Photograph

 

View into Harpa, Reykjavik

There has been a bit of a hiatus over these photographs, because I have realised that my heart has not been properly in this exercise as a result of the website I have been using to generate the ‘random’ words.  It has been producing ‘themes’ of random words.  These are a) not helpful and b) not my idea of random!  So.  I have discovered a much more fun and creative site that will, if asked, generate up to EIGHT random words!  Yippee!

Just for fun I clicked on the 8 button and the words listed below are those it generated:....
refugee
work
photograph
bush
pocket watch
butter
race
hour

All of these immediately bring forth ideas and there is almost a temptation to go out and take a photo with butter and a pocket watch (Salvador Dali style probably not, the sun isn’t hot enough), but they are also a great deal more entertaining than ‘pneuma’, ‘Homeric’ and the intriguing but horrible ‘Haggard’.  The whole thing now feels greatly invigorated.

The image I have chosen for this selection is one taken through the window of the new Icelandic Concert Hall, Harpa, in August shortly before its official opening.  The workman in the shot is there still working hard to get it ready, everyone else was I think visiting to marvel at the building.  The darkness of my reflection taking the shot allowed for the view through to the other side of the building.  It is a photographer’s paradise, that building....maybe I could attempt to say the photo is summing up work, photograph and race – the primary focus on the word, however, is photograph, and what a brilliant word to start out again with...

There is more on Harpa (from me) on Pragmatic Bollards.

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.