This site is a kind of running diary with photographs linking the entries. If you ask me why I do it, I’d say I can’t tell you other than that I like to take photographs and to document things and to experiment.
I’ve been doing it for a while, I started blogging in about 2006 with a Google blog. Then I switched to WordPress because it was prettier and I could do more things with it. Then I made a number of self-hosted WordPress sites, and the greeting card site at Flying Twigs.
The way I look at it, the world is full of images so we must like them. I like the ones that tell me something I couldn’t have known otherwise. For example, Harold ‘Doc’ Edgerton photographed the first millionth of a second of an atomic bomb exploding using a technique he invented. Look him up – his is a fascinating story.
I recall the details of most of the photographs I take.
Copyright
All content displayed on this site is copyright © David Bennett for the period beginning with the date of its publication until the date you are reading this, and unto infinity and beyond or to such limited time as the law allows.
Any use of the content here without the prior and express consent of me, David Bennett, will be considered a violation of copyright and I reserve the right to take any and all legal action in respect of any and all violations of copyright.
That said, if you want to use something you see here, ask me and I might say yes.
Climate, Environment, The Future
But of course the sky is falling. The ground upon which we stand and upon which we rely for our peace of min, is shifting under our feet. The Earth has been pushed and pulled and now it is responding in kind.
This is the mindset we have in the early part of the 21st century. And naturally, it only adds to the sense of insecurity and unease that people throughout the world are feeling.
Certainly the threat of disaster will push people along to trying to avert it. And some people think that is a laudable way to get people to solve the problem of climate change.
The problem in that is that the argument implies that all the polluting we do is OK or at least not as important as climate change and that as long as the consequence of our actions is that we do not cause climate change, and famine and total societal breakdown, etc. – then we can keep on polluting the way we do.
And if you don’t think that way, there are plenty of people who do.
I have a different argument on the ‘why’ of what we should do. What I mean is that there may be a bit of wiggle room for argument about exactly what effect that man is having on global warming and how the planet will respond in the medium or long term.
Climate scientists constantly revise their models because the planet is more complex than the models of it and it keeps ‘outwitting’ the those who model it.
But what is not in doubt is that we are destroying the Earth and ourselves with pollution.
How many pieces of plastic are in the seas, in your body?
So don’t let arguments about global warming deflect from the fact that we should clean up the mess we are making irrespective of climate change.
And stop making more mess.
To stop polluting the planet doesn’t or shouldn’t need the justification that we are facing climate disaster.
Think about it. A tree does not need to justify its existence. We, however, do need to justify destroying it, whether or not at some point down the road the fallen tree will get its innocent revenge by releasing CO2 and killing the planet.
Careful housekeeping – looking after the place and not treating it like a rubbish tip – is simply good manners and a show of gratitude for the benefits we receive from the place we live.
This image is The Garden Of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch. A very high resolution image is online on Wikipedia
Other Stuff
Google ‘Stephen Leslie’ for his very rewarding YouTube videos where he looks at the work of photographers he admires. In his look at the life and work of Walker Evans he put up this quote by Baudelaire because while Evans admired the work of Baudelaire, Baudelaire detested photography:
“The photographic industry was the refuge of every would-be painter, every painter too illendowed or too lazy to complete his studies, this universal infatuation bore not only the mark of a blindness, an imbecility, but had also the air of a vengeance. I do not believe, or at least I do not wish to believe, in the absolute success of such a brutish conspiracy, in which, as in all others, one finds both fools and knaves; but I am convinced that the ill-applied developments of photography, like all other purely material developments of progress, have contributed much to the impoverishment of the French artistic genius, which is already so scarce.”
So there!
Write This Way Or That Way
If you think you might like to try something other than WordPress, read this post on having your own space on the net for publishing your writing.
