No Religion

Avignon, France.

September 2011.

We didn't know no better

And they said it could be worse

Some people thought it was a blessing

Other people think that it's a curse

It's a choice between fact and fiction

And the whole world has gone astray

That's why there's no religion, no religion,

No religion here today

And there's no mystery, and there's nothing hidden

And there's no religion here today

(Van Morrison - No Religion)

Days Like This

"Maman" sculpture by Louise Bourgeois.

Hamburg, Germany.

February 2012.

35mm.

Blog post title taken from a wonderful song by Van Morrison.

Reasons

Show a little faith, there's magic in the night.

(Bruce Springsteen - Thunder Road)

Hamburg, Germany.

April 2012.

300 seconds, F/10, ISO 50.

This is too beautiful to upload in the usual small size.

I'll climb more than a mountain

Swim more than an ocean

I'll build up an island

I'll live for a lifetime

Just give me a reason and I'll come running

When I have reasons, I know the way

I'm pointing my feet in the right direction

Give me a reason

(John Farnham - Reasons)

I worked the whole weekend and I'll be working tomorrow evening as well... so when - finally! - the rain stopped, I packed my camera backpack and tripod and drove to the other side of town... the view is amazing... it's peaceful... I love to watch the waves... 

My friend Oliver, with whom I used to play football in London, spent a year exploring Asia on the back of a motor scooter before returning to the UK. Back home in Twickenham, Oliver must've got bored - anyway, he decided to apply for a work placement with an international company... it was around that time that we spoke about his plans, and of course I tried to convince him to come to Hamburg - successfully, as he let me know a few days ago: He'll be living and working in Hamburg from the end of June until the end of December.

I don't think it's got anything to do with the Beatles, but Hamburg seems to be our favourite destination in Germany. Look at that view in the picture above and you'll know why I love this city... and unlike London, Hamburg's skyline hasn't been ruined by a building like The Shard.

Goodnight, and have a great week!

- Dom

Heart's On Fire

Well, all right, it's hot stuff

It's hard to focus but it's clear enough

The weak run, the lost hide

The strong forever hold the flame inside

(John Farnham - Heart's On Fire)

Excavation site (above) and a cow's hip bone (below).

Lower Saxony, Germany. October 2010.

Within a week, I've been asked if I wanted to take part in excavations somewhere south of Hamburg and in no less a place than Jordan. I declined with thanks. The reason is... I don't plan on quitting my job at the coffee shop. In fact, I've been offered a promotion. I must've made quite an impression on my boss over the last few months. Then again, I'm one of the hardest-working employees, so I deserve it. From May on, I'll be the new number three in the hierarchy. This means I'll put in something between five and ten hours more per week, and this will allow me to save up a lot more money for my big plan for 2013 and 2014, which I'm not going to spill the beans about yet...

Have a nice weekend.

- Dom

The Near Dearly Departed

Through the wiles of nature and the hand of fate

we finish what we started

You take your chances and you leave behind

the near dearly departed

World of wonders on a silver screen

on a starry night in a childhood dream

No use dwelling on what might have been

or otherwise pretending

Claiming as a victim of circumstance

on a wayward trek in a loner's trance

You can't give living a second glance

waiting for the ending

(Rawlins Cross - The Near Dearly Departed)

Church somewhere in Lower Saxony, Germany.

December 2010.
35mm.

A new sculpture of Genghis Khan has been unveiled in London. It was only a few weeks ago that I heard a story that there were roughly 16 million descendants of Genghis Khan living today (click here to read the article). What remains a much discussed topic among archaeologists is the location of his final resting place.

Have a nice day.

- Dom

Rockaway

Abandoned engine shed, Hamburg, Germany.

April 2012.

Click here to view a set of pictures

taken at the same place last October.

