Bus Journeys and Critiques

Phew. I haven't posted in a while due to concentrating on an assignment for college which I just gave the presentation for today. It was on documentary photography where I researched people like Sabastaio Salgado and Simon Norfolk before heading to a restaurant to do a photo shoot on the chefs. It went well, I must say. The workers themselves liked the printed photographs, as did my class and tutors. I think it makes it all worth it when you make people happy with your work, especially for me. The fact that I could bring a smile to someone's face by simply taking a photograph of them makes the work so much sweeter. It's the reason I wanted to get into photography. It's a passion, I want people to both question my work but for it also to make them feel something inside. Whether it be happiness or anger doesn't matter to me. I will photograph both controversial things as well as pleasing images, as a photographer, my goal is emotion.

A link to my flickr where the photographs can be found:


Overall, quite a placing result I should think. Well, I'm happy with the results. It's now a case of waiting for the project to be officially marked to discover how well I did. Whilst I'm also on the topic of my class, I'd like to think that their is either something amusing about me, whether it be appearance or personality, I don't know. Maybe I'm being self-conscious about myself but I'm pretty sure when you continuously see people muttering to each other, throwing looks your way and then cackling like the wicked witch of the west, something is up. Now, I can't say for certain that they were even laughing at me, or something else entirely, but none of them cold meet my eyes for very long, so, hmmm.

It's another thing too, the fact that I've found very few people are willing to hold my gaze. I have been told that I have quite an unsettling look to my eyes before, and people find it hard to look into my eyes without feeling uncomfortable. What can I say? I naturally have a hard, cold stare, I'm not that kind of person though. I try to soften my eyes as much as I can, and smile a lot if I look at people, but still, I mean come on. You know me well enough by now to see past my look, so why does everyone seem so shy? It's not as if I'm very daunting, a day hasn't gone where I haven't cracked a joke in the class, so I'm known to be very open and friendly. I suppose it doesn't actually bother me that much, it's to do with them rather then me (I hope) so, I'm probably making a big deal out of nothing. But, I don't know. I like to know what and why things are going on around me, this is a mystery and I hate being kept in the dark. I'm nosy, what can I say. Besides, I like to call myself perceptive.



The bus. I've been getting the bus for years. To and from collge, work, high school,shopping, out and about. Anywhere I go usually hop on a bus. So, big, crowded buses usually don't bother me. What bothers me is the imbeciles on them. I don't understand what partof the human mind would want to make you be a right d--k to the bus driver. He's the bus driver for goodness sake, if you insult him, then he's going to throw you off the bus, or refuse to move until you leave. So, this afternoon, on a rather crowded bus, someone thought it would be amusing to start vandalising the windows on the upper deck. Needless to say, the bus driver had a go at him, and from what can guess (I was downstairs) the kid must have cursed and sworn at the poor driver, and carried on being a -insert swearing-.

Of course, the bus driver just shrugged this off and told the kid to get off, when the mouthy sod refused, the bus driver simply sat in his cabin for 20 minutes refusing to move. I found it quite funny when the kid eventually got man-handled and thrown off the bus by two, rather large, college students, although the while screaming and kicking like a small child. But still, I think it was unfair how the rest of us had to be late, and sit around because of one person. Not that I'm blaming the driver of course, I would of done the same thing as he did. But I seriously begin to lose faith in the future of humanity after watching kids like him. Sigh.

No sleep...

Have you ever had it, where you've been laying in bed with your eyes closed and it's taken you ages to get to sleep? It's okay though because you nod off eventually, right? Well I didn't. I laid in bed for four hours trying to get to sleep and nothing happened.

I have no idea what was wrong with me, I tried everything but I just couldn't fall asleep. I counted sheep, read a boring book, even tried to just will myself into an unconscious state by laying prone for an hour. Nothing.

Eventually I managed to fall asleep, probably out of exhaustion but by that time I had to get up in an hour and go to college. It hurt guys. It hurt. I was running on auto all day.

Zzzz.

I hate having to work when you're ill and have college the next morning. Eugh.

No post tonight, bath and bed.

