It seems I feel compelled to write these posts just after watching Skins. This weeks episode was truly crazy and beautiful and powerful and moving all at the same time. There are so many perfect shots, especially the shots of Effy and Freddie in Effy's room, backlit by the morning sun. I wish I could take shots that beautiful, but I don't know if I will ever be able to. I want to talk about this episode, just rabble and ramble and be a crazy person but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who's not watched it yet. It made me cry, which is a first for Skins I think. There's just something about someone sobbing in that way that just brings the tears out of me. Maybe I will never take my perfect photo. Maybe I will be forever consigned to taking mediocre photos. This would be a shame really as I'd probably end up killing myself not too long down the line if I never take a photo I'm happy with. Lovely thought that, but not really that scary.

People seem to think I'm quite a depressing person when it turns out that I've thought about death quite a lot. Not my own death; that would be a little morbid, even for me; no just death in general. I don't think about death in that pathetic emo way, "Like Omfg Life Is So Harsh On Me I Just Can't Go On Living Its Just 2 Hard!!!!111!!!1", sort of like, you need to accept that death is coming for you, and will get you. The harder you run the faster he comes your way. Don't give me any of that "living every day like it's my last!!" bullcrap because you're not, all you're doing is using that as an excuse to go out and get hammered every Saturday night and get laid. Living every day like it's your last is looking at the sunset and reminding yourself once again how beautiful it is, looking at that grey sky and thinking if it were just underexposed by a few stops it would look wonderful and crazy and thundery, living like there's no tomorrow is accepting the future and forgiving the past and loving yourself and those around you with no regrets. I can't say I act upon my preachings because for me the past is always there, and I can never forgive myself for my wrong doings, and loving myself isn't something I've done for a very long time, but I love those around me that much more so I like to think that makes up for it.

Dying isn't something to run from, it's something to walk towards. You know when you go on a great adventure, and when you start it you wish it would never end? And it seems like it's over all too soon, but when you get in your front door and you drop your bags on the floor and you flop into your divot on the sofa that your ass made because you sit in exactly the same place every night, you're glad to be home at last. Life is like that. When you're young you wish it would never end and you could live for ever but by the time you get to the end you're glad to be home and death doesn't seem like such a big deal any more. People who commit suicide are like people who get homesick and go home early and people who get hit by cars are like people who get arrested half way through their great adventure and get sent home early. When you look at it like that it doesn't seem half so bad. I think a part of growing up is realising that you have to go home some day. Part of growing wise is realising that it's not such a bad thing; having to go home; after all.

One of my favourite quotes is "Why die for today when you could live for tomorrow?" It has many meanings, but I think one of them is that however heroic and brave your death today is, you're still going to miss the beauty of tomorrow. Maybe dying today means somebody you love can live for tomorrow, but if they love you too then why would they want to live for tomorrow without you? Giving your life for someone is widely seen as a selfless act but it's possible to see it as incredibly selfish too. Seeing a loved one die is one of the hardest and most painful things imaginable so many would say "I wish I could die so they could live", but how much of that is chickening out of feeling that pain? Do you really wish all the pain you feel to be placed upon the shoulders of the person you love, just so that you don't have to feel it any more? Sounds pretty selfish to me.

It is very hard to kill one's self nobly. There is the case of a man throwing himself on top of a grenade to save the crowd of people around him that he doesn't even know, is that brave suicide? Suicide is so often known as the 'easy way out', but it's not. There must be something terribly wrong with a human if they can override the basic instinct to live, but sometimes someone just knows when it is their time. Suicide is often terribly selfish and pathetic and weak but I know I can think of some circumstances where it's just laid a tortured soul to rest.

So many people seem to think that living forever would be amazing. That living forever is cheating death. Living forever isn't cheating death, far from it, to want to live forever merely taunts death to come and get you. To live forever in fear of death is no life at all. To really cheat death you must live life as best you can, and when he comes for you, instead of running you turn and face him. You face him, look him in the eye and let him take you. That is cheating death. To let him take you with no fear and with no remorse. To know that you have loved and lived and that you have no regrets, that is cheating death. To be run down like a rabbit by a dog is no way to die, that is no way to live. Do not fear death, he is a friend simply giving you a lift home. Once home you can put your feet up and sleep, sleep in a way that you never could when you were alive. You can sleep without fear, without nightmare, without time or place. You can sleep in peace.

