orange. blob. blog.

Myanmar (Burma) – Sule Pagoda in Yangon

Tim — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 21:55:43 +0000

The picture above was taken at the end of last year, during a trip to Myanmar and Laos. My other half was trying to find some replacement flip-flops in town and while she was in the shop, a Monk stopped to talk to me. He was very concerned that I was seemingly alone, at first – not in a sinister way, but just genuinely concerned that I didn’t have anyone to travel with me.

The Monk seemed to relax when I pointed out Jeni looking for flip flops, and that yes, she was actually travelling with me. He was slightly taken aback when Jeni started subtly checking out his flip flops – leather sole and good looking straps – just like she had in mind! We continued to chat for a while about where we were from, where he was from, what he was doing in Yangon, and what we were doing next. He wished us ‘Safety, no sickness, and no anger’, and we went our separate ways.

The next stop was the Sakura tower, where the picture above was taken from. Opening one of the windows from one of the top level restaurants meant that we could grab a view of the Sule Pagoda. The golden stupa stands out and gleams amongst the other roads, buildings and traffic.

The Sule Pagoda is a lot smaller than its more famous Shwe Dagon Pagoda sibling, but it’s setting right in the heart of downtown Yangon makes it appeal more. Set in the middle of bustling traffic and people, it conveys the deep-weave of Buddhism in everyday life in Myanmar. Its position also made it a popular meeting point during the recent uprisings and demonstrations.

The stupa is said to enshrine a hair from Buddha himself.

The photograph was taken with a tilt shift lens, and has been slightly de-saturated in Lightroom.

7 Nights of Bluegrass in NYC

Tim — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 05:01:21 +0000

This is a bit of a non-photography post, linked incredibly tentatively by a photo of a Banjo… Anyway, on Sunday we joined a friend at one of the last nights of Southpaw in Brooklyn before it closed down. Any music venue that has nights of Bluegrass, as well as a Photo booth is ok in my book!…

The bait… Sunday

$20 per ticket

We went to meet a friend at ‘Americana Pie 2′ which promised world-class bluegrass musicians. Kicking things off were the up-beat Birdhive Boys with a suitable amount of mustache-talk amongst the fast-fingered geniuses. Next up was Six Deadly Venoms (who we happened to have seen before in a completely random location in Brooklyn) before the main event – Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper. Some great fast-paced bluegrass harmonies.

We tried to go to more bluegrass gigs a few years ago, but found that there weren’t a huge amount of options, so while we were chatting to Justin (of Birdhive-Boys-fame) our ears pricked up when he said that he thought we could easily find bluegrass in New York every night of the week. We decided to take him up on the challenge, and picked and tapped our way through the New York bluegrass scene for the rest of the week. So, without further faffing:

G… Monday

$Tips

I’m not sure if we really committed fully last night on the 7 night thing, but today we had planned to see the ever-awesome Greg Tannen with friends at the Living Room (154 Ludlow, between Stanton and Rivington). We wandered out, and found ourselves near Mona (224 Ave B and 13th), so we decided to head over since google said there was bluegrass on the cards. Sure enough we turned up to a full jam in progress, with Rick Snell (of the Six Deadly Venoms) leading a weekly session. My first glimpse into a jam – everyone (there were probably up to 10 players at some points) dipping in and out of the limelight as they wanted. Banjos, violins, guitars and more got the whole bar stomping away to the beat.

Fantastic night of music, which wouldn’t have been complete without watching the man at the bar in the bowler hat (he later joined in the jam playing the violin) teaching someone how to play the bones. At least I think that’s what they call them. The fast clickety sound looked deceptively simple to make until the other person tried. Ah perspective.

D… Tuesday

$Tips

Our natural instincts were kicking in at this point, telling us that we should be knitting at home tonight (literally, for one half of us). Instead, we spied Michael Daves‘ set happening at Rockwood (196 Allen St, between Houston and Stanton). On our way out, fate arranged for Morgan O’Kane to be playing banjo on the subway platform, with foot-operated tambourine and bass drum (which was actually an old fashioned suitcase. Fantastic). We paused for a while to listen along with a load of other normally-we-never-stop New Yorkers, and picked up one of his CDs.

