I flit, I float, I fleetly flee, I fly

158.365 – Catch Yourself by nikilynn

I can't believe the skill and creativity of some of the photographers on flickr. The girl who took this photo is only 15! It is pretty neat to view the progression from her first photos to the last ones.

I have been pretty interested in photos where the subject is floating in midair lately. Here are some more that have caught my attention.

32.365 The Misarranged Mary Poppins by nikilynn

Week Eight. by darcyface
(another 15 year old photographer)

One Day I Floated Away by steph_who

Floating Away by 'Stephen Beadles

I'd like to recreate some photos like this soon. I need to find a model for this however... Perhaps one of the girls from work.

Rainy Toronto

Rainy Toronto
Originally uploaded by Gemna

I was waiting to meet a friend for coffee and I took this photo. The tree was not a perfect shelter, but it worked well enough!

Step Two

I wanted to make an update on how I am doing with falling in love with London. So the first step in this process was to figure out what London has to offer me that I would most appreciate. I realized that I greatly value outdoor spaces, such as parks. As well, in the summertime I like to do a lot of biking, so I enjoy having paths to bike on. :P Combining these two interests and discovering locations that would appeal to them was step two.

There are lots of bike paths along the Thames River and through the city. Today I explored this area a little better and took pictures! This is also the way I get to work! (up until the second-last photo)



So everything is going very well with London! I knew I could find more than a little beauty in London! This city gets such a bad rap with people! There is a lot of beauty here and there are a lot of things going on! :) That is all for now.

Salvador Dali's Birthdate

He is one of my favourite painters. Because who can come up with this stuff? Really! You have to be incredibly creative to think this stuff up or -well, Salvador Dali!

Dali was a Spanish surrealist painter who lived during the 20th century. His most famous painting is one that you may know as "Melting Clocks", but he actually titled it "The Persistence of Memory".

If you took a first year film class you may have watched Un Chien andalou (1928), one of the best known surrealist films. Dali and the first-time director Luis Buñuel produced the film with Dali co-writing and acting in for the film. The poignant opening scene where an eye is slit with a razor is an indelible scar in my mind. *shudders*Oh dear, and now we move on...

Dali was influenced by Sigmund Freud's writing about the "erotic significance of subconscious imagery", which subsequently influenced his paintings. To access the images of his subconscious, he would cause himself to go into a hallucinatatory state. The paintings in this state are his most well regarded paintings and made him the "world's best-known Surrealist artist". The following are some of my favourite Dali works...

When I was in Madrid, I spent a day in Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sophia where a number of Salvador Dali's works are displayed (and Un Chien andalou is played). It was really neat to see one of my favourite artist's paintings for real! (I saw Picasso's Guernica too!)

In recent Salvador Dali News... Little Ashes, a film about Dali's just came out on May 8th. Robert Pattinson (you may know him as Edward Cullin in Twilight) plays Dali. would like to see it, but perhaps I'll wait till it's on DVD or something

To finish off this post on Dali, here are two amusing quotes by Dali:

"I don't do drugs; I am drugs."

&

"The only difference between myself and a madman is that I am not mad."

Update: After posting this I received an email from someone in the PR dept. at Time Inc. and who is in charge of communications for Life. She stumbled upon my blog post in the press for Salvador Dali for today and suggested that I might appreciate a series of photos of Dali from Life Magazine's website. Have a "look-see"! You'll see what an eccentric character Dali was!

Work Cited: "Salvador Dalí." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 11 May. 2009 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/150173/Salvador-Dali>.
All photos and direct quotes will take you to their original site by clicking on them.