Sailing on the sea of space and time to take today

Waves of dancing dreams it seems you're drifting back my way

My heart was like a lonesome drummer beating endlessly

Your love was like a lighthouse beacon in my memory

(Rawlins Cross - Rockaway)

This weekend, I only worked the evening shift on Saturday. I went to Altona with a friend who wanted to buy some equipment at the Calumet store. Altona is my favourite borough of Hamburg - there are lots of shops and restaurants, among them the African restaurant Tropical Point, which I've recommended before. My friend Michal recently convinced me to give the "StadtRAD" a try. The StadtRAD isn't the coolest-looking bicycle that I could imagine, but it's a great innovation nevertheless. There are hire stations throughout the entire city and the first half hour is without charge. If you're planning to visit Hamburg, I'd recommend to sign up online. I haven't replaced the road bike that got stolen last spring, so I enjoyed our ride from Altona to Wandsbek - we rode past street art, saw several Volkswagen T3 Syncro vans in awesome condition, and last but not least, enjoyed the view across the Alster Lake. Later that night we celebrated a friend's birthday at a pool hall. I played regularly in England, so I owned the other guys. I didn't have a hangover this morning and there wasn't anything to do, which is why I drove down to Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg to the abandoned engine shed (Google Maps: "53.511781,10.005753"). It's a favourite among urban explorers in Hamburg.

Blog Update

Good evening!

This is just an update - I've got no new pictures or stories to share with you, thanks to bad weather and lots of work. 

I spent the last hour labelling nearly all of my previous blog posts. I tried to keep the labels simple, so at the moment, there are only eight different labels you can choose from:

Archaeology, Berlin, England, France, Germany*, Hamburg, Netherlands, USA.
(*Germany = any place but Berlin and Hamburg)

I hope that this will increase the accessibility to my blog - especially if you're searching for photographs of a certain place or topic.

You'll find the "LABELS"-section below the "ARCHIVE"-section in the right-hand column.

Goodnight.

- Dom

A Million Miles Away

The Elbe, Hamburg, Germany.

April 2012.

Oh, witness river

You have seen it all

Now do your waters

Have room for one more?

Oh, endless river

As you transcend

Please take me with you

Far from this land

(Lissie - Oh Mississippi)

I'm standing on the landing

There's no one there but me

That's where you'll find me

Looking out on the deep blue sea

I'm a million miles away

A million miles away

I'm sailing like a driftwood on a windy bay

On a windy bay

(Rory Gallagher - A Million Miles Away)

I worked from Saturday to Monday, and today I'm attending two lectures at university. I've got three more shifts coming up this week (Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday), so I don't have a whole lot of time off to do other things... that's why I decided to go down to the river last night and take some long exposures. Once again, you can see that surreal orange/yellowish glow in the sky above the Port of Hamburg, which is the 11th-largest worldwide thanks to a size of 28.6 square miles.

I love the sea, and I love rivers. Some of the most beautiful, inspirational, sad songs and stories are about people whose lives are shaped by the sea. Herman Melville wrote in his timeless masterpiece, Moby-Dick, that "there is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath"... 


Check out these amazing photographs by Ian Ruhter, and a video about how he makes them.

Have a nice day.

- Dom

One Step Up

Boat shed, Zarrentin, Germany.

April 2011.

35mm.

Woke up this morning, my house was cold

Checked the furnace, she wasn't burnin'

Went out and hopped in my old Ford

Hit the engine but she ain't turnin'

We've given each other some hard lessons lately

But we ain't learnin'

We're the same sad story, that's a fact

One step up and two steps back

There's a girl across the bar

I get the message she's sendin'

She ain't lookin' to get married

And me, well honey, I'm pretendin'

Last night I dreamed I held you in my arms

The music was never-ending

We danced as the evening sky faded to black

One step up and two steps back

(Bruce Springsteen - One Step Up)

This is just a quick post before I'm off to work. It's been raining this morning and the air smells fresh. I'll post more 35mm photographs soon - I've got two rolls of film waiting to get developed.

Have a great weekend.

- Dom

Rosalita

Now I know your mama she don't like me

'cause I play in a rock and roll band

(Bruce Springsteen - Rosalita)

Band photo session.

Hamburg, Germany.

Autumn 2011.