Onto Rockwood, we edged our way into the packed ‘original’ stage area for Michael Daves. After hearing larger groups up to this point, it was great to hear a simpler set – just guitar, banjo and voice. Couple some great string work with an incredible voice that rips you out of Rockwood and plonks you on a porch in Appalachia.

G… Wednesday

$Free

Tonight’s plan was to head down to the Grisly Pear (107 Macdougal Street, between Minetta Lane and Bleecker Street) for the bluegrass jam night. We arrived a bit late, but still caught a number of songs, with the evening mc’d by ‘Sheriff Uncle Bob’. A dark long bar where you head back thinking that the whole evening is over, until you reach the sounds of bluegrass and steel guitar coming from the very back.

Another different take on the bluegrass scene, this one really made you feel like you were witnessing an impromptu jam. All the players circled round and played to, and for each other. There could have been no-one listening, and there could have been a thousand people listening – it wouldn’t have mattered – and the players nodded to each other to take over lead or change harmony.

B… Thursday

$10 door

Our longest trek of the week, this one took us to a corner of Brooklyn hosting the Jalopy Theatre (yep, it’s actually spelled like that) at 315 Columbia St, next to a bunch of toll booths off the interstate. The strings tonight were those of Frankenpine – at first made me wonder about those cell phone tower tree things – and sure enough, given their cover artwork, that’s probably where the name came from. If I were reclining on a couch I’d say there’s probably all kinds of parallelisms about the tree and the band. They definitely were rooted in bluegrass but at the same time had their own flavour (since this appears to be the British spelling paragraph) – there was more to them than first met the eye, and soon found ourselves loving our second row seats that we were jumping around in. Fantastic band… another email list signed-up-to!

Talking of which… the Jalopy itself is a great little venue. Feeling like something straight from the Moulin Rouge, the velvety red curtains and festive bare bulb lighting made the whole thing more fun, apart from creepy glances from the statue head on the stage. We were left feeling buzzed from the music, so decided to stay for a couple of songs from the next band – Jessy Carolina and The Hot Mess. We even moved to the back of the room, planning an early exit.

Best laid plans and all that. One song in, and we were hooked. Having no idea what they were going to be like, our interest was piqued at the sight of a washboard. Old-school-jazz-new-orleansish songs, with snappy tight presentation and a great live presence meant that we stayed right through to the second encore and walked out with their CD. Jessy’s voice really was incredible – sounding like it was being played fresh on vinyl. I could almost feel the slippy mosaic tiles under my feet and hear the clatter of oyster trays in the background.

Advice? Always stay for ‘just one’ song from the next band… just in case!

(Artwork to the left is one of the posters from Frankenpine – more on their facebook page. The banjo player is also a talented poster-maker).

D… Friday

$12 per ticket

Nearing the end of the run, tonight left us with hardly any options that we could find online. Maybe the five-strings go underground on Fridays, but it definitely felt like the Monday of Theater-land. We managed to find one band playing at Rockwood that looked on paper (or screen, I guess) like bluegrass. Banjo? Check. Steel guitar? Check. Vocals? Check. So we headed out to see Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad at Rockwood. Although it was probably pushing the boundaries of the definition of bluegrass, it was still a great night with tappable beats and harmonica. The range of songs was from definite bluegrass to different blends which felt like jamaican bluegrass. Just add steel drums to taste! A huge crowd packed the place with at least half dancing like there was no tomorrow!

Finale… Saturday

$Brunch

Pushing the boundaries again – this time with the ‘night’ thing… we decided that the Bluegrass Brunch at Nolita House was too good a looking opportunity to miss. We weren’t disappointed. This one’s definitely going on the ‘repeat as needed’ list. Great Eggs Benedict (substituting crab cakes for the muffin. True fantastic-ness) and great bluegrass, with some familiar faces in the band from other nights of the week. We’re definitely beginning to feel like bluegrass stalkers at this point. The band was on break when we came in, but soon struck up the string mix with a number of lively songs. Perfect side to a sunny morning in New York.

In case anyone else is similarly bluegrass-obsessed, these are a couple of great sites that list up-coming shows, and venues that have bluegrass happenings: Blue Grass NYC website, and Jim’s Roots and Blues (you have to filter this one down a little to get the flavor of band you’re after, but it’s a great up-to-date list).

