Wandering around some of the world’s largest and smallest cities with a camera and a notebook
April 22, 2011 Leave a comment
I’d like to take this opportunity to announce a momentous technical and logistical triumph. My blog has officially been moved and is now integrated into lydonphoto.com. Okay, it wasn’t that much of a triumph, but it’s nice to have everything in one place now.
All of the new blog posts will be there from now on, as well as the archived material.
Thanks for reading everyone!
February 19, 2011 Leave a comment
It’s funny
How free it feels to be on a train
The tracks always go to the same places
Trains keep on their schedules
Passengers have no control over their destination
save for the ticket they purchased
and the train car they board
But they have freedom
to sit and read
to watch traffic sit still as they pass by
to wave at children standing with their parents
“Hi train! So big and powerful you are!
Where are you going today?
Who are you carrying?”
How free it feels
It’s funny
December 19, 2010 3 Comments
On approach to Los Angeles International Airport
Perfectly gridded streets, stretching farther than a soft blanket of smog allows one to see, difficult to move amongst the traffic, but at least easy to navigate.
Brown lawns lining every street are a sign of poor planning perhaps, but also of good water conservation.
Trees, placed ever so sparsely along sidewalks provide no shade for homes, but do offer some for the cars parked atop patches of asphalt.
If there ever were a place for an anti-urban-density movement, perhaps the dusty, largely infertile ground of a desert would be that place.
Los Angeles, CA seemingly endless street grid from the air.
June 25, 2010 1 Comment
The things we build: useful for ourselves, or useful for others?
In the best cases, perhaps they are both.
But of the structures built in the past several decades, the majority are merely funnels for the acquisition of mass quantities of money for developers.
What price does the ‘average’ person pay?
A homeless man takes an afternoon nap in Seoul's Insadong neighborhood (P.Lydon, 2010)
May 17, 2010 Leave a comment
A crisp, yet gentle breeze sneaks up from the sea surface and a handfull of sakura explode overhead.
They float gently to the grass below, accompanied by a hush of voices, then laughter, and chatting.
The uniform dance repeats all afternoon, robotic like a stream of Japanese schoolkids, walking in step with crisp sailor uniforms and dwarfing black leather backpacks, yet still organic, as individual as the wide-eyed grins on each of their faces .
Every time this explosion repeats feels like a warm blanket, wrapping everything around you with pink specs of cherry blossom.
The small, silky soft petals carry infinitely more energy when they are afloat. It’s as if that is their one moment, a year’s worth of developing, of waiting. It suddenly all pays dues in a brilliant display of natural energy.
A cherry tree in blossom against Landmark Tower in Yokohama, Japan. (P. Lydon, 2010)
May 4, 2010 1 Comment
Musing #3
Four escalator lanes at Oedo Line’s Shinjuku-Nishiguchi station.
For some reason, I can’t help but picture one of them as a slide. I wonder…
4-Lane Escalator in Shinjuku
April 8, 2010 Leave a comment
As much as I hated Hamamatsucho, it was and is still right there, in the thick of a city whose pulse is racing and never slows. It’s as if Tokyo is constantly running a marathon, for the first time. A chaotic mess of a contestant, it darts every which way, knocking out some runners and spectators, and dragging a bunch more with it. Yet as unpredictable as it may seem to most, Tokyo — for the most part — does the job like a very well-made clock. Tick-tock accuracy. Oh, and it wins the marathon, for the first time, every time.
A view of Tokyo Tower from the World Trade Center at Hamamatsucho - 2010, P. Lydon
March 24, 2010 Leave a comment
Looking up, I see four huge pillars. But what do they support? Rising to heights that one can’t quite fathom from his ant-like position, attempting to imagine, one by one, the thousands of people at work within the windows. I’ve almost never had the desire to be up there, and I’m not. Today. But these moments are the constant reminders that I could and might. Might be wondering “why?”, in some forgotten part of this mass of blood vessels, neurons, and glial cells atop my shoulders, yet unable to access or translate that mental wisp into something that incites one into physical action.
The tall buildings are magnificent to view, but what of the things that go on inside them? Are they just as magnificent, or decidedly less so?
Skyscrapers in Shinjuku, Tokyo (2010, P. Lydon)
Our quest for survival in turn dictates our suffering through life… but only if we follow the terms which neither we the individual, nor our creator did create.
The 10ten Magazine Network
