Life on the edge

Over the past few weeks I have met a number of like minded individuals when it comes to 'extra curricular activities' Most of them involve some kind of danger, be it fire breathing, shooting or knife throwing there is always the adrenaline rush of having survived the latest feat.

For as long as I can remember I have always enjoyed the idea (and also usually the practice) of living dangerously. The base instinct to leap before looking (or to look, see that it's unsafe and then leap anyway) has been with me from childhood and I had the joy of sharing that with two older brothers who to put it bluntly would make me seem rather tame at times.

It may surprise you to discover that this tendency has at times put me in rather tricky situations... As a fearless (or simply misguided) young teenager I was suspended from my school for breaking out of my boarding house in the middle of the night (yes I went to boarding school) in order to climb around on the roofs and see if I could make the infamous 'ML1-ML2 gap!' 

Our Modern languages lessons were taught in prefab temporary huts that were situated a few meters apart from one another and it was qudos to you if you could scale to the roof of ML1 and make the jump to ML2. 

This kind of attitude might sound reckless, fool hardy or even outright insane but I think it's important to make a distinction here.

The desire to live life on the edge is not simply to try and do the most dangerous thing that can be found, such a lifestyle would result in death very quickly. For example skydiving without a parachute is 110% more dangerous that skydiving with a parachute but no one in their right mind would do that.

There is indeed a fine line between outright idiocy and a calculated, well rewarded risk. Now this line is of course down to perspective, something that is key in photography. For example from the perspective given in these pictures it might be inferred that we were essentially being a bunch of idiots, however what the pictures don't show you are the two foam fire extinguishers, the fire blanket, the bucket of water, the nurse and the first aider standing by just in case something went wrong (which it didn't).

When things are in perspective the question changes from 'are you sure that's a good idea?' to 'are you sure that you can't do it bigger?' Just to be clear here I am not advocating senseless risk taking, what I am saying is that if the risk has been removed why oh why are we not pushing this life to it's limits?

How do I remove risk? You get in line with Gods will. Never has there been a more reliable safety net, never has their been a stronger rope or fool proof protection than standing squarely in the will of God. Through the ages there have been some people who have understood this, there perspective has been shaped by God and they can see clearly. To the world looking on they look like fools. When Jesus hung on the cross bleeding out he was openly mocked by the people who passed him by because it looked like he had been a fool. He had played with fire and been burned. What he saw however was something quite different. He saw God's perfect and pleasing will and he understood it to the point of going beyond the grave to stand in it. He trusted that his father would be his ultimate safety, even from beyond the grave and the world stood in awe 3 days later when God did the impossible and rose Jesus back to life. Where were the mocking passers by now? Jesus lived a far more radical life than any of us and he is the one who quite rightly gets the glory. 

As Christians this same power that raised Christ from the dead lives in us. This is such a small well known biblical principal but oh the magnitude of it! How quickly we skim over and how much of life we miss. We are called to live on the edge, to go far beyond the boundaries of the pattern of this world, to live dangerously for Christ, knowing that he has got our back. 

NB. The pictures in this post were not taken by me but two friends from college. Thank you Tim and Andy

Title font used: 'FightThis'

Bonfire

If you are a regular here or if you know me then you may be familiar with my affinity with fire. Some of my fondest childhood memories involve bonfires that we would have in the 'wilderness' behind the fence of our back garden with the challenge of making a fire big enough that you could start another fire the following morning with just the hot ashes - I remember once having a fire on our patio, I could not have been older than 10, the fire got so hot that the concrete slabs expanded and then began to crack up, the pressure got so great that the concrete actually exploded - spitting pieces of red hot concrete in any direction.

The dual nature of fire. It has the power to utterly destroy, take life and cause tragedy ~ yet if treated with respect; brings warmth, produces electricity, cooks your food, heats your water, brings community together and is an awesome sight to behold. One of the lectures this week, entitled 'the fear of God' described God in this manner and it is a metaphor I can get behind, I love fire and I love God - simple enough.

Sitting around a camp fire last week with guitars playing and people singing (unfortunately 'kum by aah'  was not in the repertoire but not to worry there is plenty of time for that with many more fires to come)  brought to mind the togetherness that fire compounds in people and this is one of the main reasons that I like fire so much -I have long held that the best conversations are had round an open fire.

 In fact we were singing 'Bambelela' here which, somewhat ironically, I learned in England before going to South Africa despite it being a traditional South African song.

Oh and another thing on fire - it's not bad for photos  ...

Title font used: 'papyrus'

Dragons' Breath

Those of you who follow this little space will be aware that I have an affinity with fire, so what better idea than try breathing it?! I input the camera settings and handed my camera to some French guy who was standing nearby so composition credit to him for the first 2. 

The 3rd I took of my friend Dave

Fire

Yea, I blog about it fairly regularly but only recently have I actually discovered how to take a good photo of fire. You might think how hard can it be? then I say take a picture of fire and see for yourself.

Now take those settings and apply them to a concept like this:

Just as soon as I can arrange another fire blowing session I will have them up. Watch this space.

Evening Antics (backlog) -Edit

 Weirdly this has been a draft since Nov 10 and I never posted it - not sure why?! anyway here it is, there were a lot more pictures from this shoot but they were among the unlucky few that got lost when my laptop was stolen so we will have to stick with the original uploads :(

When my brother Ed Makes a trip down to Bristol from his home in East Grinstead we always make a point of  having some kind of photo-shoot. Besides being brothers our love of photography is not the only thing we have in common, we also share quite the passion for fire, explosions and generally dangerous things. Needless to say, when Ed came down last we took to the centre, bags packed with cameras and and potential energy, in the form of fireworks and steel wool. It didn't take us long to come across and abandoned warehouse ....

 Pre post processing:

Pre Post processing:

The scene was ideal, it was time to introduce some pyrotechnics...

Scenery, edited

While visiting my brother this weekend just passed I had the first opportunity to team up with him and do some photography, specifically in the area of light graffiti. This is something that is far easier when there are more people due to the nature of the activity. In fact most of the photos we took wouldn't be practically possible at all without at least two people given that the camera and the subject were separated by at least 15 meters of water, in the form of a lake. This is something that my brother and I have talked at length about before and have both done separately so when I stayed over for a night we knew there wasn't going to be much sleeping done.

So after our lovely Chinese that finished around 10 we swooped through his place, got the gear ready, donned the hoodies and hit the streets of East Grinstead looking for a suitably remote location.
after a little while we found a place and did a few test runs, just to check out the area we had to work with:

Now confident of the area, we proceeded to paint the open air with our artistic flow:

Having decided that the screech from that last Catherine wheel was far too loud we moved to a new location before disturbing the locals too much ... We also though it best to introduce an extra element to spice up the photos: Water

Despite our previous experience this last firework too let off a very sudden and loud noise, captured quite well by a comment of a passer by which won't be repeated due to profanity but suffice to say it encompassed both fear and toilet humour.

Light Graffiti

This is a very old concept: slow shutter, source of hand-held light and the world is your canvas.

This is a work in progress and is progressing slowly but thats ok cause I have quite a while and it's not like im working to a deadline, or infact working atall - its all leisure :)

so anyway here are some pictures, going from earliest to more recent as they descend:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This last one being the most recent with the youth on a weekend away to Wern Watkin  

Wow, that was alot of photo. hope you enjoyed it, I have a feeling there will be plenty more to follow in this line. 

Oh and I almost forgot! Fire can totally mix well with this type of photography: