Brick Lane market with Sana: slide show

This is a slide show of all the pictures I have taken the day we went to Brick Lane together: Sana with her video camera taking me approaching and photographing people met there, their reaction, and me taking pictures, as usual. Here is the latest: my photos together with some music I enjoy.

This is not Sana at the begining, but the first girl I met and whom I asked to pose for me near the brick wall, you'll see her later in the slide show with her camera.

Brick lane slideshow
by julie70

Come with me and follow what I did, or, use the menu and choose a bigger size or greater resolution or even full screen view. At the end, I had to take out a few photos in order to be able to upload it, but I did through away only the very unimportant ones. All the others are here.

Expectation

Expectation is so important in life!

If you expect something and get more or less, but often only differently, you feel deceived.

Not of what happened, in fact, or what is or was, but of the difference with what was in your mind only (most of the time) and the reality.

The improvisers of Wednesday, did have great fun enjoyed themselves and had great movements too. Most of the time, they also worked wonderfully together, in team.

The problem in fact with me, was that I did think I'll see something different, that in my mind the Impro I was expecting to see was a "real life" like theater group. I have seen them come up and have a scene, improvise like they would speak in real life, move around, give each other time to speak. Not act, not dance, not speak gibberish or dance almost, but live a happening improvised, more or less before our eyes.

First, it was only a class. To learn to work together. They did work together.

Second, they were not yet experimented, just had their 7th class, even if was the last of the cycle. And mostly, it was not on a scene, so it was more difficult to get used where they stay and what place they occupy. They did need a lot of space.

It also happened often very fast for me. Very loud sometimes. Shrieks, and claps, and cheering, almost like in a football stadium. I prefer quiet and slow that I have time to absorb.

All that were only differences between what I like or not personally, and even more what I expected and what was really there. So I got my first exposure of an Impro group, there are lot others I could go to see. As my expectation change, perhaps the experience too.

I'll go to see also a group giving a performance for audience, just hoping it will be not again a burlesque, because I do not understand (yet?) Brit humor and why most of the time, on TV, the people do laugh of what is happening. I do not like if someone falls on his face or if anyone is laughing of others being nasty. I do enjoy some jokes, but not often.

I should learn to laugh more often! More freely, more relaxed, probably too.

I begin to understand how Brits could expect us to behave in a way, speak as they think we should, and be deceived or grieved that we do not do as they think we should, too. How shocking! She dares to ask "whom you speak about?" She dares to sit in the first row! She...

Visit to an Impro group in London

Yesterday, I visited an Improvisation group, Kentish Town in London: one and half hour with bus, train, metro and foot from home. Interesting, nice people too, but very different as I did believe. In my mind, it would have looked more "natural".

I think, mostly because I do not like the burlesque style, the strong sounds and of course, because it was a class (the 7th or 14th they did together) and not a spectacle.

Even worse, my images they let me take with lots of grace, are almost all bad, only three small videos taken are worth something, and even those so short that they only give some of the mood.

I do not regret the spend afternoon and night, more angry with myself and my camera of the missed opportunity. They had such great movements! Very physical scenes!

Impro Oh yeah!
by julie70

Ah, and strangely, the group was taught by a man having arrived 15 years ago from France!

Was I better five years ago?

I found two CD's with my pictures taken five years ago, around my 70th anniversary.

First reaction: a great joy. Second: "I was good". Third: "Oh, was I better then?"

Here are my cherries "Modern familly" is called, and it was, it is an allegory, taken june 2004.


Until now, I did believe I made a huge progress in photography during this five years. Now I wonder. I am any better? Or even: did I loose my edge? I am going forward or backward?

Those were taken in my garden, France, Argenteuil. The cherry tree was "ours" four families living there. And that was years before I discovered they had worms in it...

A huge joy to find some really good oldies, but also a bit of fear "and the new ones are up to them?"

I'll update all my old pictures, slowly on flickr, were I did begin 2005. But my photographic life did start before, as shows me the recovered CD's that I put now, one by one on my new disk where, I hope, is enough place for them, and I also hope to find a good software then to be able to make categories, look at them in different ways, as I do on the flickr website.

I hope, someday, I'll be able to do something I like as much as those cherries. The photos near them (taken just before or after) are proof of my questioning, showing how I arrived there. I put them all in a set on flickr, a new category of "before 70" photographies taken by me.

Really listening

Really listening, really looking, really living in the moment is the advice of Patricia Ryan Madson in her book Improv Wisdom. You can also read her blog day by day and look at her new passions results: great watercolors, (but not comment the notes alas).

To be in the Moment completely is not as easy as it seems at first time, because we are all often in our own ways, our own thoughts, anticipating what to do or not, what picture to take or not, what to answer or add, instead of being all there.

Yesterday morning I did pay attention to that journal whose place was not under the sign "keep right" in the tube. And I took the photo remembering my fellow Artist's way photographer who would have noticed it and taken it, probably.

But first I took a picture of the whole, "the pattern" for my Afterclass flickr group.


I am not sure which expresses the best the situation, but the second picture has to be seen in bigger size to be understood. That is a big issue, some images are better in small size, or as good, others only when looked at in detail that bigger size permits, that is why I decided not to stick in this blog only with smaller images I did at the beginning.

Coming back to "listening", I did try, even if I did not succeed all the time, the listen more carefully, be there more completely, yesterday at my Artist's way meeting. When I did, it was rewarding! I learned new ways, I understood new situations, and even did try to apply it as soon as I went my way toward home. Did take some pictures differently as I would have before, and also begun thinking about writing again some fiction, not only about my own life.

Learning does not finishes at any age.

How much more?

Sunday Times writes that the gap between men and women life expectancy diminishes, of course the writer must be very young, for him around 80 seems already plenty to live.

Not for me.

I arrived in London at 74, this year I'll be 75 soon, it is difficult for me to imagine that my life would end in only five years!

The glass is not yet empty!

The shadow of what will come suddenly seems frightening, as it is in the photography taken yesterday in a sunny morning moment, home. The vase seems bigger, larger on the wall, the years to come before me seems to shrink suddenly, after I read how many more years I have to live. "If the health is good."

Suddenly it came to my mind the question that I should never forget: "What I really want to do with what I still have. What is important?" And also to care better for my health. But I feel that my health will not improve with worry, so I'll just try to forget that, for me, nasty paper!

Wonderful day!

Wonderful day spend with my grand children.

We went out early on a sunny early spring day with three cameras, each its own. She is ten, he is eight. I have Sony, she a Samsung and he an Olympus, but we are passionate photographer looking around for subjects around us.

On the way to discover the first spring flowers behind the house I live now, a cat come in our way. Instantly, it become a diva and the two children turned around and photographed him from all points of views, and even filmed.

The same with two beautiful dogs, but those did not stay quiet for the children, also their owner did try to keep them so they could take photos of them.

Finally, we did arrive to the flowers, and those were also studied and taken from afar and more and more near.

The steady hand of my grand daughter and her camera as well as her patience gives wonderful macros of flowers, already far away from mine. What a joy!

The imagination of my grand-son made me see the dried branches as prison doors coming nearer and nearer, menacing to close, and then the buds more huge then the two story building. It was a great day!

Even the end was great, when after lots of doing, telling, showing, worrying, smiling, hugging, mostly serene but sometimes with sudden yells between them - the apartment I live become quiet again.

The memory of great moments remaining in me as well all our photos.