Sometimes, when we run from our fears, we spend so much time running that we don't have a chance to look back and check what exactly it is we're running from. Sometimes when you look back you see that that monster really isn't that scary at all. If only I were brave enough to take my own advice eh? I might actually be able to slay some of these creatures that torture me, but no, not yet. Not yet.

Not yet.

So long, So love.

Long time no see, it seems. Should I apologise for this? Maybe not as I have a sneaking suspicion that I may be talking to myself but that is not an object of concern. I talk to myself a lot so this is just extended talking I guess.

The war photographer Don McCullin said in an interview, "I have been manipulated, and I have in turn manipulated others, by recording their response to suffering and misery. So there is guilt in every direction: guilt because I don't practice religion, guilt because I was able to walk away, while this man was dying of starvation or being murdered by another man with a gun. And I am tired of guilt, tired of saying to myself: "I didn't kill that man on that photograph, I didn't starve that child." That's why I want to photograph landscapes and flowers. I am sentencing myself to peace." I think he's saying that even though he has no part in the atrocities that he photographs, he still feels the guilt associated with them. He feels the guilt of not helping, but how can you help everyone? If you help one you must help many else it isn't fair. Life isn't fair though. It just isn't. Good people die and bad people prosper because that's the way the world turns around. I wonder what would happen if we spun the would backwards instead? Chaos, no doubt, but would it really be chaos? Or just different to what we see and know? If you walked through a door and you were suddenly in another universe surrounded by people that look exactly like us, except that they were crazy; foaming at the mouth and raving and lumbering around; who would be the crazy one? You're in their world and to them, you are the crazy one. Should this idea modify the way we talk and think and act socially? Maybe.

Imagine you were in the jungle and suddenly you were captured by some men. These men are cutting down the jungle for wood and they think you shouldn't be there. They take you back to their campsite and there are 10 natives in a make-shift cage. One of the man holds out a gun to you and tells you that you can go free if you shoot one of the natives in the cage. If you refuse to shoot the native then you may go, but they will all be killed instead of just one. Assume that the man is telling the truth, and that those you don't kill will be freed, what do you do? Do you take the gun, aim down the barrel and shoot, and have the blood on your hands? Or do you turn your back and walk away? Is this a question of responsibility or guilt or humanity? Do we have a responsibility to kill one to save many in this situation? Is your guilt important? Would you feel more guilty about killing one or letting many die? Do you deny yourself something when you take that gun and pull the trigger? Something so important that it makes up the very core of humanity? Or are these morals and ethics and guilty emotions all weakness?

Does it make you weak to walk away? Or strong? Some might say that it makes you weak because you cannot shoot one man to save many. Others might say that it makes you strong because you aren't taking the easy route out, but then again, what is the easy route?

I'm predicting that many of you will choose to shoot the one to save the rest. Am I right? That seems like the natural human reaction to a situation like this. You have the power to stop 10 people getting killed by killing one yourself. Do you really have that power? Or is it an illusion? Are you simply removing yourself from the equation if you walk away? Does that change anything? Would these people have died anyway if you hadn't come along to be given this choice?

Seeing as I guess many of you will still say that you would shoot rather than walk, now suppose this new scenario. You are the president of a large country - we'll say America. Now someone else, say Russia, contacts you and says that they will kill 50% of the American population with a nuclear missile. The only thing you can do to stop them is to kill 5% of your own people. What do you do? Let the Russians kill half your country or kill 5% of them yourself? I guess that makes it a lot harder, doesn't it? Lets just add in there that the Russians will have proof that you ordered the deaths of thousands of people and will leak it to the media, so there's no way you can pawn it off on another country. Do you shoulder the responsibility and risk revolt, hate, or even your own assassination by killing your own people or do you let the Russians do their thing? Just to clarify, we are talking about the same ratio of people living or dying in each scenario so, technically, your answers should be similar. Are they different?

Maybe they're different because as a normal person you think you could handle killing someone as long as you don't let all 10 people die, but you're scared that if your president of prime minister was in the same situation he might betray you and choose you to be one of the ones killed. Maybe you would prefer your president to kill off a smaller part of the population so you have more chance of surviving?

