In which our hero, realising he forgot to start the last entry with that phrase returns to form and continues with a tale of suspicious hashtags, monstrously missed deadlines, badly realised ideas, horticulture and possibly the odd bit of photography. Please be aware that the following missive contains the word ‘juices’.
Inspiration often strikes when you least expect it and, as mentioned previously, usually when you can’t do anything about it. As such jcwoody (you should probably look at his blog, it’s better than mine) and myself in the middle of a bit of Twitter banter came up with the idea of giving creativity a kick up the behind by challenging each other to shoot, write and post a blog entry within a limited time based on a theme to be chosen by the other person.
And lo, the hashtag #30daydeadline was born, though not without a small amount of trepidation that using it would bring us under investigation as part of a social-media aware kidnapping ring. Unless the observation we’re under is incredibly subtle, or they’re waiting for us to issue some kind of ransom demand, I think we’re fine. The theme I was given was ‘Time and/or Clocks’ and immediately the creative juices dried up, ran away and hid in a disused corner of my mind behind some cardboard boxes full of Queen lyrics and childhood memories of a trip to the beach. Eventually though I managed to tempt them out and get the cogs whirring.
Idea No.1
Clocks have hands yeah? And time affects everything yeah? So how about getting some clock hands and put them on seemingly random non-clock things? A few interesting angles? Try and light it to get the shadows going?
Click click click. Bish bash bosh.
27 days left.
Job done.
Boomshanka!
Right then, best get some clock hands. As I’m a man on a (pitifully small) budget I headed to everyone’s favourite: eBay where I hit upon a stumbling block. It turns out clock hands are in demand. Every bid I made was trumped, and trumped royally by people who actually needed them for y’actual clocks and actually needed them so badly they were actually willing to actually pay a decent price for them. Actually.
As such, sadly Idea No:1 had to be set to one side, possibly for future use, more likely just for me to stare blindly at the inky scrawl in my Big Book O’Ideas and wonder what the planet of hell I was blathering on about.
Back to square one.
Idea No.2
Create some kind of social-media aware kidnapping ring.
No.
Idea No.3
Behold the ravages of time!
A slightly depressing idea was to venture down Entropy Alley and capture an image demonstrating the passage of time. Being as once I get an idea I usually get impatient to get it sorted (mainly before it falls out of my head) I needed something that a) shrivelled/decayed quite quickly and b) still looked fairly picturesque once shrivelled/decayed. After all, no-one ever won an award for a photo of some off milk did they? Flowers were an obvious choice, so obvious that I was too lazy to consider anything else. We have a couple of rose plants in the back garden of LG&E Towers and they needed dead-heading anyway so…
Snip snip snip. Bish bash bosh.
As I was sitting there twiddling my thumbs waiting for the blooms to fade it struck me that maybe a few dead flowers was a little too simplistic so thought I’d bulk the idea out by including the ‘clocks’ aspect of the subject given. A quick leap back onto eBay and a winning (huzzah!) bid of 99p on a slightly battered clock face gave me a suitable background. A close focus, bordering on me getting the macro out.
Click click click. Et voila…
So, job done, time for a bath?
Nope, ideas, like buses are large, usually diesel-powered, vehicles used for… wait, I’ll start again.
Nope, ideas, like buses never come on their own.
Bonus Idea
Showing time passing without any movement.
I’ve got a bit of a thing for old coins, I’m not sure why exactly, but it does mean that I have a small stack of pre-decimal pennies in various states of wear from fingers of the past, despite that varying quality they all have their year of minting on them and, as as rule, the older they are the more worn the coin is. In a few minutes a suitably angled stack had been arranged by my fat fingers.
Click cl… ah, you get the idea.
So there we are, a mere [insert fairly large number] days overdue, not one but two photographs on the subject of ‘Time and/or Clocks’. Having spoken to jcwoody in the meantime it’s been decided that when/if (hopefully when) we do this again the subjects will be slightly more specific, the original ones giving a little too much freedom of interpretation.
Onwards and upwards!
Light, Glass & Electricity 