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farewell wordpress wpc

Image | | andy townend

Like many people, I suspect, I am saddened to see the unannounced demise of the WordPress weekly photo challenge. In the early days of this site the weekly prompts from the WordPress team often offered a much needed spur to action, and helped me find my voice and new inspiration.

The WordPress team, and their occasional guests, created a cherished sense of community. They will be missed.

How to choose a favourite? Not exactly Sophie’s Choice I know, but hey guys, you may be ripping out the soul from your blogging platform. Why not at least have issued some kind of warning, canvassed opinion, or even sought out those willing to carry the torch?

So, I publish again one of my first photo for this esteemed challenge, and if you’d like to see the whole set from andytownend then here you go.

And, I wonder.

See also my posts on belgradestreets, salamancastreets and belgianstreets…

lines

Image | | andy townend

his way had therefore come full circle
or rather had taken the form of an ellipse or a spiral
following as ever no straight unbroken line
for the rectilinear belongs only to geometry and not to nature and life

― hermann hesse, the glass bead game

for wordpress weekly photo challenge ‘lines’

*shot with Nikon d700 and nikkor 85mm f/1.4 d lens with manual focus at f/1.4 ISO1800 and 1/200s, cropped and transformed into mono in lightroom cc*

plaza

| andy townend

Another shot at this week’s WordPress prompt on the theme of ‘I’d rather be’ which features the streets of Salamanca, words by Murakami and some unedited mono photos from me and my trusty old Olympus OM10.

salamancastreets

“Look at the rain long enough, with no thoughts in your head, and you gradually feel your body falling loose, shaking free of the world of reality. Rain has the power to hypnotize.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

We often spend time wondering who, where, or perhaps what we are.

What we’d rather be.

Maybe, our lives would be better if we simply accepted who we are, where we are.

And what we have.

Let the rain wash over us, cleanse us.

Make us whole again.

And maybe then, we’d rather not need to be anything that we are not.

Already.

A thoughtful piece for this week’s WordPress Weekly Photo challenge which posed the rhetorical question ‘I’d rather be’

And, in an odd way, the fact that each of these shots was captured, in Salamanca’s Plaza Mayor, with a 35 year old Olympus OM…

View original post 31 more words

I’d rather be

Image | | andy townend

‘what was the thing, who was the one?
i’d tell you if I had the chance
all over the city, the suburbs and towns
i’m begging someone, please look up’
– lyrics from ‘everybody wants to sin’ sarah blasko

for wordpress weekly photo challenge ‘i’d rather be’

*shot in salamanca, españa, with 35 year old olympus om10 and zuiko 50mm f/1.8 lens in aperture priority mode with ilford xp2 super iso400, developed by ilford, after I dropped it on a cold tiled floor and bent the filter ring, gotta love film…*

story

Image | | andy townend

‘whispered something in your ear
it was a perverted thing to say
but I said it anyway
made you smile and look away’
– lyrics from ‘nothing’s gonna hurt you baby’, cigarettes after sex

once upon,
a time
each story
began

in gentle tones
no broken bones

later,
gingerbread,
blood red
tales of death
and terror

stalked my,
dreams

later, still
each story
began, in torchlight
and fright

what right,
had i

and now,
each story,
ends before,
it begins

as life,
unwinds

for wordpress weekly photo challenge – story
*image shot in salamanca, españa, with fujifilm x100f with 23mm (35mm fill frame equivalent) lens at ISO500, f/4 and 1/300s with added effects applied in analog efex pro 2*

Ethio(pics)

Image | | andy townend

This post features a diminutive lady called Lucy, an emperor by the name of Haile, a few flip-flop wearing parasol bearing clerics, the Red Terror, Sylvia the suffragette, some spicy sauce, and St. George (or at least an eponymous beer).

You have been warned.

This week, Ben Huberman‘s challenge for the WordPress Weekly Photo challenge is ‘out of this world‘.

In framing his challenge Ben suggested that we ‘share a photo that takes a familiar scene — a place you frequent, a face you know well, an activity you engage in regularly — and makes it look and feel like something out of this world’.

I’ve always had a slight problem in answering the (right) question, or at least reading the question and then coming up with an appropriate answer.

In any event, Ben also said ‘Feel free to interpret the theme as loosely as you see fit. I look forward to seeing your photos!’. So, in a lazy moment, characterised by a certain slice of synchronicity, I found a hook for framing a post that I was going to write anyway.

The problem with my world at the moment is that the places I frequent fluctuate with a frenetic and feverish frequency. And the activity that I seem to engage in with the greatest frequency is that of being a frequent flyer.

Which is a rather long-winded way of sharing some snaps from my latest adventure. It’s not ‘out of this world’ but it was a new part of the world for me.

And I think that must count for something?

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