Tag: water

Axolotls

After multiple people asked me, I did a print design of everyone’s favour­ite neoten­ous, cute but some­what canni­bal­ist­ic Mexic­an sala­man­der.

Schwartz­see

A short train ride or couple of miles walk outside Kitzbühel is the Schwartz­see (“black lake”). It’s full of miner­als washed down from the moun­tains that give it the glassy black effect…

Split

Here’s some photos from my trip to Croa­tia this summer. It was a real last minute thing, I suddenly had a week free in a packed summer of teach­ing engage­ments and still didn’t actu­ally live anywhere yet, so I bought a cheap flight to Croa­tia and did some sight­see­ing.

Naoshi­ma

Naoshi­ma is tiny idyll­ic island in the Seto Inland sea devoted to modern art. The open­ing of the Benesse modern art museum (owned by the same organ­isa­tion as Berlitz language schools) revived the island’s fortunes, although it’s still a small and quiet place with only a few villages and a lot of old people.

Torbole

After Malces­ine, Limone sul Garda and Riva del Garda, I present to you Torbole. I went to Torbole just because the boat from Riva del Garda to Malces­ine stopped there along the way, and I’d never been there before. It was a weird little place. Like Riva, it used to be in Austria until 1918. Every­one except the staff of the restaur­ants seemed to be German, and really into intensely star­ing at you in the street. The light and the way the water looked along the harbour front was beau­ti­ful though, and I spent most of the hour before the boat back sitting on a bench soak­ing it in. I don’t think this is a real place, I think it’s a screen from one of those new-age computer games from the 90s like Myst.

Riva del Garda

So far I’ve shown you Malces­ine and Limone sul Garda. I also took the boat to Riva del Garda at the north­ern end of the lake (which is also in a differ­ent province- Trentino). It was rain­ing all day, so I figured I might as well go to the colder, rainy end of the lake and visit the museum, and save the outdoorsy stuff on the south­ern end like archae­olo­gic­al sites for a sunny day.

Limone sul Garda

Now I’m head­ing over to Limone sul Garda on the other side of the lake. I didn’t spend much money while I was in Italy, but a hefty chunk of the (tiny) budget went on ferry tick­ets. Boats constantly criss-cross the lake to all the towns, and it’s the most scen­ic way to see the area. If you’re in a hurry, you can take the bus on land, but I was on holi­day, so by defin­i­tion, not in a hurry.

Malces­ine, Lago di Garda

At the end of May I went on a last-minute trip to Italy by myself. I had given up my tenancy in London, because I was fed up of paying a small fortune to a land­lord who was unwill­ing to fix the seri­ous leak in the ceil­ing that was prob­ably going to bring the plaster down some­time soon, and a relat­ive asked me to house-sit. The house-sitting date then changed, but it turned out to be cheap­er for me to visit friends in York­shire, and then go on holi­day for a week than it was to extend my tenancy, which shows how ridicu­lous the prices are in London now. As it was a last minute thing, I had to go on my own. I don’t mind trav­el­ling solo though, I used to do it regu­larly for work, and trav­el­ling alone is better than going on holi­day with someone who doesn’t want to do any of the same things as you. (In my case, wander­ing aimlessly for hours and hours, taking hundreds of photo­graphs and eating a lot). I also got to re-read The Name of the Rose in peace.

Gener­al wander­ing round Copen­ha­gen

About 6 weeks ago I went on a short break to Denmark and Sweden. It shows how busy I’ve been lately that it’s taken me so long to post these. I unex­pec­tedly had some extra holi­day days I had to use up quickly before the end of my work contract, and none of my friends were free to travel on the specif­ic week­end I had to use them, so I went by myself. I saw cheap flights to Copen­ha­gen, and booked them on a whim, on the grounds that I’d never been to Denmark before, and it was also easy to visit Sweden from Copen­ha­gen. I also have a danish friend Sanne I used to work with in London, so I arranged to meet up with her while I was there and drink some Mikkeller beer at normal prices (rather than the exor­bit­ant prices they charge in the UK). (Good luck with the PhD viva Sanne!). I liked Denmark a lot, although I’m not sure if I’d want to live there. They seem very set in their ways. In fact it reminded me a lot of Austria, but with sea rather than moun­tains.

Wander­ing along the canal

I often like to get some fresh air in my lunch break by walk­ing along the canal near my work. There’s not a lot there, just some house­boats and a small lock, and a lot of lunch­time joggers and the odd person eating sand­wiches on a sunny day. I’m a big fan of canals, and I think I’ve walked along pretty much the whole length of this one at vari­ous points.

Canal St-Martin

Here’s some more pictures of Paris, this time of the Canal Sainte-Martin, once again taken with an old Pentax ME Super from the 70s. The film was expired and from Pound­land, and went through the x-ray machine at the airport, which resul­ted in it having a red cast. I colour correc­ted it out where I could, but the pictures don’t quite reflect the aqua green water as I saw it. I also took some b&w pictures of the same area, which I’ve developed but not yet scanned.

Endless card

This was some­thing I made as devel­op­ment work on my MA, and never finished. It’s an endless card. Basic­ally you cut four rect­angles of card, and fold and glue them in such a way that you create a card that opens to reveal anoth­er open­ing, which then opens to anoth­er, and so on. You get four differ­ent pictures that open up. There’s a tutori­al to make one here. I went to a work­shop where they showed you how to make them, and the woman running it had made a very nice card of the story of Dori­an Grey.

Mystery film- pleas­ant but bland

I’ve got a whole load of unscanned negat­ives here which I’m slowly work­ing my way through. There was a whole film of pictures of this place with a lake, but I have abso­lutely no idea where it is, or when I took the photos. I also have no idea what camera I used for these, but the film is Kodak Ekta­chrome 160 Tung­sten, cross-processed. The pictures are pleas­ant but bland, and I’ve got a real feel­ing this was a test roll to see if some­thing worked right/​was any good (char­ity shop camera? lens found in someone’s loft and given to me? who knows). Whatever it was seems to work fine.