In fact, the rain was so bad, I spent part of the morning watching Dexter. I finished all of season 3 in two days.

My only photo while off the ship in Seydisfjordur, some wooden sculptures.

Guest entertainers get nice cabins with windows, but often those windows look out onto life boats. I only notice the man working on the boat once I’d stripped off my wet trousers.

Reykjavik! A silhouette of the cathedral.

I visited the Blue Lagoon for the first time. I took a bus out from Reykjavik by myself because I couldn’t secure a place on the crew tour.

I didn’t take many photos, but did get some video.

The part of the blue lagoon where swimming isn’t a good idea.

Jon and Stewart.

As I met up with the crew tour at the lagoon, I decided to sneak onto the bus for the journey back to the cruise ship.

Greenland! My first time visiting the biggest island in the world. This is a glacier near the entrance to Prins Christian Sund, a channel between the mainland of Greenland and some small islands. The helicopter flew the length of the channel, to make sure it was clear of ice.

Another glacier. The ship stopped close to this one, and the officers on the bridge sounded the whistle. The blast of sound knocked a huge chunk of ice off the front into the water. It’s good to see a plan come together like that.

Kids on the ship playing their own version of Jenga.

A waterfall.

Looking back along the sound.

A typical Greenlandic village. Population: 160. Main income: seal hunting.

The village scrap heap.

A sailing boat rounding an iceberg.

Qaqortoq from the top of the hill.

The Ocean Princes and the Saga Ruby (a ship I worked on last year) anchored off Qaqortoq.

A helicopter flying past the Ocean Princess.

The same helicopter.

A test shot for a juggling clip. I stood on the edge of this ridge, and tried not to fall off the cliff.

Here is that juggling clip.

A pond on the top of the hill.

The Saga Ruby.

]]> http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/archives/922/feed 1 http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/archives/910 http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/archives/910#comments Mon, 28 Jun 2010 23:58:05 +0000 admin http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/?p=910

I hope you can see the map above. On this new work trip I get to visit quite a few new places. Faroe Islands, Greenland and Newfoundland. I hope I have chance to see and do some interesting things. In Iceland I hope to re-visit that very ashy volcano. Other things I want to achieve:
- Good photos.
- Get some videos of me juggling in amazing places.
- Write a song for June.
- Continue writing my novel.
- Get round to writing blog posts that include the photos I took in Istanbul, Croatia, Montenegro, Venice, St. Tropez, Pisa, Olympia and… um… I think that’s it.
- Record a review of a book I finished TWO WEEKS ago.

I think that’s it.

How did the contest come out, Luke?

The Berlin Fotomarathon? I had a lot of fun, but now my body aches all over. I was cycling for about 14 hours. Not constantly, but when I wasn’t cycling I was laying or crouching or standing or leaning over to take photos. At about 10:30pm I got cramp in my toe, and then later in my calf.

About 400 people took part, and each person enters 24 photos. The judges have a lot to look through! There is an exhibition of all the photos in July, and the top 10 winners are announced then. I won’t be about in July to see the exhibition, but I think they put all the photos on the internet. I didn’t enter to win, but now that it’s over I’m curious to see if I win a prize. I know all my photos were technically very good, and I explored the main theme of “Time Travel Berlin” very well. As for the 24 individual themes for the photos, that you receive as you go along, I got really lucky with some, and completely copped out on others.

I started with zero inspiration, and nothing prepared. All I knew was that I wanted to do something different with my photography during the Fotomarathon, and not just go with my normal style. You’ve seen my photography… I just take photos of things I see. It’s not often I have a theme or a plan. I mean, I knew I wanted to take photos of swans the other day, but my favourite photo from that trip was the dog in front of the hospital, and that was the one photo I took that I didn’t plan!

So, the theme of the first photo was “Witnesses”, and it also had to include the paper with your number, so your photos can be identified from the first one. I was thinking “Maybe a security camera…” The next theme was “No man’s land” and I thought “Maybe the door of the ladies WC…” but knew those ideas were completely uninspired, and said nothing about the overall theme of time travel. Then I rode past a flea market, and spotted these two wooden dwarfs. They had funny eyes, looking off to the side, as though doing something naughty. I took a photo.

