Clouds

"Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm,

but to add colour to my sunset sky."

 - Rabindranath Tagore

Stray Birds

Nightfall

"I wish I could show you

when you are lonely or in the darkness

the astonishing light

of your own being"

- Hafiz

This photograph is of the 1905 Jetty in Swakopmund just after nightfall. I was a glorious day and I just kept wandering around here looking out to the sea and taking photographs.  The sky remained beautiful for a long time after the sun had set. I started walking back to my car but turned around for a final shot and this was the result.

It is my favourite.

Rant

Negativity is a choice.  As is being positive.  Choices.  We all have them.  Make good ones, or at least try to.  Don't be a slave to negative emotions.

It's so easy to sink into the negativity and utter cataclysm around us.  The world is raging and it's negative vibe is contagious.  There is no more good news, only news of death, desperation, greed, violence, destruction, terrorism, poverty, selfishness - you name it.  It is so easy to buy into the mass media hype and sink into the despair it brings.  The depression, the anxiety, the anger, the fear.  Filling ourselves up with news of the terror and sadness around us.  It abounds and it grows daily.  I see it everywhere.  We are consumed by this vortex of evil.

I'm not saying turn a blind eye, but don't be consumed.  Don't make the bad news all you read.  It might consume you and you yourself will become bad news.  We become and reflect what we fill ourselves with and what we surround ourselves with.

I truly believe with my heart and soul that there is much beauty to be found in this world, even if we don't read it in the newspapers.  There are people with kind hearts and pure intentions, carers, givers, the hopeful.  If you have a choice, be one of the latter.  Be one who brings a little bit of hope and sunshine, joy and grace to others.

And stop raining on other people's parades.
As I said, it's a choice.

Rant done.

So much unsaid...

I just love this photograph.  So many things are left unsaid, but the image is striking.

Perhaps because the individuals in the photograph is known to me?  

Or perhaps it is that I've caught them in a moment.  

A moment of laughter and joy.

A moment of forgetting the world.

A moment of demonstrated unconditional love from a father to his daughter.

This is love in it's purest form.