Tell your story behind the shot...

[Jimr1961]

Thank you Donald. The event was in 2012. I think that I'm the only one who still feels it from time to time. Small helicopters still give me a physical reaction and I look up searching for it. During the last two days of the ordeal, I could have sworn I kept hearing the droan of an engine and continuously scanned the skies. I found out from the SAR team that they had a communications plane circling the whole area for two days due to the remoteness of the place.

Kris, I can relate in a big way. My son, the same one pictured, was diagnosed with autism when he was 2 1/2. It was excruciatingly painful. All of my hopes and dreams for my son were shattered. Everything came down to wondering if anyone would ever love my son. Would he ever feel love. Would he ever know how much I loved him. Makes me want to cry right now. After 2 years of treatment for heavy metal poisoning, he lost his diagnosis and is now a normal teenager.

[Manfred M]

This image that I posted about 6 weeks ago is a tiny bit of a fraud. The old pot still is indeed located at the Suntory Hakushu Distillery.



The way I composed the shot implied that it was indeed a production still, and while this was once true, today it sits in the Whisky Museum at the distillery. A carefully chosen camera angle, timing (ensuring no stray tourist was in the shot) and post processing made it look like something it is not.

This shot from the front of the presentation area of the museum shows things in a truer light.....

[IzzieK]

As I am for yours. It was your very touching story and the image that you posted that prompted me to think it would be okay to post this image into the thread. I can empathise with the feelings and emotions that came across very strongly to me in what you wrote.

Same for me here, Donald. No one told me that I need my box of Kleenex just reading your story, Robert. I have a story too behind several shots but even up to now, I still couldn't get myself to even tell mine as we (Bill and I) are still in mourning about it.

With your story, Donald...I saw you mentioned something about Sheila in another post but it was at the same time Bill and I were too distraught, so I pour my own emptiness into photography and learning my camera. Many times I just sit and stare into nothingness numbed with pain, saw your postings about your wife and prevented my darnedest best to avoid it and not comment at all. Sorry for your loss, Donald. This is the first time I read your story fully because I can somehow do it, for some reason or the other. We are still on the road to healing. One foot forward at a time...

[Donald]

Some of us have shown images that have very deep, personal resonance for us which at different times, in my case, fill me with great joy and at other times deep pain and sorrow.

There are other images, more indirectly linked to me that also stir significant emotion.

Many of you will be aware of that time in Scottish history known as the Highland Clearances. Ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, when, with the forced ending of the clan system following the Battle of Culloden, the landowners changed from being the benign, paternal figure into being the money-grabbing ruthless capitalist unafraid to exploit others for profit.

Not everyone in the 'new world' who claims Scottish ancestry is the descendant of a victim of the Clearances, but many are.

The purpose of the Clearances was to clear the land of people to make way for large scale sheep farming by people from the south of Scotland and England who paid handsome rents to the landowner.

In modern times, the whole episode has become very romanticised and all sorts of myths and un-truths have been built up around it. Thanks to historians such as Dr Jim Hunter, we have been able to re-learn what the truth was and what actually happened. And it ain't romantic.

Anyway, I was walking on the hills of Coigach one day, an area from which many families were cleared, but also, at the coast, one to which many families were evicted from the interior. I knew the name of this image even before I pressed the shutter.

And on my website I present it with a passage from Jim Hunter's book in which he quotes Patrick Sellar the factor for the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, who was one of the most notorious figures in the episode of the Highland Clearances (as you can see, he thought of the people as 'barbarous hordes'):-

"Lord and Lady Stafford were pleased humanely to order a new arrangement of the Country. That the interior should be possessed by Cheviot Shepherds (meaning sheep farmers) and the people brought down to the coast and placed there in lotts (meaning crofts) under the size of three arable acres, sufficient for the maintenance of an industrious family, but pinched enough to cause them to turn their attention to the fishing. I presume to say that the proprietors humanely ordered this arrangement because it surely was the most benevolent action to put these barbarous hordes into a position where they could better associate together, apply to industry, educate their children and advance in civilization." Patrick Sellar, 1815, reproduced in Hunter, J, 'From the Low Tide of the Sea to the Highest Mountain Tops', 2012.

The Great White Sheep

[John 2]

...and you only had to listen to the comments from some of the younger element at the Tory Party conference last week to realise that there are some people still living in that misguided world. Very nice image BTW.

[Manfred M]

An interesting story, Donald. Unfortunately, ethnic cleansing has a long, sordid history and that history is always written by the victor. It's always interesting to see how people rationalized their positions and put a positive spin on something that most rational people would recognize as being 100% hogwash.