Writing - 2

The front of the black cacoon exploded outdated without any warning, cannoning into the cliffside with enough force to make the ground shake slightly. The golden man briefly glanced over his shoulder to watch as another figure stepped out of the crystal, before turning back to watch the sea as of it held a great many secrets. The figure who emerged out of the darker crystal was also male, tall and well built like his companion, but with a lighter complexion. He wasn't pale, but he wasn't far off. He had dark hair which fell into his eyes, and matching dark blue eyes. He stepped out of the remains of his shell and walked over to stand beside his companion, not bothering to throw a glance his way. As they stood in silence, watching the tide, comparisons and contrasts between the figures where obvious. They were both tall and well built, each with a strong, athletic figure. Each held themselves with a measure of confidence, something you wouldn't expect too see from two individuals who had just crash landed from space. And both were unmistakably young and beautiful. 

"Are you ready?" the dark haired one asked without turning, his eyes scanning the horizon without a hint of emotion, their cold gaze almost daring the world to offend him. The lighter one nodded and turned, gazing back at their wreckage with softer eyes, a slight frown playing on his features. 
"You take care of the mess we've left behind, I'll go and find us some shelter." he turned to make sure that he was understood before taking off, a pair of white feathered wings spraying out behind him from nowhere. With two powerful beats of his wings, he quickly took off from the ground, soaring into the sky in a way only angels can.  

The dark haired one watched him for a few moments, feeling the familiar twitch of his own wings, hidden by a incantation which shifted them into an ethereal form, invisible to all of those not blessed by The Sight. If you looked extremely closely, you could see a constant shimmer of the air, similar to that on a hot day of where the two forms, ethereal and physical met. Once he had dissapeared from sight, the angel turned and raised his hand, palm outwards towards the wreckage of their landing site. A rune flamed up on his palm, two overlapping circles with a straight line through them, and a sudden pulse of light shot out of it, engulfing the vale in a pale, white light. It pulsed again, and again, repeating every few seconds. A gradual change took place where the land and the area around where they crashed began healing itself, taking on the form of which it had before they came here. Their crystal cacoons turned to ash and began floating away in the wind. The earth gave a gentle sigh as it's wounds were healed, the trees blossoming into colour unlike they had ever done in their lifetime. Flowers bloomed and lush green grass sprayed up from the dirt, the pale sand glowed and everything just seemed so much healthier. Eventually, the pulsating stopped and he lowered his hands, looking around at his handiwork and nodding with approval as the last of the light faded. After a quick check to make sure the remains of the crystals had faded, the dark haired stranger stretched his black wings and took off into the distance.


Chapter One.
12 years later...


Cassandra Redfield stared out of the car window in a day dream, something she had become known for during her high school years. She watched silently as cars rushed past in a blur of colours, the clouds drifting lazily across the sky. A bad 90's pop song droned on in the background and Cassandra was faintly aware of her mother singing along to it, occasionally glancing her daughters way to make sure that she was okay. 12 years had passed since the day she had watched the two stars rush across the sky from her bedroom windows, unaware of the importance that they held for her. All her life she had lived in ignorance, living a life of a common girl. Going to school, making friends, being good for her mother, staying out of trouble and living a happy life. Now, at the age of eighteen, she had been invited to stay and study at an exclusive academy. A memory flicked in the back of her mind of the time when she received the invitation in the post.

Writing - 1

This is just something I may take some time writing in my spare time, not looking for any critique or anything but if you want to read then go for it. It's a work in progress.

 Prologue.

The night sky was dark. Darker then it had ever been, a plain devoid of light, no stars, no moon and no sun. A vast blackness that stretched on forever with no end, no beginning.  A young girl sat by her window, a soft chair underneath her and a small bear in her lap. Her soft brown eyes wide as she gazed up at the emptiness and dreamt of a world bigger then she. She didn't hear her mother as she crept up the stairs, quietly pushing open the door and silently watching her child, a soft smile playing on her lips. She took a few steps forward and gently rested her hands on her daughters shoulders, her smile widening as he daughter looked up, her mouth in a small 'o' shape. 
"Come now Cassandra, bed time. You'll be six tomorrow." her mother murmured. Cassandra nodded, turning back to her window where the blank sky remained dark.
"Okay mum, just five more minutes? Please?" she asked, turning in her seat to give her mother a winning grin. Works like a charm. Her mother sighed, her smile never fading in the company of her daughter. 
"Alright, but then straight to bed. I'll be up to tuck you in, in five minutes." adding emphasis onto  the end of her sentence. Her daughter nodded, grinning impishly as her mother shut the door. She turned back to stare up at the sky, but this time it wasn't quite as dark as it was. No, this time two stars were clearly visible as they raced across the darkness. One, gold and bright. The other, darker and with an almost reddish hue trailing behind it. 
Cassandra gasped and watched them trail across the sky, captivated by their beauty. 
"Wow..." she whispered as they disappeared into the distance.

