Panopticon

Narnia in 3D

By TheSupercargo

Yesterday evening I went to see my very first 3D movie: Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I know, hopeless. Why did I not see Avatar? Or Tron?

Well, that’s the way it goes.

The experience was not as disturbing as I’d feared. I only had to leave the salon once, fighting nausea but I managed to return to see the rest of the film after visit to the loo. (And it may have been the steak tartar got up as hamburger that I ate just before visiting the cinema that was to blame.)

On the other hand, the experience was not as exciting or as beautiful as I’d hoped. One scene of snowflakes falling around Lucy was nice – otherwise I didn’t feel the 3D experience added anything. Still, I should probably try out a made-for-3D film before dismissing a whole technology.

I didn’t enjoy having to hold the extra glasses on my nose Â (see picture). I obviously have a short nose. And I particularly didn’t like the subtitles hovering above the surface of the film – though perhaps that’s something one would get used to.

And still it snows

By TheSupercargo

After a month of snow, NOW we have winter. Snowing with a vengance and the thermometer hovering around zero.

Pariah

By TheSupercargo

The Word of the Day on Artwiculate today was pariah which reminded me of this painting on a roadside hoarding in Sofia, Bulgaria. Photo taken in September 2009.

In fact, while there were dozens of apparently homeless dogs wandering around Sofia, they all seemed pretty cheerful and well-fed. They were also very trusting of people, which suggests that Bulgarians are in general a dog-loving folk. The situation for cats though was quite the reverse. No pictures of pariah cats though – they were too quick to disappear when I pointed a camera at them.

What I did at the weekend

By TheSupercargo

The book was stuck in the mud, I was still feeling sorry for myself after a bout with the flu and suspicious the germs were coming back for another round, and my good lady wife was determined to give the flat a major dusting.

“Why don’t you go out to the cottage?”

Why not? The cottage is actually owned by my sister-in-law, but it’s been my wife’s family’s seaside retreat for decades. Mostly used in the summer, though I’ve had writing retreats there before when the snow has been piled high. Now it was cold and raw and rainy.

I packed my (non-Internet connected) laptop, a change of clothes, my sleeping-bag, some food and set off.

So that’s where I’ve been, with no Internet, no TV or radio, no other people. Just the sound of the sea breaking on the beach, the rain on the roof and the wind in the trees. Me, a computer, two electric heaters and a disturbingly large number of dead woodlice.

The afternoon after I arrived and early on the morning of the second, I took the camera and went for a couple of walks in the rain. Otherwise I worked. Wrote about 3500 words, so I was pleased.

The pictures were not terribly good. Not really enough light and the rain kept spotting the lense, but I think they’ll do at this resolution. I liked especially the blue light in earliest of the early morning pictures. I hope you do too!

Autumn Banners

By TheSupercargo

If you once post a sequence of seasonal banners to rotate on your homepage, you are sooner or later going to have to update them with a new batch for a new season. And so I present my Autumn Banners for 2010!

The banners are set to rotate randomly everytime you refresh the page so you may not see them all for a while, but here they are below in miniature and if you click on one of them, you should be able to see them all full size in a slide-show.

They are mostly taken in September or October, though not necessarily this year. in fact, I think only five are from 2010. I’ve doctored a few of them in Photoshop to bring out the colours more vividly.

This first I took last year or the year before in the Botanical Gardens here in Gothenburg. The tree is a Japanese acer.

This is a recent picture at the time of writing. A duck framed by ripples on the pond in Hisingspark near where I live.

Taken at more or less the same time as the duck photo. I love the almost abstract quality of the rippled reflected birch trunks and turning leaves.

In London this September, walking around the city, my wife and I were surprised to find this bus stop. And there, we thought it was a fictional place in a TV comedy show!

These hands are picking up flower petals someone has thrown as confetti at a wedding. The owner of the hands intends to recycle the petals. Over her mother’s head.

I took the photo in November 2007, I think. Autumn frosts have already bitten this year.