From top to bottom: Lukasz was born in Poland but has been living in Hamburg for a long time, where he's buying and selling old cars. Erik is from Nebraska; he's also a member of the local philharmonic orchestra, where he plays the upright bass. Jesper, who rode all the way up to Denmark on a Schwalbe, and Matthias are both from Hamburg. These four guys were in a band which broke up when Jesper decided to devote his time to his solo project and when their female lead singer, who's not pictured here, moved to South Africa.

Click here to watch an amazing video, which is part of the so-called Project Yosemite. 

I'd also like to recommend once again my favourite travel and photography blog, "A Restless Transplant". I love the 35mm photographs and the anecdotes. The blog is authored by a dude called Foster Huntington; he bought a Volkswagen Syncro and left his job in New York City to drive around the country.

Have a nice evening.

- Dom

Electrical Storm

The sea it swells like a sore head

And the night it is aching

Two lovers lie with no sheets on their bed

And the day it is breaking

On rainy days, we'd go swimming out

On rainy days, swimming in the sound

On rainy days, we'd go swimming out

Let's see colours that have never been seen

Let's go places no one else has been

(U2 - Electrical Storm)

The Netherlands. 

September 2009.

The new semester has begun, and I'm still working 20 hours a week, which - along with the fact that I still need to write four essays - means that I'll be very busy for the next few weeks. I doubt that I'll have enough time to take long exposures. It's been raining and snowing for the last few days, so I don't even want to go out and take pictures anyway. 

I might post a few more pictures from my archives, and I might as well publish a post about cocktails. Of course, I won't be talking about the well-known ones (e.g. my all-time favourite highball Cuba Libre), but I will be talking about some cocktails that you may not have heard about before.

I've been mixing cocktails for friends and myself for years, but before I started working as a barista, I never thought about doing it for a living... In the past, I haven't always been the most efficient worker... Working at the coffee shop, however, has made me realise how fast I'm able to work... I wouldn't have thought that I'm able to make a Latte Macchiato, two Cappuccini, and a Vanilla Latte, all within a minute.

I spend too much money on nightlife and I like sleeping long, so I might as well work at night.

Last but not least, I noticed that I haven't posted about architecture and interior design for a few months. I've been interested in renovating houses and interior design ever since I first watched a programme on British television - I don't remember what it was called, the only thing I do remember is that one of the presenters was called Dominic, too. Our neighbour in Richmond used to be an estate agent and the fact that he was able to afford such a huge house made quite an impression on me as well. Anyway, there's this blog called Design To Inspire which has been a huge source of inspiration, and I might share some of the posts on that blog.

I've got Friday off so that's when I'll check out your blog posts.

Have a nice week!

- Dom

Achtung Baby

Eastside Gallery, Berlin, Germany.

March 2012.

Good morning! I'm back from Berlin, and the pictures above are pretty much the only ones worth posting on here - the weather was miserable and I'm sure we had less than five hours of sunshine. I'll be back in Berlin at the end of May and I hope the weather will be better.

Even though there weren't many photo opportunities, I did enjoy my trip. Some of the places we visited were the new museum Topografie des Terrors, Checkpoint Charlie, and Buchstabenmuseum. 

Max, my friend from work, and I stayed at the place of my friend from London, Sergio, who's been living in Berlin since 2008, and I also met his ex-girlfriend Clara, who's a lovely young lady, for cocktails, and my other friend from London, Sebastian, showed us some places we hadn't heard of yet - awesome coffee shops, a vintage book store owned by an English transvestite, a comic book store, a place selling awesome postcards, and the most famous kebab shop in all of Berlin, Mustafa's. 

Sebastian is German; his father has worked abroad for the foreign office, which is why Seb was born in South Africa, grew up in Israel and Abu Dhabi, and moved to London when he was in his early teens. We went to school together, and after we graduated, he decided to move to Berlin. 

Both Seb and Serge have worked abroad last year, but now they're back and we had an awesome time together. There's so much going on and the rents are much cheaper than in Hamburg. I've been working really hard these past couple months and I don't like how much I'm spending on rent for a small flat. I'm contemplating a move to Berlin - not now, but at some point in the future.

Blog post title taken from the album by U2. The photographic style (the blue hues) of the photos above are a bit of an homage to Anton Corbijn's lomographic pictures.

Have a nice day.

- Dom