So that was 2009; full as ever, although work gave up a little room to other things this year – I found the time to work on my photography, and it’s really developed(1), helped, of course, by a near seven week sabbatical break in September and October which took me to beautiful, strange, tasty Southwest China and Maryland and Virginia in the USA. It feels as if I wrote less than in previous years, both outside of work, where my current novel seemed to seize up, and at work, where a bigger team meant more management and less of a need for me to write. On the plus side, there were a few things I really liked from 2009 in terms of quality. They’re linked after the jump. Now, on to 2010.
Best of, 2009 edition
In Fiction, Non fiction, The Wired Jester, bit-tech on January 1, 2010 at 8:42 pmGarden photography
In Photography on December 12, 2009 at 10:37 amSince I’ve got family nearby, I’ve visited Wakehurst Place in West Sussex a couple of times this year. It’s lovely; it combines an Elizabethan country house with extensive gardens and the Millennium Seedbank, the world’s largest seed conservation project. Earlier in the Autumn, the gardens featured an exhibition of photos from the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition. It runs until February, and it features some terrific work, especially the macros of seeds and flowers. The 2010 competition has come up, and I decided to enter two categories: garden views and plant portraits. You could enter four images in each category, so here’s a selection of the ones I went with:
Plant portraits
Stalk of Fire. An old photo that I rescued from a dusty folder on the hard disk to brighten up a dull winter day. Taken an August ago, in the gardens of one of South East London’s best days out, Eltham Palace.
Rothko and 1984
In Photography, The Wired Jester on July 16, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Camera: iPhone 3G, processed with Camerabag app.
A favourite image of mine, snapped on the iPhone at Tate’s Rothko show. I entered it into a competition run by Penguin to win a big print of the new cover artwork for 1984. To win, you had to enter an image that reflected 1984; I chose this shot because it’s funnier and stranger than a lot of 1984-derived images tend to be, although of course, it doesn’t shy away from the central darkness of the novel – how bleak life is when words cannot be trusted.