The photo looked a bit like this:

Then I thought, “Fuck it, I’m going to buy these right now, and they can be my models for the rest of the day.” I looked at the themes, and worked out a rough story that I could tell with the two dwarfs. It involved one killing the other, then going back in time to correct his mistake. Thankfully the later, unknown themes worked well with this. The last three were “One the edge of time”, “Nightowls” and “Berlin 2020″, so after they make friends again, I knew they would do a final time jump forward to 2010. Of course, I could only plan this after I found out at 9pm.

At some parts in the story the dwarfs had to look at photos of themselves in the past, so I took a photo of the back of my DSLR with my iPhone, zoomed in a bit on the iPhone screen, and showed them looking at that. Here is an image I used when one dwarf was showing the other how he teleported through time and space:

I chatted to some other marathoners along the way, saying “I’ve got to have a dwarf travel through time, and I don’t have a time machine! A phone booth would be good, but they don’t exist any more. Maybe I’ll create some kind of special effect on the spot.” Later on, I remembered the special effect above. You do it in camera. Hold the zoom lens, and make sure the eye is in the middle of the frame. Make sure you have a 1/30 exposure. Hit the shutter and turn the camera, not the lens, at the same time. Result: swirly time travel scene! The photo above isn’t the one I used for the final image, but it was the one that looked best on the the iPhone screen.

The favourite parts of the day, and the story, was when something happened spontaneously, and I made it part of the story. For example, at one point the red dwarf was going to spot the green dwarf across a fountain, after the red dwarf chasing the other through time to meet find him. The theme was “I spy with my little eye.” But a tourist turned the green dwarf round, for her husband to take a photo of her standing next to it in front of the fountain. First I thought “Damn tourist! Can’t you see I’m taking photos here?” Of course she couldn’t, as I was laying on the ground in on the other side of the fountain, trying to get to the same eye-level as the dwarfs. I was waiting for her to finish, when I realised the story would be better this way. Red would see green, but green wouldn’t see red. That way red could follow green for a while (the next theme was “moving”) and they could meet in a more personal way.

Also, on the second to last photo, I dropped one of the dwarfs for the first time. This resulted in a completely different ending to the story than I imagined. Better or worse, I can’t say, but certainly more abrupt than I imagined.

Overall, I had a really good day. I found out new things about photography, and about creativity, and about myself. Who knows, maybe I’ll do more of this kind of photography?

Someone called Jeremy Geddes asked to be my friend on Facebook, and I didn’t recognise his name. I googled and discovered he is an artist, and paints pictures of (among other things) astronauts. He’s also a listener to my Science Fiction Book Review Podcast, which is how he knew me. I decided I liked his work so much, that I’d buy a print.

It arrived while I was away on my last work trip, but now I’m home I’ve hung it on my wall. It won’t be here long term, but it’s not going in the dining room until I’ve decorated.

Breakfast.

Daniel’s Geek Juggling Table.

Neta and Noam preparing for the fashion show.

Frix and Katrin, two of three fashion show organisers.

DJ.

Katrin.

Preparing the bubbly.

DJ and JJ.

Paparazzi.

Ana sorting the music.

Karo and Gonzalo.

Jacob looks Sharpe.

V.I.P.

Press.

JJ and DJ.

Milan.

Anja and Joerg.

DJ.

Neta and Noam.

Jacob.

Guillaume.

Milan and Alan.

Karo and Gonzalo..

Karo and Gonzalo.

Umbrellas.

JJ.

Hannah and the press.

Stefan and Guillaume.

Stefan and Guillaume.

Stefan and Guillaume.

Karo and Neta.

Karo and Neta.

Stefan and Guillaume.

View from the sound desk.

Frix and Ana.

Frix, Katrin, Ana.

Davidone.

Flo and Jochen pose for a combat photo.

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Volleyclub

Water melon.

Sven tries cigar boxes.

