Posts Tagged ‘paranormal’
Rated ‘Triple S’: A Stroll on the Strange Side
Lara Zankoul & Naeema Zarif (Photo credit: CC Beirut)
We get the week underway with our weekly Stroll on the Strange Side with this ‘Triple S’ post, beginning with the . . .
Spooky!
Yesterday, ‘confirmation’ of ghostly activity was reported in a tavern in New Jersey. The connection to this blog is that you can view it! Click the link to read about and see an ‘orb’ bounce around and run down a hallway. Make that two – you can see two different videos of orbs on the move.
The writer of the article, Kelly Roncace, is a professional ghostbuster of sorts (“paranormal investigator,” to be politically correct) and she says: “a certain traveling, flashing ball of light that was captured may be the real thing. . . definitely an energy orb.”
We’ll take that with a pinch of something else beginning with ‘S’ . . .
Surreal
Lara Zankoul ain’t no ghostbuster; however, she must be a devotee of Dali and Magritte, for she’s that rarity among photographers: a Surrealist.
Lebanese newspaper Al-Shorfa ran an interview with the winsome Miss Zankoul but, unfortunately, they do not do her talents justice: only one photograph adorns the interview.
Not a problem: Zankoul has a portfolio online and it’s a Surrealist sensation.
She has a whole section on ‘Tea cups’, a bigger and better one called ‘Expressions’, and a few images of levitating persons and one of a very unfortunate girl who woke up in the wrong place.
Amazingly, Zankoul does all this as a hobby – and, man, that’s just surreal!
Shadowy
Transitioning from colourbursts to shades of grey – make that shades of black, shadow black:–
Photographer Romain Laurent says that his “series is about the ‘surreal impression’ he felt while walking around on pitch black streets for hours over several nights,” in A Study of Shadows in Manhattan During the Blackout.
This third element of our weekly ‘triptych’ of a kind unites the first two elements: not only are Laurent’s photographs about ‘surreal impression’, they are downright spooky, showing the ghostly side of what appears to be a modern-day ghost town.
A couple of the photographs here, such as this one, are genuinely top-class, evocative, well-balanced images in their own right and that should not be overlooked as a consequence of their novelty appeal or because they are part of a themed set.
Enjoy our ‘Triple S’ Post!
Offbeat Day: The Silly, the Spooky, and the Sad
Silly
Bad photographs are making a comeback because . . . well, because apparently they’re cool! The fashion world strikes again. I know it sounds silly but it’s true.
The photography techniques and ideals of the day are now “blurry shots, shadows, overexposure” according to Anne-Marie Conway, who seems (at least a little) enraptured by this retrograde development. Known as ‘Lomography’, boiled down to its essentials this Art & Science centres around deliberate use of el cheapo cameras to simply point and click, and then see what happens.
The boxes of choice for the hip and cool (and silly) crowd are Diana+, Holga and Lomo LC-A (which are said to represent a serious threat to Nikon, Canon and Olympus’s long-term viability). Evidently these are ultra-complicated rigs, for Create Studios offers a half-day Holga and Diana Workshop, according to Conway. No doubt it will be expensive but I am sure it will be well worth the stiff price so I am booking a place . . .
Spooky
Talk about this lomography business’s “burry shots” and “shadows,” Julie Griffin’s blurry shots of shadows from the spirit world represent a much more honest endeavour than the lomography fraud, er, I mean fad.
Cathy Torrisi writes about Griffin’s childhood in a purported haunted house in which para-normal activity was . . . normal. Swaying chandeliers and swinging doors aroused a desire in Griffin to photograph the spooks and she set about her task with whole-hearted dedication.
Spooky Goffe House is said to be one of the more in-demand retreats for sophisticated ghosties and Griffin tried to hunt down a few with notable success: “Last week, she set up her camera with a motion detector inside the Goffe House when no one was there, and it did go off,” reports Torrisi. The results of Griffin’s ghost-hunting exploits are at http://www.ghostlyphotographs.com/. Definitely worth a look-see.
Sad
We move from hunting ghosts to hunting elephants, and from the ghosts of humans to the ghosts of elephants – slaughtered, mass-murdered elephants.
Ivory, though illegal under CITES, is big business. NatGeo’s sad story, Blood Ivory – Ivory Worship, exposes the Elephant Killing Fields and reveals that the outlawed ‘Blood Ivory’ trade runs into the unknown ‘multi-tons’ and spans the Middle East and Far East.
Here’s the photography connection: attached to the article is a photo album by Brent Stirton. It captures some low points in the transit route of illegal ivory, including a nice pic of the ‘Elephant Monk’ outside his temple.
The killers will surely stop someday . . . that sad day when all the tuskers are gone.
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