Crawl
My Amsterdam hyper-wife adventure is yet to be told, but rest assured I do intend to get around to it. I was very close to initiating Wife Hunt IV: Czechmate after seeing some Prague super-wife wife material wife... w... I've lost myself. Well nevermind, the point is that I've been too busy at work to do much of anything of late, so the updates will have to come when things die down a little.
The one thing I have managed to do recently is purchase a new camera. I haven't bought one since the early 00s, and my equipment was looking horribly outdated. I came to the conclusion that my life isn't allowing me to have specific photography trips like it used to, and lugging around some huge SLR camera was no longer practical. These days I tend to have a couple of hours free for photographs in a day that consists of many other tasks and activities. I've therefore reverted to using a compact, albeit a good one. I figured it was better to have something I could just shove in my bag and pull out whenever a good shot presented itself than pass up the opportunity because I couldn't go and sort out my taxes with a camera, lenses, and tripod slung around me.
I've been busy testing out this new camera by terrifying myself beyond all description by lying down underneath the end of a runway and letting planes land directly over my head whilst I photograph them. Oh the joys of living in rubeville. If I tried to do this at Heathrow I'd end up being beaten up all down the street by the over-zealous security crew who would assume I'm a stowaway or a terrorist. At the local aerodrome they probably just thought me a local nut (which is a fair assessment really). An example of such a picture can be found here:
It is surprisingly unnerving. In reality I've probably had buses whoosh by me with far far little distance between us, but seeing a plane up close is an alien experience. Even if I'd been standing up and jumping in the air it wouldn't have hit me (I would say it was about 9 to 12 ft in the air), but I could still feel the hairs on the back of my neck raising. Whenever I saw a plane circling the airport to make an approach I'd run up to beach, lie down, and wait. Then suddenly that dot in the sky would drop and point its nose directly towards me. Before I knew it that dot would be a hulking great big vehicle coming straight for me. Then a quick snap or two before it whooshed straight overhead and came to fierce stop on the tarmac some 20 feet behind me. I was fine until a twin prop came thundering in at low altitude and gave me a fright I won't forget. This incidentally can be seen
I spent the rest of the day taking photos of the beach itself and the glorious sunset that bathed the mountains. Those pictures are for another entry. Days like those, short as they are, make this place incredibly hard to leave, though I must know that they day will come - and sooner rather than later. This is the time of the wife hunt, and of the best-possible-career hunt. Both these hunts seem to call me away. I'm embarrassed now of my attitude at the end of my twenties. Twenty-somethings who imagine thirty-somethings to be boring are showing their supreme inexperience. Already my thirties are more intense than anything my twenties could ever muster.
The one thing I have managed to do recently is purchase a new camera. I haven't bought one since the early 00s, and my equipment was looking horribly outdated. I came to the conclusion that my life isn't allowing me to have specific photography trips like it used to, and lugging around some huge SLR camera was no longer practical. These days I tend to have a couple of hours free for photographs in a day that consists of many other tasks and activities. I've therefore reverted to using a compact, albeit a good one. I figured it was better to have something I could just shove in my bag and pull out whenever a good shot presented itself than pass up the opportunity because I couldn't go and sort out my taxes with a camera, lenses, and tripod slung around me.
I've been busy testing out this new camera by terrifying myself beyond all description by lying down underneath the end of a runway and letting planes land directly over my head whilst I photograph them. Oh the joys of living in rubeville. If I tried to do this at Heathrow I'd end up being beaten up all down the street by the over-zealous security crew who would assume I'm a stowaway or a terrorist. At the local aerodrome they probably just thought me a local nut (which is a fair assessment really). An example of such a picture can be found here:
It is surprisingly unnerving. In reality I've probably had buses whoosh by me with far far little distance between us, but seeing a plane up close is an alien experience. Even if I'd been standing up and jumping in the air it wouldn't have hit me (I would say it was about 9 to 12 ft in the air), but I could still feel the hairs on the back of my neck raising. Whenever I saw a plane circling the airport to make an approach I'd run up to beach, lie down, and wait. Then suddenly that dot in the sky would drop and point its nose directly towards me. Before I knew it that dot would be a hulking great big vehicle coming straight for me. Then a quick snap or two before it whooshed straight overhead and came to fierce stop on the tarmac some 20 feet behind me. I was fine until a twin prop came thundering in at low altitude and gave me a fright I won't forget. This incidentally can be seen
I spent the rest of the day taking photos of the beach itself and the glorious sunset that bathed the mountains. Those pictures are for another entry. Days like those, short as they are, make this place incredibly hard to leave, though I must know that they day will come - and sooner rather than later. This is the time of the wife hunt, and of the best-possible-career hunt. Both these hunts seem to call me away. I'm embarrassed now of my attitude at the end of my twenties. Twenty-somethings who imagine thirty-somethings to be boring are showing their supreme inexperience. Already my thirties are more intense than anything my twenties could ever muster.