Homeric

Taking the definition of Homeric literally, to mean more than a place detailed in Homer’s surviving tales, this photograph is of Leptis Magna in Libya, taken in 2009.  It seems appropriate to choose it because of the historic changes that have taken place in Libya in recent days.

Leptis Magna was initially a Phoenician city on a promontory overlooking the sea and would have been active in Homer’s day. It was developed much later by Hadrian and then Septimus Severus as a Roman city, rival to Carthage and to Alexandria.  Septimus Severus apparently came from the city before becoming emperor in 193 AD, from which time he spent a great deal of time and energy investing in it, as well as a great deal of money.

This photograph shows a street called the Cardo viewed through the Triumphal Arch of Severus as it passes down to and under the Arch of Trajan.  The streets show the ruts from carts wearing the stone over the centuries.  On this day there were hundreds of thousands of starlings feeding on olives in the fields next to the city, any black dots visible are starlings not blobs!  It is hard to know what has been happening to this incredible place in the past few months, there were stories of weapons and tanks being stored amongst the ruins, all we can do is hope that there hasn't been a profound level of damage.

Starting it all off

Flower festival turtle in Liepaja, Latvia - looking rather exhausted...

Here we are on a bright and sunny Monday morning and a good idea turns a bit weird.  This morning it seemed like ‘a plan’ to start a new blog on random generated words and how photographs can be selected to illustrate the word.  It is unlikely to be a unique idea, but it is not consciously triggered by anything other than the experience of taking and using photographs for clients and for graphic design projects.

So, full of enthusiasm, I headed for the website given to me through a newsgroup a few weeks ago on Random Words http://wordsmith.org/words/random.cgi and got landed with the deeply ‘inspiring’ (not) word of HAGGARD!  How beautifully apt for a Monday morning, sunny or not, but not the best one to start a new idea on its march to public view.

Haggard. Gaunt, exhausted, tired.  Definitely Monday morning-ish.  I don’t take many photos on Monday mornings, so it is an interesting first word to test the lateral-thinking.  Apparently it originates as an Old French word for falcon, but they fly jolly fast and so I have none of those either.  Oops!

What this word does do, however, as a result of the image I have chosen to use, is that it illustrates very well how the addition of a word to a caption or a concept can change the sense of the image remarkably.  This floristic turtle is definitely feeling very Monday-morningish and is a photograph that couldn’t normally be used, because the poor chap looks so tired and flat in spite of his colourful back.  But calling it Haggard suddenly it is quite attractive as an image and yet also illustrates the word.

He was taken in the town of Liepaja in Latvia outside a local church and has no pretensions to grandeur.  That day there were several floral creations around the city for a flower festival, I think and he was much remarked upon.