The Astral Pilgrim

I think it is safe to say that today was my first dose of awkward street photography. We decided to visit the local park seeing as the weather was nice and I of course thought photo shoot time! The park just around the corner form my house is nicely nestled in amongst a small wooded area and I thought I would put my new macro lens to work on some potential small wildlife, plus get some nice portraits of the kids and the my wife.

It never dawned on me until we got there – lots more kids, onlooking parents and a dude with a camera walking around…hmm as you can imagine it got awkward pretty quick. My immediate solution was to stick very close to my family making it very clear to onlookers that “I am with these guys!” but as you can imagine this was going to make wandering into the trees for some nature shots damn tricky. After a good 10 minutes of picking my camera up only to put it back down as other peoples kids came anywhere close I decided enough was enough.

From there on in I just kept camera in hand, took shots of everything and anything I wanted on the simple basis that no one else’s child was in frame. If a parent has a problem I knew that I would simply have to be willing to show them the photos I have taken to reassure them that there was nothing to worry about. I guess the lesson I learnt today was that as a photographer you need to be able to be confident in what you are doing around people who may not necessarily like the fact you are there. To be understanding yet at the same time getting the job done.

As a person who was diagnosed as schizophrenic over 12 years ago I have understood myself for along time the role I play within the real world, the world that lies above and beyond the mundane trash existence which is rising up around us. Here is a video which gives a wonderful perception on the role of schizophrenia in the modern society.

It can be safely said that there are many an MP who rely, if not completely depend upon, your ignorance of what they say over the long term. They wholeheartedly do not expect to be held accountable for keeping their promises 3 or 4, even 5 years now, down the line.

Well how about changing that? There is a great resource on-line you can use to check up on just what your MP is saying, standing up for or standing against when he or she is in parliament. I found this website very interesting in that it showed that my previous local MP was certainly not standing up for things I had voted him in for, in fact in many areas he was opposed to them when it was time for him to vote. I won’t be making that mistake again and using this site you don’t need to either. Go check it out and let me know what you think in the comments.

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/