Sport Hocker.

Sport Hocker.
]]> http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/archives/853/feed 0 http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/archives/850 http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/archives/850#comments Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:01:22 +0000 admin http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/?p=850 Someone posted this sheet to a discussion forum I frequent. It’s full of arty types, so this kind of challenge brings out all kinds of fun stuff.

Here’s Adam’s submission:

Here’s mine. I made the joke before anyone else:

Rym wins, with this topical entry:

I had to put earphones in an listen to something else while watching the Germany v Australia game, just to blot out the noise of those damn vuvuzela. The England USA game was bearable, because I watched in a full theater, and we made our own noise. But vuvuzela result in zero atmosphere inside the stadium, as portrayed on TV, and means I’m probably not going to watch another game unless I can turn the sound off.

Also, here’s a vuvuzela’s take on the world cup.

A Gibbon (I think).

Ring tailed lemurs. This photo is a collaboration between myself and my father. He stood behind me, doing increasingly big and stupid movements to get them all to look our way at the same time.

Love is in the air!

I could watch the baby monkeys playing all day! Here they’d (accidentally) set up a seesaw balance type thing. A monkey each end, pivoting over a log. The monkey on top is here pushing the stick off the log.

My parents looking into the manatee tank.

Manatees like lettuce.

We reached the elephant enclosure in time to see their daily wash and foot check. Compared to actually washing elephants in a river, in India, it really didn’t compare.

Open wide…

Elephants love apples.

Lazy leopard.

Sunbathing vulture.

Prairie dogs.

A visitor’s dog watching the prairie dogs.

Tiger portrait.

Two bears, two Burrages. I made my parents pose for this photo, as when I saw the bears in the distance I thought a shot like this would look good. I should get people to pose for natural shots more often.

My dad with a pelican.

]]> http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/archives/846/feed 0 http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/archives/836 http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/archives/836#comments Thu, 27 May 2010 18:22:59 +0000 admin http://www.lukeburrage.com/blog/?p=836

I want to hang some of my photos on the walls of my dining room. There’s space for four large prints, plus two or three smaller prints. My problem is that I take loads of photos, and picking six or seven to hang on the wall is really hard.

A few months ago I decided to print out the full set of my “Best of 2009″ photos, to see which images look good on paper rather than on screen. An LCD is illuminated from behind, so the pictures have a completely different quality. Dark images with small amounts of colour really pop out. When printed I discovered these ones don’t look great. Alternatively, some photos which look just okay on screen look much better when printed.

So as not to waste all the photos I’d printed, I mounted them all in the frames I’d bought for the final large prints. I liked the look, so I’ve printed out another two sets of photos after other trips this year, and today I mixed them up for a total of four photo collages.

I’m planning to decorate this room in a few months. Hopefully by then I’ll have decided which of the 150 photos I want to embiggen. If you’ve particularly liked any of the photos I’ve shared on my blog, and think it would look good on my wall, leave a comment or send an email to luke@juggler.net.

I unapologetically used my parent’s visit to do things in Berlin that I wanted to do, but hadn’t yet got round to. That was for general touristy things, but for dining I unapologetically used them to visit establishments that I’ve been to many times before, to eat food I know they’d like.

So, this blog post is a guide to good eating in Berlin.

Tuesday (the first night) I took my parents to Hotdog World. This is on Bergman Strasse. It doesn’t sound or look like much, but it serves all-organic hotdogs and burgers to die for. I’ve eaten cheeseburgers the world over, and none beat Hotdog World.

On Tuesday (the last night my parents spent in Berlin) I left it up to them to find a place to eat. They decided to return to Hotdog World. I don’t blame them.

Wednesday (the second day) we were in Mitte, in roughly the right area, so I proposed Papa Panne Pizza on Acker Strasse. This place was a favorite of Pola and I, but due to it being far from home, and me being single now, I’ve not visited it for over a year. The pizzas are uniformly amazing, so deciding what to eat is always a long, agonizing process. We ordered two pizzas plus a tomato and garlic bread, and shared them around.

