrive
mosaic naga head
stencilled door
interior
We took lots of photos of the banners and the woven lantern decorations, from low on the ground looking upwards and turning the camera at different angles. Because I took so many photos that day I have made many of them into collages.
We then took a red songthaew to Wat Goo Come, or Wat Chedi Liem which had a beautiful viharn (the sermon hall and usually the busiest part of a wat). This was on the outskirts of town and therefore off the tourist track. You can visit the complex by horse drawn cart and there were a number of stalls selling food and drink.
staircase up to the viharn
roof gables
Inside the viharn these lanterns were perfect for trying shots from below.
Approach a group of figures from different angles and then go really close to photograph the small ones in the front.
An attempt to incorporate a modern day clock into a more traditional composition.
We experimented with exposure compensation settings in combination with the ISO settings on these photos of the silhouette of a gable on the ground.
After refreshing ourselves with a fresh coconut our driver took us to the nearby Chiang Mai Gate market.
Inside the picture frame shop I had to try and take a photo of the Admiral with the wall of portraits in the background.
Inside the market we watched the stall holder make Thai coffee by straining it through something that looked like a sock – a great photo opportunity. I tried traditional vertical shots and some taken on the diagonal from close to the ground. The bizarre-looking contraption to the right of the lady’s head (plastic bags and a glass bottle) is a makeshift fan to be used in hot weather.
The next challenge was to use the props in the form of the small flowers in pots against a textured/coloured background.
After a delicious vegetarian buffet lunch we were driven out of town to the ancient Wat Umong situated in the forest.
There were a number of plaques on the trees with sayings on them and I had to try and get the plaque in focus but not the path – not easy.
We didn’t visit the wat itself but confined our attentions to taking some photos of the dismembered Budhha statues amongst the trees.
abandoned figurines
Look at the difference between these two photos. The top one was shot at ISO 1000 and the bottom one at ISO 800 and -2 on exposure compensation.
detail shot of the hand
playing with taking photos of shoes and feet
We then drove back into town for a much-needed cup of tea in a colonial style tea room.
strange fruit in a vase in the lobby
In the garden of the tea room (Raffles-like but without the price tag) there were squirrels chasing each other up and down the tree trunks. Examples of the beautiful pale green celadon ware were hung on the walls in the garden.
We then walked down to the night market to meet Lily, who works in a cabaret bar and who obligingly posed for some portrait photos together with one of the other artistes. I have never tried taking portrait shots before so this was a real challenge.
Apart from taking the shots of Lily her/himself Alan explained that it was important to give a sense of place too. At around 5pm the bar was empty but the shots give you an idea of the place. I have to say that I think she would be perfect for the part of one of the ugly sisters in the pantomime “Cinderella”.
By the end of the day my head was buzzing with ISOs, exposure compensation, and aperture priority shooting. It was a fascinating day and I have certainly learned to look at things differently and to make more use of shooting from low down, something I hadn’t tried before spending the day with Alan. I now need to sit down with the instruction manual for my camera and practise, practise, practise.
On a recent visit to Bristol, UK, we managed to visit two art exhibitions. The first was in the Bristol Museum and featured the art of Beryl Cook and the second was in the Royal West of England Academy and featured work by Damien Hurst, Elizabeth Frink, Jack Vettriano and Lisa Milroy.
Beryl Cook is probably best known for her illustrations which have been used on numerous greeting cards. Invariably they are images of larger-than-life ladies in improbable footwear as well as animals. In fact this exhibition was called “Larger than life”. Beryl Cook often painted herself, her husband and their pets into the paintings. They spent 5 years living in Bristol and were frequent visitors to the jazz and music bars in King Street (near the theatre) where she apparently loved to sit and watch and sketch the patrons. She also collected shoes which she painted into her paintings and the current exhibition included some of these. I loved this exhibition and her gentle sense of humour.
These are some of the paintings.
over the fence
firescreen
the sofa
the last gasp
anyone for a whipping?
who’s next?
sailors and seagulls. Note the dog in the background who seems to think that the sailors should be playing with him and his ball rather than staring at the gulls
4 hungry cats – according to the label next to the painting, this lobster was so large it had to be cooked in the washing machine!
I was less enthusiastic about the other exhibition. The only item contributed by Damien Hurst was a large statue of a little girl holding a collecting box, entitled “charity” and it had been placed over the entrance to the Academy so it wasn’t immediately obvious that it was part of the exhibition. I was particularly keen to see the new paintings by Jack Vettriano. He had used as the basis for a number of paintings some photographs of dancers taken by the photographer Jeanette Jones, herself a dancer. However, IMHO, the paintings lacked finesse and were poorly executed – a great disappointment.
I did, however, like the aquatints by Elizabeth Frink.
And I didn’t much care for the paintings by Lisa Milroy, a series entitled “improvisations” which had apparently been based on Japanese prints, although I could see the sense of humour inherent in them.
Valentine’s Day, the sun is shining and the sky is blue so I decided to go for a walk in the town centre at lunchtime to see how some of the shop windows had been decorated for the occasion. It seemed that love was indeed in the air …….
note the hearts on the girl’s skirt
chocolates …….
The rose covered heart cushions are under glass domes which had perfect reflections of the buildings opposite them. This was really difficult to photograph successfully as I didn’t want myself to be in the picture and the window was all steamed up as well.
Fran sent us all a link to a You Tube video this week (which has now been removed by its user) featuring two monks and a book - one of the monks was explaining to the other how to use a book. This reminded me of a comment a visitor made to our house a while ago “you’ve got so many books”. I got the impression that all she read was magazines.
I thought about this and it’s true, when you go into other people’s houses how often do you see books? I mean real books, not just coffee-table books? We have books in our bedroom, our toilet, a whole wall of them in my studio and boxes and boxes of them in the cellar. Here are a couple of pictures.
This is part of the wall of books/DVDs/videos/large-format books which graces our toilet
and this is part of the wall of books in my room
In my dotage I can see me, an eccentric old bat, with a house full of cats and books …..