These are all very hard questions but interesting thinking. Killing one to save many is known as utilitarianism, the idea that we all must strive for 'the greater good'. I think the official line is 'the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people'. If someone or something gets in the way of the greater good then they are no consequence. It sounds like a good idea doesn't it? As many people as possible get to be happy and those that try to make us unhappy get eliminated. In theory, it is a good idea (like communism) but in reality it doesn't quite live up to expectations. What if you're a member of the side who don't agree with the majority? Don't you still want your voice to be heard? Don't you still want power to make a difference? The problem with utilitarianism is that you need someone to decide what the 'good' is, and how we should be 'happy', but everyone feels happiness differently and is gratified in different ways. How could one good be right for us all? The 'greatest number' might only be 51%, while there is 49% unhappy people. Maybe a true democracy would work, but true democracies hardly ever exist in the real world because it's simply too difficult to coordinate.

I feel like I should carry this on in some way but I need to shower and get ready to go out now so maybe another time. I'll see if I can dredge up any more ideas to think about for next time.

So long, So love.

I guess I'm going to have to give up on the whole post-a-day thing, life just gets in the way. Shows how strong minded I am eh?

It's just gone midnight and it's now Wednesday. I think. In this cloak of darkness that the world takes on upon the changing of the guards it could be any time or any place out there. I'm sitting with only my laptop, my lamp and my music in my perceptions and I have to say it's a good feeling. Nothing else really matters in these moments. You are invincible, immortal and beyond life all at once. It's a wonderful thing. A clash of philosophy and ethics and the internet. Sometimes I find myself browsing the web in the small hours of the morning going from page to page, through link after link, expanding my mind and my consciousness and connecting myself with things around the world. I learn things I could never have dreamt of and more.

I thought today; what if we could make a machine, a computer, that was conscious? Would it be a person? Or would it be a machine? It would have feelings and emotions, because it was conscious (I think we should hereon in refer to it as 'she') so why should we treat it any differently that we do a human being? One argument might be is that it's not human. Some animals clearly have feelings and emotions but the rights of a human come above those of an animal. If we took this into consideration then we couldn't call her a person because it would mean she came above animals, but how could that be if they are alive? Breathing and warm? Maybe she would be able to deliberate morals and ethics, would this make her any more human than an animal? I suppose we have no way of checking with animals if they've considered the pros and cons of abortion, but it might be safe to say that the likes of Dolphins are clearly very advanced in their intelligence so may well have some sort of moral code, even if they can't communicate it with us. Maybe the film The Bicentennial Man can help us answer this question. Andrew is a robot who malfunctions and forms emotions, thoughts and feelings instead of following his pre-set commands. He begins on a quest to become human. It is ruled that 'while humanity can accept an immortal robot, they cannot accept an immortal human.' Andrew is faced with a choice between life and death, an interesting idea as none of us get to choose whether we live forever or die. Andrew says 'As a robot, I could have lived forever. But I tell you all today, I would rather die a man, than live for all eternity a machine.' Andrew understands what so many of us who wish for immortality cannot comprehend; that death is a part of life and that without it we cease to be human. So our machine, would she choose to have a death so she could be accepted as human? Or would she want immortality? We see in so many films and books the idea that all machines want is power and immortality, in fact thats often what the 'bad guy' wants too - is he being likened to a machine? Does he forgo his humanity when he screams that he wants to take over the world and live forever?

Or maybe it's compassion that makes our machine human. The ability to understand pain and grief and even feel it for herself. To make decisions based on emotion rather than logic, even though we understand that we probably won't gain from it - that is a very human trait. Could you ever love a machine? What about if they loved you back?

In Ridley Scott's Bladerunner, humanoid servant robots called Replicants, 'malfunction' and begin to feel emotions, and as a result turn violent. They fight for the right to live, for they have an in-built life span of only 4 years and don't want to die, not yet. The main Replicant is called Roy Batty and the end of the film when he realises he is about to die, sees him make a speech which is surprisingly powerful; 'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.' Just before the moment of his death, he chooses to save the life of the main character who, up until that point, he has been trying to kill.