That night, her dreams were on one thing. The two shooting stars.

Several miles away on the Northumbrian coast, two dome shaped missiles crashed into the ocean with enough force to throw up a ten metre spray of water. It was perhaps fortunate where they landed, for had it been a hundred metres in either direction, the local villages would have seen the oddities crash and have been swarming the area within minutes. Instead, the two UFO's landed between the shelter of a vale, with two cliffs blocking either side of the incident from prying eyes. 

It took only a few minutes for the tide to wash the glowing, crystal like objects onto the beach. One glowed with a golden light, the crystal a pale white and blue. The other, seemed much more... Dark. A black crystal with red veins running throughout it, smoking with a crimson hue. The crystals lay side by side on the sand, each glowing in their own way. A moment or two passed where the night was still, an eerie silence crossed the vale and without the moonlight, the two crystals glowed paranormally. It was sudden then, when the golden crystal began to vibrate, a high, humming note vibrating in the air. The vibration turned into a wobble, the wobble into a shake as the air grew loud with an almost inaudible screech. And just as the shaking object reached it's climax, it shattered. Pieces of the shell flew in all directions, impaling trees and rock a like, shearing through them with ease. A thick plume of steam poured from the remaining carcass, hissing in the same manner as hydraulics, a distant tree collapsing, it's trunk sheared by the largest shard. 

The silhouette of a hand reached up and gripped the edge of what remained of the crystal, pulling with it an arm, shoulder and eventually body. And as the steam eventually cleared, a naked man was left standing in all his glory. He rubbed at his shoulder absentmindedly as he stepped out from the remains of the cacoon which had carried him across space. He was tall, and fairly built, with golden skin which seemed to glow. He had short, mouse brown hair and piercing green eyes which scanned his surroundings, seemingly indifferent to his lack of clothing. He took a few steps forward, turned to kick at the dark cacoon next to him and continued walking, standing on the beach, the waves rolling gently over his feet. The sea was louder now, but in a kind way, almost welcoming. 

The Shapeshifter series

The Shapshifter is a five part series written by author Ali Sparkes. The book revolves around Dax Jones, the worlds only Shapeshifter and one of over a hundred other 12 year olds who have discovered that they too have powers. The powers seem to only group into five sections. Illusionists who can turn invisible, Glamourists who can make you see things which aren't there, Healers who heal wounds and take away pain, Telekenetics who can lift things with their minds and the last group, a mix of people who can read minds, find hidden/lost objects and speak to the dead. These children are called The Children of Limitless Ability, or COLAS for short.

The five books show a gradual change of age, personality and maturity to Dax Jones, as he meets friends, finds enemies and comes close to dying in pretty much every book. Sometimes twice. The books are written for a much younger audience then myself but I still found them quite an entertaining read. The vocabulary and grammar was quite simple but the story was still linear and easy to keep up with and you could truly get engrossed into the story. The fourth book was the only weak one of the series, a little boring as half of it was spent trying to find one of the characters by Dowsing (look it up) continuously.

With Dax being the only Shapeshifter, oh he can change into SPOILER! a fox, falcon and by the end of the last book an otter, he becomes a kind of, must have prize for all of the villains in the story and so he seems to be constantly on the run.

Overall, I very much enjoyed these books, they were very good for the audience they were written for and I know for certain that in a few years, my younger brothers will be reading them too. :)

Photography - 1

Mindless ramble

A mindless ramble I wrote one evening, a few months back.

Sometimes, when the world is at it's worst, you will put your faith into the strangest of things. Sometimes, all a man requires to survive is a belief, a belief in something more then himself, something that is stronger then he is. For all we are, we are more like sheep in a flock then anything we may wish we were.

Perhaps our strongest and greatest fear is ourselves, afraid of who and what we are. What we will become. What our actions we lead us to becoming.

For all the things I am, I can't help but to look into my past and think, "did I do the right thing? Was there something more I could have achieved?" These questions do not have a definitive answer to them, but we can only hope that our pasts reflect us in the right light, and not cast us into the shadows.

It leads us to the idea of karma, and the idea of "if you do good things, good things will happen to you." A nice prospect, sure, but for all the things man has done do they truly deserve the future of judgement and contradiction that awaits them? Probably. But for every ten souls who can't be saved, surely there is an eleventh who can, and is it fair for the actions of others to be reflected onto all? To be judged as a society rather then an individual, to be just a face in a crowd of thieves.