Related Links:

Ehm… yeah, there’s nothing else really related to Bluegrass in NYC on this blog, so instead, why not check out a few pics from my Travel Portfolio pages.

Brooklyn Bridge Waterfall

Tim — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 04:15:10 +0000

One from the archives to tide me over the vast swathes of tumbleweed that have been rolling through the blog recently… I’m sorting and indexing all the photos from my last trip to Thailand, Burma (Myanmar) and Laos, and came across some of these oldies that have never seen the light of day!…

These are taken back in 2008, and the whole art project was part of Olafur Eliasson’s ‘New York City Waterfalls’ art installation. There were 4 of these waterfalls built, and immediately everyone was reminded of the orange ‘Gates’ project in Central Park. The waterfalls were all built with scaffolding and looked pretty utilitarian in the daylight – I dare say that was part of the point – but I have to admit I preferred the slower shutter speeds that blurred the water to cover most of the scaffolding.

The picture above was taken from across the river on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge, just as it was beginning to get dark. A very small aperture brings out the ‘star like’ lights on the bridge. The one below was taken before the one above, from the same spot with a slightly wider angle, pointed up so that the large pink sky gets most of the attention.

Top: Canon EOS-1D Mark III
30 secs at f/22
ISO 100
38mm (using the 24-70mm lens)

Lower: Canon EOS-1D Mark III
3.2 secs at f/22
ISO 100
25mm (using the 24-70mm lens)

Photography Masters Cup – 2011

Tim — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 04:08:29 +0000

A little late posting this one… only one year out. Towards the end of last year, I got a nod from the Photography Masters Cup awards for my abstract picture of Greenery…

The official title is the 5th Annual Photography Masters Cup awards – either way, they liked my photo of the cold looking stone, contrasted with the deep green of the bush. The photo was taken in La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Thanks again to the judges for picking my photograph out!

New York Halloween Parade – Mr Men and Little Miss costumes

Tim — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:53:40 +0000

It’s that time of year again… the air turns cool, the leaves start to drop, and the apartment smells of hot glue. Wait… what?

Yep, it’s Halloween again! We managed to recruit even more people this year, so that our ‘crew’ was a total of 6.5. The half was ‘Mr Small’ who was awesomely tiny – at only 1 year old – it was his first Halloween parade too. No doubt first of many!

So after our first year in 2007 as the Lego Couple, then Pacman and the Ghosts, Where the Wild Things Are, and Sock Monkey and Muno… we decided to go for ‘Mr Men’ and ‘Little Miss’ costumes this year. Check out the Mr Men website if you have no idea what I’m talking about!

As usual, the ‘let’s start them really early this year’ turned into being a few weeks before the big day. The full impact of making the costumes only dawned on us when we went out to buy the raw materials. 45 yards of 2 inch thick foam, and 40 yards of various colours of spandex. From Spandex House no less. The apartment became impossible at that point. Ferrying different body parts around the place depending on what needed to be worked on. If you need to draw out the material then it has to be the kitchen for the largest area of open floor space. If you need to hand-sew the body joints, then you need the table in the living room. If one of the bodies wasn’t being worked on, then it would land up on the bed to get it out of the way!

We had a few friends join us this year, so everyone chose what they wanted to be, and we decided on a few that had to be in, because they just look too cool. That brought us to the Mr Men choices – Mr Tickle, Mr Nonsense, Mr Small and Mr Sneeze – and then the Little Miss choices – Little Miss Bossy, Little Miss Giggles and Little Miss Sunshine.

It also led to some ridiculous conversations. Where’s Giggles? In the kitchen. I think Tickle’s in the bedroom. Ok, there’s a pile of Nonsense in the corridor. Can someone pass me sunshine?

Little Miss Bossy, Little Miss Sunshine, Little Miss Giggles, Mr Sneeze and Mr Nonsense. Mr Tickle and Mr Small had already left by that point but they were walking in the parade too!

We all spent quite a few evenings and weekends working on the costumes. On Halloween we also decided to dig out Muno and the Sock Monkey from last year’s Halloween parade, and head down to the ‘Regis and Kelly’ show. The costumes were fine when we were outside last year on a cold October night. Under the hot studio lights indoors, it was a different matter! Anyway, we got onto the show as one of the audience costumes – was good fun!

The living room was so full of foam and material that now that it’s empty, we can actually tell the difference because the room echoes a lot more!

Here’s a clip from a local news channel in New York – Pix 11 – you can see all the Mr Men and Little Miss behind the presenters, and then later on in the clip too, dancing down 6th Avenue in New York…

10th Anniversary of 9/11 in New York

Tim — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 15:56:42 +0000

Took another trip up to the Top of the Rock earlier this evening, on the 10th Anniversary of 9/11. At dusk they switched on the ‘Tribute in Light’ – two massive beams of light in remembrance of September 11. It’s actually an art installation of 88 huge searchlights. Originally placed in the footprints of the two towers, they have now been moved to a rooftop close to the original site…

The installation has been repeated every year since, and the huge beams of light are visibile for up to 60 miles around. In the picture above, the Empire State Building is also visible – lit with red, white and blue.

The photo above was taken earlier on in the evening immediately after the tribute was switched on. At that point, the Empire State Building hadn’t yet switched on its lights. Both images were taken with a Tilt Shift lens – which is how the focus is kept on the Tribute and the Empire State Building, while blurring the surroundings.

I think that the building under construction to the right of the beams of light is the new WTC 1 building, and the smaller new construction visible to the left is WTC 4, from what I can tell.

On the way home, we walked past Bryant Park, which had its own memorial. 2,753 empty chairs sitting on the lawn. One for every victim of the September 11th attacks. There were quite a few people even at 10pm sitting and standing around the edge of the lawn – seeing the sheer quantity of chairs, and the amount of space that they took up really brought home the scale of loss.

It was actually this Bryant Park Memorial that moved me the most – it didn’t cost anything – only the time that it took to make sure that there were 2,753 chairs, and that each one was carefully placed – facing south, to the site of the fallen towers.

Black and White Spider Awards 2011

Tim — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 01:26:54 +0000

A good email to wake up to this morning – my photo of Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse won a ‘nominee’ placing in 2011′s Black and White Spider Awards. This is a black and white conversion of the photo taken in the Beagle channel at the ‘end of the world’ at the southernmost tip of South America…

It’s supposed to be the most photographed lighthouse in South America, but it took us a couple of attempts to get out there – the first couple of days the boat trip was cancelled due to the awful weather. Check out the original post on Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse for more background to the image, and the lighthouse.

Wall Street

Tim — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 22:41:36 +0000

One from the archives – taken a couple of years ago, this one is a photo that was part of the “Manhattan – A Closer Look” series of images…

The image didn’t make it into the final cut of images for the series – all of the images were going to be black and white, and the one above didn’t really jump out as much in black and white as it does in colour. With all the talk of Wall Street… money… ratings… and the economy, I thought it was a suitable subject for a blog post!

Canon EOS-1D Mark III
1/800 sec at f/2.8
ISO 200
45mm (Tilt shift)

Popular Photography Magazine Runner Up

Tim — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 00:12:54 +0000

First up – Happy New Year!

Had some good news the other day – a couple of photographs that I took were recognised as runner ups in the Popular Photography 17th Annual Readers’ Photo Contest…

You can view all of the winners and runners up over at the Popular Photography Photo Contest page. There are some great images in the gallery!

The two photographs are Park Avenue in the Rain (taken in New York City, with a tilt shift lens) and the Guggenheim Museum in New York (also taken with a tilt shift lens). Park Avenue was a runner up in the Travel/Places category, and the Guggenheim was a runner up in the Architecture category.

Both photos were originally part of a series of photographs of New York that I took, called ‘Manhattan – A Closer Look‘. The series looked at famous buildings and views in Manhattan, and were all taken with a tilt shift lens. You can take a look through the related blog posts to see more info about each of the photos, including the other photos in the series.

International Aperture Awards 2010

Tim — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 09:13:28 +0000

I had submitted a couple of photos to the International Aperture Awards 2010 – this one was selected for a Bronze Award…

It’s a photo of what seems like it should be a seat, in La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The striking green of the neat hedge contrasted well with the surrounding marble, and added a patch of welcome colour in between the mausoleums.

The original photograph is below… and there is an older blog post about La Recoleta Cemetery too.