This photograph I took on another trip out to the West Coast of America. I didn’t actually ride this roller-coaster and I am not sure why that was. I am not normally one to pass up a cheap thrill ride in an amusement park. Instead I opted for taking this rather amusing picture of it in the dusk light before we headed home the Hotdog on a Stick sign still tickles me when I see it.
I have a deep and meaningful relationship with food. Food and I have been entangled with each other ever since I could stick my hand into a bowl and mush it into my face ( and usually down my shirt and into my ears too). It’s a relationship which has been passed down from parent to child in my family for generations. So when we get together we will often choose a part of town (in this case London) that is famous for great food (in this case Borough Market). So my dad being very much a seafood lover could not resist buying some seafood from this lovely fishmongers, it was very very tasty and well worth the effort of negotiating the crowds. When I am not wandering around with family members or friends eating our way through London I am often found taking photographs of food. I don’t think it’s something I’m ever going to get bored of.
I took this on my trip out Spain with some friends. It was a great trip and I do hope to return to Spain another friend and I have been talking about doing the walk across Spain together. I love to walk a country, there is something deeply connecting about exploring a country step by step at your own pace. It is humbling to have a true sense of the size of a place which I think is hard to do in a car or on a train. There is also a great sense of achievement to walk for a whole day and to see just how far one step at a time can take you.
Despite the changeability of the weather at the moment plants are doing their best to keep to schedule, they keep on doing what they do which is put on their best colours to entice lots of busy insects and birds. A good thing that we are still managing to get the odd day or two in between the rain and hail storms for them to really shine. And it is so lovely when I do get a moment or two to appreciate them.
Another train, another train journey into London. When they are not packed full of people, or when I don’t have to be somewhere and I’m stuck on the train, I love riding the trains. Watching the world woosh past or crawl depending on the signals is great fun. You can see all sorts of amazing things out the windows, there are fields full of horses and cows and bunnies and deer. Some of my favorite train moments have been early in the morning out in the country seeing the deer in the fields as the sun rises it is so surprising to see them and such a rush!
Today though I am coming into the city so no furry animals but there are trains and graffiti which I also love to photograph.
Skull jacket I noticed the skull patch on this guys jacket as he walked past and I was compelled to capture it. So much so I speed walked to keep him in sight while I fumbled for my phone. Thank goodness for my current obsession with Instagram or I may have well let thus moment just pass by.
Today, I took a trip back in time with myself to when I first started taking photographs. I have been asking myself a lot about what photography is and means to me. I have been looking out at the enormous wealth of talent out there on the internet and wondering if I have a place there. If I could or even should put my work up here too and more and more I am getting back in touch with the things that first started me on the road to wanting taking pictures to be part of what I do in life.
I took a walk out this morning to a graveyard and walked around remembering myself at 15 when I first got hold of a 35mm camera. I don’t know why I chose that setting to begin with, maybe because it was quiet and people would not get in the way of my lens. I started thinking back to being a younger child and going out to the graveyard with my grandmother for All Souls, every year we would bundle up in the car and tend the graves of our families, bring them fresh flowers, tidy up and maybe leave a bit of something they liked to drink. As a child it marked for me these places as somewhere special to reach out and connect with those we love and who had loved us, not so much as scary gruesome places for a good horror scene.
So as I walked around I began to look again at what was really here in this place, I started to notice the words. Places that had been tended and others not. The stillness, the quiet and sadness.
Digital Oskar 