Week 137: Regulation.

So there are certain rules to what I was talking about last week. I don't always abide by them. Sometimes I speak my mind when I shouldn't, that's normally down to reaction more than anything else. Sometimes we act without thinking. I will normally think before I act, but not always. I'm sure you've done it too. I look the way certain friends talk to one another and I think about their individual connections with one another. I try and guess how long they may have known each other, what memories they share and what they may have been through together to act in the way they do. I'm never normally right, but it's something positive to think about. Yes, there are rules and regulations set out for socialising, but not all of them are there is be abided by. Some are meant to be bent. Some rules are there to be challenged.

"Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down."

Some food for thought, I think.
Dan.



Friends stick with you through everything, and are always there to lend a helping hand. The oldest of friends will even help you when you think you don't need help, so just be appreciative of it and let them in.

Song listening to right now: Now Arise - Born of Osiris

Week 136: Reputation.

Keeping up a good reputation is hard. You have to please everyone apart from yourself. I tend to just carry on doing what I want to do in the way I want to do it. I try not to be ambiguous about anything so people can actually understand why I do things, but sometimes I don't come across in the way I think I am. I believe you must keep a strong personality, it makes an impact on people. Not so strong that it offends them, but when people speak to you, you must speak back, give advice and don't just blend back into the crowd. Put your opinion forward in a way that suits the situation. There is no use in being overly blunt, just sculpt the conversation to get your opinion across and people will be more likely to listen. Make a reputation for yourself, promote your way of thinking.

D.



Another band promo shoot. Skies in Motion. I've made a bit of a reputation for myself around bands in the UK. I offer my services to anyone who needs them, keeping music alive has always been one of my biggest interests.

Song listening to right now: Berserker - After the Burial

Week 135: Blank.

Not much to say this week apart from being completely unmotivated. I guess that's okay every once in a while right? It works well as a break and gives me a chances to relax my brain.

D.



More band promotion, this is for a band that have a lot in the pipelines at the moment. You may recognise some of the band members. Keep an eye pealed.

Song listening to right now: Dead to Me - Arusha Accord

Week 134: Rumours.

So I hear things from certain people and I don't know whether I should believe it or not. Sometimes the things people say are fabricated, but sometimes they are exaggerated and some of the time they are telling the truth completely. I hear a lot of rumours about other people I know, I give people the benefit of the doubt and believe it until it's proven wrong. It's a strange phenomenon, the act of lying, I guess I'll just go along with what most people say but always mark each statement with suspicion. It's a way to get paranoid easily, but it's also a way to protect yourself. There are friends I don't trust, because I know that they are self centred and will do anything to make themselves look better than anyone else. Yes, I'm not a perfect person, but I know more about certain things than people may know. I know more secrets than I let on, and I won't let on. Just for the sake of argument.

Thanks for reading.
Dan.



From the 9/11/2011 memorial collection. It is obvious what this guy is representing. Questions I relate this photograph to are: Who believes what? and who is telling the truth? It is very relevant to the way I have been feeling this week. I hear rumours, I chose which rumours to believe and I act on it.

Song listening to right now: Karate - Tenacious D

Week 133: Wading through the subconscious.

I am both fascinated and scared that my own brain can hide things from me. It can control my memories and dreams completely separate and out of the way from my initial control. After travelling and taking photographs in places I never thought I'd see for years, I have a lot of thing running through my mind, it has changed me. The photographs act as memories and I have them engraved at the front of my mind. However, at the back of my mind I think they are doing something a little strange. I have been having dreams about the photographs I have taken, the light metering, the framing and also the subjects themselves. They are all moving around. The lighting in one of my photographs swaps with another and the people hop from one frame to another. It's the strangest set of dreams I've had in a long time. I rarely dream about my own photographs.

Daniel.



This was one of the places that kept appearing in my dreams. The Rockefeller Centre in Manhattan.

Song listening to right now: Voice of the Soul - Death

Week 132: Prompt.

Something always urges me to do something that frightens the living daylights out of me. I think it's when I lose motivation. You know when you're feeling like there is going to be no outcome to everything you do and so, in turn, you feel as though it won't be worth doing it? I get that feeling every now and again. I think it is that very feeling that pushes me to just get back on my feet and put everything I've got into my work. So it's almost a risk, putting all your time and effort into something that may turn out to be nothing. I like that feeling, it's almost like adrenaline.

Thanks
Dan.



This was a Desert Starling, taken in Massada. I could get so close to him that I could see the reflection of my lens in his eyeball, he didn't even flinch. Nothing scared him. I'm sure I could have even picked him up. I'm not sure whether these birds are actually scared by humans getting up close to them, seeing how close we can get before they fly off or they just couldn't care less. Either way it reminds me of how I feel when I do purposely something to scare myself.

Song listening to right now: Viva Las Vegas - ZZ Top

Week 131: That place.

Sometimes I wake from a dream, realise it was just a dream and then fall back to sleep again. Very rarely, I will fall back into the same dream knowing I have been dreaming. I then have complete control over myself for a short amount of time in this dream. I've spoken about lucid dreaming before, over a year ago now but I've been experiencing it a little different recently. This time my dreams have started to involve memories. Memories of things that I would not think about in day to day life. They are almost dispositional, rather than surreal. They are memories that are ready for me to harvest through the state of dreaming. It's a strange feeling that I cannot really do much about. The thing that really gets me, is that when I'm in that place between dream and awake, I know what's coming next but I can't control myself enough to stop it from happening. I can however, completely control myself once it has happened.

D.



I made a series of portraits of people behind masks. This was a parody of the Portrait. It plays with the concept that all portraits are, in fact, masks. You can never show what a person is truly like through one photograph (or even a series of frames i.e film and cinema) it is something more than that. The irony of the Portrait is that the true portrayal is actually behind the portrait itself. So in this case I tried my best to illustrate that concept, I made a series of portraits of people trying to break through that mask. Much like a wet piece of cloth, it is almost impossible to break through, it won't suffocate you unless you struggle.

The mask is very much like that place between dream and awake that I mentioned earlier. I am in a constant struggle to control myself and break through that mask, but once I get into the dream (that place behind the mask) then I can control myself completely.

Song listening to right now: Elaborama - Everytime I Die