Whimsical Musings of a Loon

Murakami. Hokusai. Sushi. Samurai. Ghibli. Kurosawa. Japan had always been my dream destination. My fascination in the country and culture started in slightly an unusual way - sifting through my Van Gogh print book aged 11, I saw Vincent's Japanese art work, The Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige) and was rather taken by the image. On further inspection, I learnt of the original by Hiroshige and how Vincent had been influenced by the ukiyo-e prints. I had no conscious awareness of the why, but I just knew the style ticked a certain box within my sense of order. As I got older, the more I delved into Japanese culture, the more obsessed I became. I read the Pillow book of Sei Shonagon. I watched all the Kurosawa films I could get on VHS from the library (I've been concocting a whole blog post dedicated to my love affair with Ikuru for months), I bought all the Murakami I could afford (I remember trying to explain to a friend once why I loved his books "He writes what...

When I first started studying photography, mobile phone technology was still relatively primitive. Digital photography was still in its infancy (I learnt on a second hand 35mm film Nikon and dark room processing). Digital cameras were the golden grail of its time, the extra legroom supplement of technology - expensive but you didn't really get that much more for your money. To think of our lives without digital photography, or indeed, smart phones, is akin to imagining us existing without air.  Digital imaging and mobile technology has become an integral part of how we live - a repercussion of the internet emerging as the centre of modern life. Smart phones, or rather, camera phones have changed photography as a medium. It has changed the way we take photographs, obviously, but it has changed the way we share our images, the way the media use and publish images, and perhaps most interestingly, the way we even experience our lives. The first camera phone I ever owned was...

New year. New outlook. Usually new(ish) reflections; reviewing the past 12 months can be cathartic, it can also be for some of us painful. At new year, I always feel reflective, its the very nature of the time - the dark evenings and harsh weather turn me into something of a clam shell. I want to hibernate and ponder; I feel myself morph into something I don't always recognise. It's also a time when I see so many people pour scorn on the year that has just passed. A quick glance across social media sites result in a textual cornucopia of  similar statements: 'good riddance to this year!', and 'this has been a terrible year, can't wait for the new one' etc. etc. My immediate response always seems in agreement: "How true! X year has been appalling, let it die a nasty horrible death and bring on the great hope of placebo new year!" I suddenly stopped myself. Why did I think 2014 had been particularly bad? What evidence was there to support th...