I am currently conducting a sizeable purge of my life.
I am dividing everything I own into three piles.
1) This item is useful, or contains useful information.
2) This item is not useful, but simply owning it brings me pleasure on at least a monthly basis, and the item is not larger than quite a small breadbox.
3) This item is not useful and is not small, and should be binned.
(Definition of “useful” is not limited to the strictly practical, and includes entertainment value – books, CDs and DVDs and similar are automatically “useful” as long they’re good.)
You would be amazed at the amount of stuff I have acquired that this does not cover. In future, I shall refer to this simple series of questions when evaluating whether or not I need to own something:
“Is it useful? Is it funny? Does it cause Is it larger than a breadbox?”
Well, that’s a spike put in one of the shittier weeks of my life.
Themesong:
“We walk but once among the living,
So no regrets and no forgiving
Hard to dance when you’re down upon your knees”
I have a week off work, and I intend to decompress like a motherfucker. And also tidy up. And dance.
It’s a champagne cocktail. I really wish I’d taken a bit more time to get the focus right, because obviously the thing I wanted pin sharp was the little silver balls in the drink. Still, this was taken with a point and shoot that I haven’t even taken 150 shots with yet, so I think I can cut myself just a little slack on this occasion – this is still quite pretty, after all.
I hope this makes sense in relation to the previous shot – for me at least, the shift in focus alters the whole tone of the shot, and the figure in the background becomes a thing that provides atmosphere to the drink, without, I think, just making this shot a photo of a drink.
This may be one of my favourite portraits that I’ve ever taken. I have another shot that I’ll be putting on-line shortly where the foreground cocktail is the thing in focus, which I think works very nearly as well, but is a completely different sort of shot, in as much as I think that with this shot I’ve managed a portrait for once in my life that captures something flattering about the subject. OK, you couldn’t identify them if you didn’t know them, and possibly not even then, but fuck it, you can’t have everything.
I aten’t dead.
OK, this lacks an imaginative title, but I’m quite happy with this shot – I think I’ve made them look almost as good as they taste. They’re eggs, poached in red wine, in a red wine sauce, served on garlic-saturated fried bread, and served with mushrooms and shallots. The nicest starter I’ve had all year.
And I am becoming increasingly convinced that Flickr ought to offer a background colour switching option, because this photo looks much better on a dark background. Damn.