You normally need to call to book a table at Papa Panne, being a very popular pizza restaurant, but we turned up at about 5pm, way before it got busy. It felt strange being there with only two or three other table occupied.

On Thursday we cooked and ate at home. On Friday I ate at the Another Country bookshop, as I do every Friday night. My parents bought food from some stalls at the Karnaval Der Kulturen.

On Saturday we returned to the Karnival for more food. Here we are waiting for barbecued steak. Being a carnival celebrating other cultures, the selection ran to far more interesting items than sausage and steak. Kathy and Cliff told me about fish stalls, Indian food, dough balls, rice dishes, and much more.

I ate crepes with bananas and Nutella. Twice. Once in the rain, once not.

On Sunday, while I had other plans, I sent my parents to a Thai restaurant on Bergman Strasse. I can’t remember the exact name, but I think it’s something simple like “Thai Kitchen”. You order at the counter, and they deliver your food to your table. If you sit in the right place you can see them make your dinner from scratch.

On Monday we ate the Berlin favorite: Doner Kebab! But not just any kebab, the increasingly popular Mustafa’s Chicken and Roast Vegetable Doner Kebab!

Mustafa’s is a kiosk on Mehringdamm, my home street. The first times I walked past it (it’s right next to the Ubahn) I didn’t give it a second glance. Then someone told me it served the best chicken kebab in Berlin. The rest is unhealthy history.

Now the secret is out, and the queue is always stupidly long. I often feel like eating there, but waiting for so long outweighs the tasty benefits.

The people behind us in the queue had taken the train from Steglitz to eat Mustafa’s kebab. Yeah, it’s quite popular. The queue almost reaches back to Curry 36, a stupidly popular currywurst eatery, also on Mehringdamm, currywurst being the other classic Berlin fast food alongside donna kebabs.

Nom nom nom.

That’s it! I have other favorite food places in Berlin, but this covers the basics. Pizza alternatives: sliced pizza from Dolce Pizza, sliced pizza from Ron Telesky, great pizza and bad service at Il Casolare, good pizza with pizza-base-spinning shows close to home at Pizza Parliamento.

Last night I decided to sort through and count up all the foreign currency I have at home. I travel a lot with work, and visit a lot of countries. Often the local businesses will accept dollars or euros, and sometimes pounds. Other times I’ll just use my various cards. But sometimes I’m going to spend a few days in the country, and might go on various adventures. The last thing I want to do is be stuck somewhere without enough money to do something spontaneous. More importantly, I never want to be stuck without enough money to hire a cab back to the cruise ship in an emergency.

So I often change too much money, or get too much money out of an ATM. And just as often, when returning to a country, I forget that I have that currency at home, so change more the next time I am there. Do this for three years and one collects quite a lot of cash one can’t spend at home.

I guessed I had about €700 of foreign monies. I counted it up last night, and spreadsheeted it this afternoon, and it turns out I have €891.87 in 29 different currencies, plus four kinds of coin and one note I can’t identify. I think some of it is Russian, but others have even less recognizable alphabets.

In case you are wondering, 5.10 in Slovenian money equals €0.02, 210 in Tanzanian money equals €0.12, and 160 in Icelandic money equals €1. Some of biggest chunks of money are, handily, in more useful currencies. US dollars (€117.73), UK pounds (€78.98) and New Turkish Liras (€115.58) I’ll be able to use no problem, as I plan to visit all those places by the end of the year. Israeli Shekels (€47.69) won’t be that handy though.

And I’d like to admit I’ve unknowingly broken the law in India by taking too much money out of the country (€69.37).

The single largest currency is Norwegian, after getting enough out of the bank to pay for various trips for two people at Nordkap and Svalbard last year, only to have the person I was traveling with to cover all the costs with his credit card (€366.76). I think I’ll just change that back into euros.

So, it seems I have more money than I thought. This is good, because I just spent a lot of money on my new laptop. Thankfully, now that I have my new laptop, I can’t think of a single thing I’d like to own that I don’t already own, so this money is going into the savings.

Or maybe an iPad.