At the Globe theatre on London’s south Bank. Taking pictures of the interior and the audience before a performance of The Merry Wives of Windsor in September 2010. When I came to look at the pictures I found this face. I wonder who she’s waiting for.

I’ve used this picture before. It’s a sun-spot-lit lighthouse on one of the skerries off the Swedish west coast. It’s an autumn picture because I took it on a photo safari with my photo-friend Lena sometime in September or October a couple of years ago.

My most abstract banner. This is from a photo taken in the receptiona rea of a hotel in Sundsvall a few autumns ago. It was a bit blurred. I have used one of Photoshop’s “artistic” treatments on it.

Which one do you like best?
Write me a comment!

One fine day at Kew

By TheSupercargo

The 12th September there were clouds in the sky and sometimes the weather seemed threatening, but mostly the sun shone. In London for my sister’s wedding and to house-sit, my wife and I took this opportunity to visit the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. Here are some of the photos I took that day – and one of me that Agneta took, standing up on Kew’s treetop walkway.

Getting ready for the carnival

By TheSupercargo

I just got back from London where my wife and I spent two very full weeks. This was the first photo I took while I was there. The idea of a pigeon dressing up as a parrot for the carnival tickled my fancy — and I thought of a couple of Twitter friends (tWordBird and Squawkingalah). The poster was still up on the wall on several Underground stations, though we’d just missed the reason for it.

The caption read:

Get ready for the Notting Hill Carnival.
29-30 August.

We arrived on 1st September.

More from London is likely over the next few days …

More Summer Photos

By TheSupercargo

These photos were taken over the summer of 2010. The oldest (the Balloon and clouds photo) I took on 26th June and the most recent, the group portrait of Taiga, the Gothenburg Balalaika Group, I took this morning (29th August). The Soapstone Inuits are on the mantlepiece of my brother- and sister-in-law, who have paddled kayaks off Greenland. The reflected clock is in the tower of HÃ¶galid’s Church in Stockholm and the Styr-o-stÃ¤ll bicycles-for-hire are a new feature of the Gothenburg cityscape.

Summer banners

By TheSupercargo

I was in leisurly process of assembling some new summer pictures to use in the title banners or headers for this site when my friend and fellow WordPress Wrangler Kristina S (aka Chefstomaten at Tomatsallad.nu) beat me to the draw. Her blog now has a fine new set of banners (I particularly like the jelly-fish.)

Spurred on by Kristina’s enterprise, I got my finger out and with this entry I present my own set. The banners are set to rotate randomly everytime you refresh the page so you may not see them all for a while, but here they are in miniature for your delictation and delight.

I came across this set of dolls in the window of a basement secondhand shop in SÃ¶derkÃ¶ping.

The son of a friend of a friend. He was drinking through a straw and watching me very seriously as I took the picture.

This whale advertises the Natural History Museum in Gothenburg and is usually a dull rust-red. A graffitti artist has given the whale a summer holiday – complete with a cone of ice cream.

Stepping-stones Â in the Botanical Gardens. I took this picture at the beginning of June. [And now have removed it from circulation - see comments.]

The shadows of fern fronds cast by a strong summer sun.

More of a late spring picture, this one, but I like the lilac flowers and the little fists of the lilac buds.

This almost abstract picture is water reflections on the side of a boat, tricked about a little in photoshop. I took this picture last summer when I was visiting Waxholmen in the Stockholm archipelago.

This is the setting sun on (Swedish) Midsummer’s Day.

And finally … a snip of the brick and whitewash facade of Â St Laurentii Church in SÃ¶derkÃ¶ping.

Which one do you like best?

Picture(s) of the weekend

By TheSupercargo

Swedish Midsummer on the west coast

Looking out to sea to the north west. I took these four photos at 7 p.m. (evening), 10 p.m. (sunset), midnight (twilight) and 2 a.m. (dawn) on the night between 25th and 26th July.

Apologies for the quality of the 2 a.m. photo – I blame the light and taking it through a pane of glass. Nothing whatsoever to do with drinking too much

Swedish Midsummer on the west coast

TheSupercargo says: