Stay At Home

When I did my Gloomscapes series two years ago, I never imagined we would soon be in the midst of our own dystopia. I expected some things, of course, with Brexit and Trump and the wave of right-wingery on one side and climate change on the other, but I never expected a pandemic. And now here we are.

Following the advice of staying at home and social distancing is for me, pretty much, just living my life as I do. I stay indoors and don’t go anywhere anyway, unless I take a trip for my photography and I don’t socialise. So I thought I would post some currently appropriate shots of my home. I put no quality in these, I basically just snapped them and uploaded to my computer.

I’m very much about Kindle books, as I blogged about before, so these physical books are from the time before eBooks started or titles that are not available in digital format. I’ve got some Game of Thrones characters figures, funko pops of Captain Marvel and Black Widow, a tiny model space shuttle and cats!

This is an older photo, as you can see more effort was put in it. This pile represents so many of my interests: Anne of Green Gables, Agatha Christie, history, maps, Star Trek, A Song of Ice and Fire and Sherlock Holmes!

Jaime Lannister with a catapult pencil sharpener from Chester and a tiny globe. The doll with the red braids is, of course, Anne Shirley.

The dog is called Snoopy and I’ve had him since 2003. Obviously I’m a cat person but Snoppy is special.

I’ve posted some of my Polaroids before, here they are again.

Picture of a Picture?

Have you ever… printed your photographs and displayed them in your home… and then took a photograph of those displayed photographs?

Because I have.

I’ve had some of my favourite shots printed in the Polaroid-style format that is trendy now and I hung them on a string with clips… which is also trendy now.

Majority of these have featured here. Interestingly, the last one, which is my best sunset, never has.

The third one from right on the first picture, the purple one that’s out of in focus on every photo it appears in, is a smartphone shot from Imagine Dragons concert I went to last year. The lights were purple at that moment, it wasn’t something I added in–I wouldn’t know how to, anyway. I added the name of the band to it to make it look more artistic. (As it happens, Imagine Dragons have a song called Polaroid, what a coincidence!)

Which brings me to: photographers of WordPress, those of you that use digital cameras, do you print your photos? And do you frame them or display them in any fashion? Do tell me in the comments!

Throwback – Polaroid 2004

I keep this photograph among my important possessions.

I’ve never personally used an instant camera–never even held one in my hand. The shot is from an event in my home town of Bratislava, organised by Kia, the car manufacturers, when they opened their first plant in Slovakia.

It was in one of the squares in city centre, where they set up a stage for traditional Korean performances (I remember we watched some cool drummers). Among the promotional material they were giving away, like key rings and stickers and bags, that sort of stuff, I don’t really recall exactly, they did Polaroid shots for people.

As you can observe, there is a Kia car in the picture and those two people in front of it are myself and my younger brother! I was 23 and he was 12. I had already left for UK by then, but was back for a visit.

So, the year was 2004. An interesting year, because that was when Slovakia (with 9 other countries) joined the EU. Here in UK, you bet they had a lot to say about that and not in a good way. But on one news program they also said that with Kia now establishing themselves in Slovakia, potential other car manufacturers will follow and the country might one day become a second Detroit. Amazingly, to this day, it was the only positive thing I heard about my country on British TV ever. Now fifteen years later, we have Brexit and car manufacturers are leaving Britain.

And that thing with second Detroit became true.

Obviously I wasn’t the one who took this pic, but I was the one who took the pic of the pic, so is it my pic or is it not my pic?