Archives for posts with tag: vacation
Rocky
0
On Tuesday I had to take some pictures at a gathering for one of my clients. That is something I usually don’t do. I don’t like to take images of people I don’t know. I always have the feeling that I am intruding and stealing their soul. It was a business meeting and it was surprisingly easy (I am not saying there were no souls to steal). On my way home I tried to remember any images I had taken showing strangers from the front, apart from the two tourists I posted earlier this week. My thing (when I photograph people) is to take images of everyday solitairy situations. Usually it is just me with my (rather large) camera and the other person on the scene. It’s very unlikely the other person doesn’t notice what I am up to.
Yesterday I sifted through old photographs and I found this one taken at the Viktualienmarkt in Munich. The Viktualienmarkt is a permanent farmer’s market dating back to the 1800’s. It is located wham bang in the middle of town, only a few paces from the Townhall. You can get all sorts of edible treasures here and the place is usually hustling and bustling during the opening hours. But Sunday is still a day of rest, so I must have taken this image on a Sunday in winter (as there are no leaves on the trees). In Winter the market opens when it is still dark and closes after night has fallen again.
This is something I easily could do without: Sunday trading. Even though I am not a religious person, I believe there is a good reason to have one day of rest in the week. It is a day when the entire family can do an activity together. Some sort of pastime that excludes shopping. I think Sunday trading has a lot to answer for in regards to the disintegration of family values.
In a lunch time conversation yesterday two of my friends revealed that they appreciate when I explain what I think about the images I put up, as I did with the image of the dam a few days ago. I am not keen on explaining as I think everybody sees something different in a visual. This image here for example, I took many years ago, when I didn’t even know how to take a decent photo. I called it: We are not alone. Why? …Many reasons.
The image was taken in one of my favourite places, the Karangahake Gorge at the south end of the Coromandel Ranges. It shows the reamains of a stone battery, another reminder of the people who were here before us. At the same time it reminds me of antennas that might send out signals into outer space :).
One time when we were sailing around Waiheke Island (an island in the Hauraki Gulf not far from Auckland), we anchored at Hooks Bay, an isolated area at the back end of the island. When we stretched our legs we came across the remains of an old villa and next to it a tiny grave yard with two or three graves. I wondered how crowded this place would be if all the people who had ever set foot on this piece of remote land would be there at the same time. So clearly I could feel the presence of the spirits that have been. But it didn’t feel crowded… Which reminds me of a very interesting graph I once saw in the German Museum in Munich. It was a timeline showing the world pouplation since the very beginnings of human life. It was flat, flat, flat, flat, flat and then a sudden, very steep rise in the last century. It said that currently more people are alive than have ever died. I don’t know if this still holds true, but this graph really stuck in my mind.
We had a wonderful sunny weekend and I hear the summer is going to be drier than the last one (and the winter that followed). New Zealand is a very lush country and everything grows wild. Nature is very good at reclaiming its territory when left alone. In the most unusal places you can find reminders of battles between settlers and nature. It must have been extremely difficult to get the huge machinery into the bush and when the pioneers finally gave up their plans they just left it there to slowly rust away.
This is a dam in the Waitakere Ranges in West-Auckland, where the hustle of the big city gives way to the tranquilty of nature. It is right next to the main road, but only a few paces away from the car park the sounds are seriously muffled. You can physically feel the stillness. I like this image as it quietly unites so many opposites: Fluid – Solid, Nature – Man-made, Hard – Soft, Light – Dark…
I can not remember ever having been so void of thoughts as I am at the moment. All I can think of is what shall I cook for dinner to feed the troops and I desperately need to clean the house, it’s spring. But absolutely no thoughts beyond the chores. This sort of freaks me out. Particularly as I normally don’t think about daily stuff at all, it just seems to happen on the fly. For a week now my head is packed tightly into cotton wool. I wonder when the cloud will lift.
dedepuppets 