Now I discuss to myself the thought of love and friendship and whether these two overlapping emotions dictate one another. Friendship is usually a bond eternal, a connection we share with one another over long periods of time. Although you can  break a friendship you can never truly sever the bond.
Love is slightly different in the sense that over a lifetime our life for that "special" person can swap and change dramatically. Over a series of years and situations my feelings of both love and love have changed dramatically, I believe I have felt love for another on many an occasion. It is not the feeling however that I question, it is the answer most have for it. Soul mates for instance are something I can not believe in due to being skeptical on the idea that two people are perfect for one another. We are not pieces of a jigsaw which simply need to be put together to create a picture, there is more depth to people and what our idea of love is.

Some believe that love us two people destined to be together, the will of the gods if you want, no matter the odds or the risks they must take. Fate wants them to be together and so they shall.
I am again skeptical. I can believe that we have a path we are destined to follow and that every step we take has been planned since the beginning of our birth. But two paths so closely linked together that our very futures are entwined in a circle? What about those who cross our paths? Do they mean nothing? Are their lives irrelevant to our own until we find true happiness? There are too many things hidden in the world for us to truly understand the will of the universe, but who's to day that we can't try.

Perhaps the true meaning of everything we accomplish is hidden from view until the very end. People have been known to say that their entire lives have flashed before their eyes at deaths door, perhaps it is a explanation for everything we have done, our atonement. It gets me curious on the idea of death and what lies beyond, mainly due to the fact it is something you can only experience as an individual our final moments... I want to know what lies beyond. Whether it is the light of heaven, the flames of hell, or some other mystery matters not. Simply knowing would keep me at peace.

But I suppose we all have things to live for. A final hand, steady on our shoulders guiding us through life like a guardian angel.

Heroes: Season 1

Ooooof it's good. It's fricken amazing actuLly. For those of you who haven't watched/heard of it, it's about 12ish people who have discovered that they have super-power abilities which allow them to do pretty much anything. From flying to bending space and time. But of course it can't all be sunshine and dandelions, there is of course the stereotypical badguy with the all too obvious ability of being able to steal other heroes abilities. Well, actually, it's a little more detailed then that. Sylar, the bad guy, is able to learn how things work simply by looking at it's source. So to learn another heroes powers all he has to do is cut the top of their heads off and look at the brain and bam, he can fly, read minds, walk through walls, etc.

The story gets pretty confusing at parts, especially with the time travelling Japanese man who turns out to be the greatest hero who's future self makes several, casually appearances to lend a hand. There's also Peter Petrelli, who's an empath and essentially the arch rival of Sylar. Both of them can take other people's powers for their own uses, but Peter doesn't have to kill to do it, he merely calls upon the thought of that person and he can use their ability. A true good versus evil duo there.

Season 1 revolves around the theme of, "Save the cheerleader, save the world." the cheerleader is indestructible, and it shows you this various times. By killing her and bringing her back on many occasions, just so you don't forget. Basically, if Sylar gets the cheerleader, he becomes unstoppable.

It's a very, very good program and one I would recommend to anyone!

Phew. STRESS and Christmas.

My god has my life just been full of stress over the last month. I haven't made a post in a while due to several issues which I won't go into too much detail on here but all I'll say is that a friend of mine passed away and another is currently in the hospital after a car crash. He's on the mend now but it was hit and miss for a while and he had us all worried for a long time. But moving on from a depressing topic. CHRISTMAS. What a lovely time of the year, where families truly come together in a season of giving and joy. I found myself giving a lot more then receiving this year, I suppose it's now that I'm finally working, I have begun to fend for myself and rely less on people whilst all the while helping out those who needed it. Hell, I spent over £300 on gifts!

New years eve was a very interesting time. Despite having to work during the day I did manage to go out in the evening to my brothers house party. It was,ill admit, slightly awkward considering I only actually knew two people (my brother and his missus) But his friends soon warmed up to me and I actually had a really good time despite a 7 year age gap. Needless to say by the end of the night I was very merry and a little unsteady on my feet, much to my mothers anger. Ah well.

There were however a few girls my age there, so I wasnt completely alone in my age group. My brothers girlfriends sister happened to be there too with a few of her friends. They found it a little awkard too, so I got to spend most of the night in the company of three beautiful ladies. Needless to say however, nothing happened, we just had a good laugh, talking and drinking and some other stuff that gets a little hazy. Mmmmk, anyway!

The new year is upon us and with it I have to return to college and hand in many assignments I have yet to even start. So. I am calling this post an end. Night.