I've been taking a lot of flower photos recently with my macro lens. I love all the fiddly detail in flowers - especially like those in the buds below (the red isn't part of the flower - they are the leaves).
About an hours drive from where I live there's a place called the Promised Land. It's rolling green hills and rainforest backed farmland dotted with cows and houses and kids on bicycles and winding dirt tracks. And cutting away the valleys is the Never Never Creek. This is a burbling stream of water that gushes over grey stones and relaxes in deep clear pools. Here and there along its winding path there are beautiful swimming holes like this one, with a rope to play on and campfire sites here and there suggesting frequent use. Many of these spots are not accessible except by foot. A perfect place to spend a day with your friends or lovers.
I like to head up this way when I need to be alone. I find being out amongst the trees and birdsong replenishes the energy in some little part of me. If I'm stressed or tired or sick or angry, I can remember a particular tree or cascade or a winding trail from somewhere in this area, and it releases that little pod of energy and brings me back to the calmness of this place. I'd like to have people along with me too, but so far I haven't found the special someone to bring here.
I like it so much that the fact that it was looking a little overcast didn't deter me. I put on my backpack and "old man's" hat (a straw beach hat), grabbed the tripod and set out to capture the movement of the water and dappled light through the trees.
Then when I had trekked a few kilometers from my car, it started to bucket down. Luckily, I happened across the old bridge and took refuge.
It rained for quite a while, and I took to both finding photo opportunities, and trying to dodge rivulets of water that would leak through the old creaky wooden structure. There was a close shave with my macro lens: it got pretty wet, but it seems to be ok: it still captured this moss exactly as I had hoped:
I'll have to go back again one day when it's not so wet (though I do like the feeling of trudging along in the rain when it's not too cold or too warm). Sometimes things get a little slippery, and your shots go a little haywire:
My clot had been caused by Deep Vein Thrombosis in my leg. This is where something gums up the works in the wall of a vein and the blood starts to clot like it does when you get an external cut. It goes hard. Unfortunately, when this is inside your body, it can continue to grow - blood will clot on the end of the existing hardened blood cells, and grow like a stalagtite or string inside your body. Mine grew to around 35 centimeters before I knew anything was wrong. In fact, I didn't know anything was wrong until I collapsed from oxygen deprivation (the doctors told me my "O2 sats were 60%", which is pretty bad. Normally it's 95% or above), because a huge chunk had broken off and travelled up into my lungs, where it promptly broke into about 1,000,000 peices, blocking all those useful holes that let you breath air.
This morning I had strange dream. It was one in where I was being told news I really didn't want to hear. But I couldn't get away from the person who was telling me. I awoke in a fug around 4:30am and was seriously unable to go back to sleep. I knew exactly what my problem was, for today was my meeting with my haemotologist (blood specialist) to determine how long I would be on these little green and white drugs. I was nervous. I shouldn't have been: my clot was diagnosed as completely gone on the 17th of December last year, but to this day no-one can tell me how my body formed the clot in the first place. I didn't have symptoms at all, and I didn't have the usual diagnosable problems when I went into hospital that would indicate a clot. It was a mystery. My morning nerves were from thinking that my doctor was going to tell me that I would be on the little pills for life.
These little pills make my blood less susceptible to clotting. So if I get a cut that bleeds, it would take two to three times longer for me to stop bleeding than other people would take for the same size cut. Not such a problem for small scrapes and such, but for major breaks or bruises or internal damage it can be life threatening. To be on them for life would mean I would either need to buy a portable INR lab kit, or simply live near a pathology clinic and go there once or twice a month for a blood test for ever. The stuff these pills does to your blood can get wildly out of control very quickly, and you don't want your blood to be messed up. It's kind of important, you know?
My doctor could have told me two things today. He could have said "You're slightly overweight, I want you to stay on the pills for another unspecified-vague amount of time until you lose that weight and keep it off". Actually, I'm 100.1 kilograms at the moment, according to the highly calibrated scale at the hospital. I'm around 185cm tall, so this weight is not excessive. The doctor could have also said "That's it, clot's over, get off those pills and go have a nice life." Thus my morning anxiety. Would the doctor surprise me and tell me I had twenty minutes to live?
In case you're interested, he actually said "That's it, clot's over" and sent me on my way. I'm pretty happy about that, to understate it. I needed to take a photo of the pills for my memory, because they're going in the garbage now for ever.
There it goes: the itch to travel. To get out; away. To find a place I haven't been and be there. When you travel, you see things you don't normally see. You go places that are probably interesting - depends on how they market it, I suppose.
It's been a long time now since I have done any distance in my little car. A couple of years back, I found an interesting coastline and drove to it. It took a few days to do that, since the interesting coastline was battered by a whole other ocean. What a great spot it was though:
I think half the fun was getting there. There's nothing quite like having a bit of space in front of you (and behind) when driving. You get to open up the car and see just how fast it can go without fear of running into anything. It turns out that at the time of this trip, my car was capable of going at 171kph, at which point the tread on the cheap tires I had put on it flies off and destroys the moulding on the rear wheel cavity, leaving you stranded at dusk exactly half way between two nowhere towns. It may be handy to know that for next time.
A couple of years previous to the southern coast experience was a trip through Italy. I'd picked it because a) I'd never been out of the country, and b) it was about as far away as I could get (I know the "exact" opposite of the world puts me somewhere off Portugal, but Italy seemed more interesting than floating about in the mid-atlantic). Italy's got castles and stuff. Australia has lots of nothing.
I rather like some bits of Italy. Some places were just places. Some places were total dives. Some places were worse than that. The most ugly thing in Italy is by far the Vatican. I just don't see the point of it. Knock it down and put up a waterslide, I say.
Hopefully one day I'll be able to post photos of New Zealand here on my blog. It's my next "to do" destination (once I remember how saving money works). I'll be booking a camper van and heading here, there (or possibly both), and all around. I'm thinking a hot mud bath, a trek across a glacier, a swim in a freezing cold ocean and tour of the places that tv shows get filmed is in order.
If you want to come with, just drop me a note!
While trawling my home for idea today, for it is still raining and I didn't get home from work early enough to catch the afternoon light, I thought: "Why not do a self portrait?" Of course, I'm taking photos not doing a painting, and I only own one mirror, so it became an excercise in trying to focus on myself in the reflection. So: this is me.
Catchy colours jump out at me when I go searching for subjects. And what could be more colourful than pencils?
I don't know what these things are called. They exist on my coffee table, and I try capturing them up close every now and then. Since they are round, the present many problems in focus.
In my bathroom I keep maidenhair ferms. I like their gentle leaves. I'm somewhat bad at plants in my bathroom: It's got a west facing window, and as such turns into a sauna in the summer months. In winter it fails to catch the afternoon sun to any useful degree and as such turns into a walk in ice chest. So it's perhaps not such a great location to keep maidenhair ferns (or any non succulent plant). But through a few yellowed leaves and quite a lot of total disasters I persevere. It's green on white: that's cool!
Where I get all my power. Self explanatory, really.
Anyway, these entries are my contribution to todays challenge. I really have to go now: My vegetable soup needs blending, my nightly pills need popping, my chardonnay needs a refill, and my cat is bored.
My Groups
-
Photography Updated: 15 minutes ago
-
traveller pic Updated: 21 minutes ago
-
Aussies Updated: 4 hours ago
