In the first hostel I stayed in, I met a very nice South Korean guy visiting from Italy, Kim Hee Won. We chatted for a while, and then went our separate ways. I ran into him again later at the market on the waterfront, where I bought peas and blueberries.

Together we got the ferry out to Suomenlinna, one of the many small islands in the bay of Helsinki. Once a sea fortress protecting the city from invaders, it is now popular with day-trippers and artists, who live and keep studios in the buildings which were once barracks.

Kim Hee taught me how to use my camera much more carefully, and I am very grateful for his help. Here are some nice photos from the island.

Beyond the tail-end of summer, we drove up to Lough Bray in the Wicklow mountains for a swim in the ice-cold water. The weather was just perfect, sitting on the rocks, swinging our feet in the water.

David played his mandolin, Ciarán his guitar. Kevin refused resolutely to get his head wet. Laura and I swam out to the other corner of the lake.

A blind dog felt his way across the boulders. The sun went down behind the mountain and we put our shoes back on.

My Father's Kodachrome and B&W Contributions

This Wikipedia user has scanned and uploaded some of his father's old photographs, from America and Europe, seemingly from the 1960s. What strikes me is the difference that still existed between places, a far cry from the homogenous urban and suburban landscapes of today.

What attracted me most was the comparison I could draw between London and Chicago at the time.

IS THIS MAN A PAEDOPHILE/TERRORIST?

An article here from the London Evening Standard:
Father-of-three branded a 'pervert' - for photographing his own children in public park

Yes, it's another story about someone being stopped from taking photos in a public place. There will be more posts on this topic...

When Gary Crutchley started taking pictures of his children playing on an inflatable slide he thought they would be happy reminders of a family day out.
But the innocent snaps of seven-year-old Cory, and Miles, five, led to him being called a ‘pervert’.

You can read the article to see the usual moral-panic reactions from the "twitching-curtain biddies" (thanks Hugh!).

The most interesting points raised come from the end of the article and the comments:

Mr Gwinnett, 58, a LibDem councillor in Wolverhampton, said: ‘Our policy is to ask people taking photos whether they have children on the slide. If they do, then that is fine.

Here we see appeasement of the reactionary element, denying simple rights on the basis of perceived threat. I don't see why it shouldn't be legal to photograph any child. The assumption that anyone doing so (only men, of course) must be a paedophile or pervert of some type is sickening. Children provide very subjects for photography, with their innocence of and curiosity towards the world.

Even more worrying is that the more expensive your equipment, the more harassed you are likely to be. Despite 5Mpixel tiny camera phones, and high resolution cheap point and shoots, snapping away everywhere, if you spend over a grand on your equipment, you are suddenly a terrorist/pervert.

This one is rather difficult to explain. Why is a more professional tool seen as a threat? Is it because an SLR (for example) looks more like a camera than a point-and-shoot camera? Perhaps the mere effort of purchasing the right tool for the job is anathema to the undiscriminating prosumer. Or perhaps I have lapsed into flippancy.

We did not have this much fear in the 80s when the IRA were exploding bombs in London. Why is there so much fear today?

Not directly related to the topic at hand, but I digress.
Al-Qaeda and friends pose, in my relatively uninformed estimation, far less of a risk than the Provisional IRA did during the 1980s and 90s when they were bombing on the UK mainland. At that time, people tried not to let the terrorist campaign affect them. Bins were removed from train stations, but not a huge amount changed otherwise. Some attacks were perpetrated, some people died. Life continued.

Look at Britain now, cowering in fear of a few hundred potential terrorists, who might choose to attack at some stage. The attacks on the London transport system were surely horrible, but consider this:
Terrorists aim to force people to change their lives by violence. Since the attacks on New York on the 11th of September 2001, our legal, transport and surveillance systems have changed enormously, perhaps irreversibly. Our cultures and societies have been wholly infected by paranoia and mistrust.

We let the terrorists win.

Go han-déanach, táim ag cur suas na grianghraif a ghlac mé nuair a bhíos ar an gCeathrú Rua, sa Ghaeltacht, le mo comh-ghleacaithe ón Gúm (cuid de Foras na Gaeilge anois).

Bhíomar ag múiniú cúrsa foclóireachta san Acadamh atá ann faoi láthair. Bhí roinnt mhaith aistritheoirí den scoth ag freastal ar an gcúrsa agus an tuairim atá agam ná gur bhain siad taitneamh as an gcúrsa.

Bhí uair nó dhó saor againn ar an lá roimhe sin agus shocraigh mé an deis a thapú chun roinnt grianghraif a ghlacadh den tuath. Tá súil agam go dtaitníonn siad libh! Tá fáilte roimh gach ráiteas.

Very late, I am putting up the photos I took when I was in Carraroe, in the Gaeltacht [Irish-speaking area], with my colleagues from An Gúm (part of Foras na Gaeilge).

We were teaching a lexicography course in the Acadamh [Academy] that's down there at the moment. There were a good number of high-level translators attending the course and it seemed to me that they enjoyed the course.

We had a free hour or two the day before the course and I decided to take the chance to go out and take some photos of the countryside. I hope you like them! All comments welcome.

Déan clic ar "Read the rest of this entry" chun na grianghraif a fheiceáil!

Click "Read the rest of this entry" to see the photos!

Luftwaffe funeral?

In this post, there are a mixture of photos taken from the air and on the ground by Nazi German pilots in the Luftwaffe during WWII, flying over cities in Russia. There are some miscellaneous other photos mixed in too.

Here's the link: http://englishrussia.com/?p=2952

With the gunner at the turret

Empty beach - Varosha, Cyprus

About a fortnight ago, Aengus made a rather good post about abandoned places.

Today I came across another page with photos of abandoned places, probably the largest one I've seen so far. All the usual ones are there, Pripyat, San Zhi and Centralia, but also a few I hadn't seen before. If you are new to this addiction, this will whet your appetite. This one has three pages full of photos, and while it's just a compilation, it's not to be missed!

http://www.dirjournal.com/info/abandoned-places-in-the-world/

Abandoned building - Varosha, Cyprus

These were taken before I got my new camera, so quality's not perfect, but I like them.