It now comes to light that Ian Tomlinson died from internal bleeding after being assaulted by a police officer, manslaughter charges have been brought. I saw the following picture today, a spoof on the posters that the Met have put up trying to make us paranoid and telling us to effectively spy and inform on our neighbours. There have been several other spoofs, trying to highlight the ridiculousness of these posters, but the following brings a much more sombre warning. I have no idea who to credit for this, but I think it’s very well done.
Despite loving photography I’m actually very bad at taking pictures of people. I think it’s the shyness thing, I don’t like to intrude, so I’ve mainly done landscape and other things apart from a rare option to do portfolio shots for a couple of friends or snapshots at parties. When I picked up my dSLR last year, I made a promise to myself I’d start taking more pictures of people, and have a goal to start a project where I take a portrait of different person every day for a month and make sure some of them are strangers. It’ll force me to approach people and start practicing that.
In the meantime, I’ve been in spain for the past week as I said in my last post. It was a great week and I thoroughly enjoyed being part of the amazing team of people Inspa had put together for the retreat. I learned much and made some great friendships while I was there. When not working or sleeping, I took part in the hikes that were organised and took the camera along to record the places we walked as well as taking some photos of people. At the end of the week there was an ‘It’s a Knockout’ type event for fun and I spent a snap-happy hour photographing everyone there. I’m really pleased with how the shots have come out, and you can see the gallery on my flickr account here
It was good practice in shooting people, and I could relax knowing that no-one minded. In fact everyone was really pleased and asked to see the shots, hence the flickr set. Must try doing more of this.
Peace,
J.
Isn’t falling on me 
I’m up in the hills about an hour outside Seville, at a wonderful retreat called Trasierra. I’m working for in-spa.co.uk as one of their massage therapists in the sunshine. It’s glorious weather here and doing me the power of good.
Just like the guests I’m detoxing, eating fabulous healthy food, going on hikes and doing some exercise. Unlike the guests I’m not lying in the sun relaxing in between all that, I’m working my, unworn, socks off giving rather a lot of deep tissue massages each day. The clients are a mixed bunch, mostly alpha females, all with good jobs and large disposable incomes. Over the last few days they’ve relaxed, refreshed and it’s been great fun getting to know them all.
The rest of the team are all first class, we were introduced to the guests as the very best of our kind in the business, which felt great. Apparently I’ve had nothing but good feedback from everyone and to be able to stand together in this sort of crowd of personal trainers, nutritionists, therapists etc is a quiet vindication of the years I’ve been working at this. I feel very humble here, but at the same time really quite proud.
I’ve managed to catch up on some sleep when not working and I’m looking forward to the long hike we’reall doing together tomorrow. A few more days then it’s back to the reality of London, but only for a few days then I head off to Glastonbury for a week helping friends build an art project in the green fields. I have another week out here in July and I’ve been asked if I’m available in August if they need someone for then. I said yes.
So much happening, it feels a bit strange after the last few months of treading water. Be interesting to see where it all leads over the next few months.
T’ra.