I would recommend anyone to see either of these films as they are both very thought provoking and an enjoyable watch. Bladerunner is altogether darker and filmed in a very 'film noir' style whereas The Bicentennial Man is much brighter and less murky, but both films have both sad and happy undertones if you look in the right places.

That's it for now I think people. I've been writing for 45 minutes now and I think I need some sleep.

So long, So love.

As I suspect many people around the UK have been, I've just finished watching the second episode of the new series of Skins. Some moving scenes and nice to see an extension of the suicide in the first episode. I think if only for the more emotional scenes, Skins should be celebrated. Throughout one single program one can feel any range of emotions from mind-fucked euphoria, to happiness, to fury, to heart-break. There aren't many other programs that can portray this much or this strongly and that is precisely why I love it so much. The storyline can occasional stray into the not-quite-so-realistic but I think what flows beneath the surface is more real than critics like to believe. I still need to rewatch the first series, only having seen snatches and parts online, and after that go through the second series again just to see if it really is that much better than the third and fourth series' or if it's just fond memories. I really think, however, that the fourth series can blow away the third series' mediocre reception. Even I personally found it hard to connect to the characters and storylines in the third series but the first two episodes of this one look promising.

Maybe what I'm missing from my life is colour film. I play a lot with digital colour trying to replicate often what I see on TV and in films but maybe this can only be done with film. Maybe these emotions and feelings and dreams I see in my mind can only be trapped in the emulsions of film rather than in digital. I need to get myself another film camera it seems (I have two already, however one (the better one) is broken and the other feels like a toy in my hands.) I want an old Pentax or another Konica and maybe then I can start realising my desires of beauty through film. This seems like a good experiment. My exam project for photography in college will most likely be set around 'colour', which I think would be a good excuse to buy up an old camera and get shooting the colours I see in my crazy mind. Large colour film prints are simply stunning and nothing can beat them in terms of feel and colour. Especially when shot with a good 50mm prime the out of focus areas can be wonderful swirls of colours. Dynamic range is vastly improved over digital also. I'm rambling now I feel, which is a shame as my thoughts aren't as collected as usual.

I need to sleep again. I think I'm going to scour eBay for some cameras before I drop off though. Goodbye for now, and lets hope I can get my scattered mind together enough for a decent post tomorrow.

So long, So love.

So I didn't write anything yesterday. My excuse is that I had a massive photography project to hand in today so I spent most of the night writing a 2000 word essay to accompany it and finishing off my sketchbook. Hopefully I can be redeemed...

Listening to the Mirror's Edge theme song at the moment and I seem to play it at least once a day at the moment. I most certain recommend it. You can tell it's originated in Asia, as you can the game. It's very electronic and sort of like trance/euphoria but with a ballad beat. Quite moving, to me at least.

I went to the zoo the other day and took some pictures. Only have one uploaded online at the moment and I really can't be bothered to wait for Blogger's painfully slow image uploader to suck all 5Mb of filesize into the internet as it's quite late so here you go. Unfortunately it's quite low quality as I was shooting through very thick persplex which is a bit of a bummer :/ The colours are also a bit funny as I was shooting in 100% cloud colour and I dragged some of the colours up as I wasn't pleased with the desaturated look. It seems as if my Photoshop skills need work in that department. Partial colour blindness doens't help but I didn't think it would affect my editing skills so much :/ ah well. More animal photos will go up as soon as I get the good ones (of which there are few) edited and up on my Facebook.

I got a letter offering me an interview for Swansea University concerning my application for the Photojournalism course. I didn't expect to have any interest from unis so this letter was a bit of a surprise but I'm going to go anyway. Not sure what I'm going to do after that though because I'm doing a National Diploma in Lens Media at college for another year. Ah the choices. I wonder how my other applications will do. In saying that, I really need to actually apply for the Foundation Diploma as I haven't done so yet :/ I'm too damn good at procrastinating and it's really not good.

I've just dug out the form and it makes no sense at all so that one will be interesting to sort out.

I've run out of things to say tonight. I think I'm very tired. I'm always tired in an emotional sense, but body-tired tells me I need to sleep. Maybe I should sleep. I've been ill the past few days and I think it's taken a lot out of me. Up at 8 tomorrow, that'll be a nice one. Ah well. Night.

So long, So love.