Hard Sun

I had a stressful day at university today so I relaxed by editing pictures. I find the process of editing very calming. The pictures above have been edited in a way I hadn't tried out before. I have quite an obsession with signs and the ones you see here have appeared in other photographs before - refer to my blog post from October 2009. I love everything about those vintage American signs... the colours, the light bulbs, the lettering. The first picture was taken in downtown Kingman, Arizona. The second might have been taken in Needles, California, but I'm not sure.

There's a big

A big hard sun

Beating on the big people

In the big hard world

When she comes to greet me

She is mercy at my feet

I see her inner charm

She just throws it back at me

("Hard Sun", Eddie Vedder)

The lyrics above are excerpts from the song "Hard Sun" by Eddie Vedder; together with the song mentioned in the previous blog post and a number of other original songs plus Michael Brook's instrumental music it's featured on the soundtrack of the movie Into The Wild. This Sean Penn film is one of my all time favourite movies because it's very inspirational. It's one of the reasons why - for the first time - I went on a road trip alone, driving nearly 3200 miles in eleven days. Enjoying the landscape of the American West all on my own was an almost spiritual experience, because the desert can be unbelievably quiet - not only at the dead of night, but also during the day. By the way, the aforementioned Michael Brook invented the Infinite Guitar, which was played by U2's The Edge on their iconic album The Joshua Tree. So much about music for today.

Contrary to British TV, there's not only four channels (BBC, BBC Two, ITV, and Channel 4; we didn't even get Five - unless you pay, of course, then you get a wide selection of everything you might desire) over here in Germany. Basically, this means there's a lot of useless channels, but there's a few channels that show good documentaries almost every day of the week. Yesterday, I saw something on PHOENIX about the caves and caverns on the Yucatán Peninsula that form underground rivers which the ancient Maya got their drinking water from. As in almost any case, Wikipedia has got further information if you're interested. Both my fellow photographer / friend Brooke and myself got plans to go diving there someday. Gosh, there's so many activities and destinations on my to-do list already and I tell you, the task list keeps getting bigger every week!

I hope y'all have a great week!

- Dom