And with regards to the image of the sheep. "Don't jump!" was the first thought that came to mind when I looked at it.

[chauncey]

ethnic cleansing has a long, sordid history

Careful Manfred, for you're treading on one of my pet peeves...mankind has a long and sordid history.

[Thlayle]

When I traveled west this summer, I had never heard of Heart Mountain and only went there by chance after hearing of it from a local in eastern Wyoming. I already knew of the Japanese 'relocation' during WWII but once visiting Heart Mountain Relocation Center where over 14,000 Japanese Americans were detained only because of their ethnic heritage, I realized how much this shameful chapter of our history has been ignored and untold.

In all, over 110,000 Japanese Americans were rounded up and imprisoned in ten relocation centers across the country. They were all like Heart Mountain, assembled quickly and shoddily, barely made habitable, and all deliberately placed in the most remote, desolate locations that could be found. And while isolated & alone, the families were all crowded together in barracks that gave no privacy whatsoever.

I am the son of a US WWII veteran, a Pearl Harbor survivor. My father spoke little of his survivor experience. He never spoke of the Japanese internment.

I found that photographing the center was much like trying to explain the history of it: impossible to capture adequately.

[davidedric]

I have no personal experience of the relocation, but there is a song Manzanar about the camp in California of that name. Written by Tom Russell and recorded by Tom Paxton, it provides the soundtrack to this video. Dave

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fqd-Kh_zpdA

[rachel]

It's something I know little about but it's touched on in one of Isabel Allende's recent novels.

Should these stories be quietly forgotten to avoid stirring up ill-feeling, or should they be talked about openly so we can learn from them? I don't know the answer.

[Thlayle]

It's something I know little about but it's touched on in one of Isabel Allende's recent novels.

Should these stories be quietly forgotten to avoid stirring up ill-feeling, or should they be talked about openly so we can learn from them? I don't know the answer.

I feel strongly that they should not be forgotten, even though I understand your concern about stirring up ill-feeling. For one thing, I think not everyone who went through the experience wanted to talk about what happened to them.

For my part, I am grateful the history of the internment was not worse than it was. I think remembrance can help everyone. It's not automatic that it will, but I think there is a greater risk involved in forgetting.

[rachel]

I tend to agree, I think we must learn from history but since I wasn't involved then I can't say i really understand the feelings of those who were and their descendants.

I've lived in both Spain and Chile, both have their dark histories. In Spain, during the transition to democracy after the death of Franco great effort was made to leave behind the grievances in the name of reconciliation. But it hasn't really worked. There are still those who desperately want to know what happened to their loved ones and still stories of 'stolen' children trying to find their biological families. Chile's history is more recent and still seemed to me very raw and unresolved.

[IzzieK]

I have no personal experience of the relocation, but there is a song Manzanar about the camp in California of that name. Written by Tom Russell and recorded by Tom Paxton, it provides the soundtrack to this video. Dave

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fqd-Kh_zpdA

Thanks Dave-with-the-pretty-smile...it was Kleenex time for me just watching that....

[Thlayle]

I have no personal experience of the relocation, but there is a song Manzanar about the camp in California of that name. Written by Tom Russell and recorded by Tom Paxton, it provides the soundtrack to this video. Dave

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fqd-Kh_zpdA

Thanks, Dave, for the link. The ballad & the video tell the story well.

[NorthernFocus]

...I think we must learn from history...

And yet history itself is the clearest indication that it is beyond mankind's capacity to do so. The wisdom needed for us to live collectively in peace and prosperity has been available for thousands of years. But each generation believes they know better than anyone before. Ego/arrogance is a costly burden.

This wasn't what I had in mind when I started the thread...

[rachel]

Many years ago I had a little book of contemporary poetry by someone called Steve Turner (I think) - he was from Birmingham (I think). I remember one of them clearly

History repeats itself.
Has to.
Noone listens.

[Tronhard]

In Flagrante Delecto...

I was at Auckland Zoo, trying out a new lens and happened upon the baboon enclosure just in time to see the alpha male "court" and vigorously mount one of the females.
Right beside me a young mother had just arrived and I listened to the piping voice of her five-year-old ask... What is that thing on the monkey mama? What is he doing to that other monkey?
The mother looked at me and said " I REALLY didn't expect or want to have this discussion at this point!"
My response, "It's nature and you are probably better off having the discussion now when it really means little to her than later when it will be a much more loaded subject"
In the meantime the sated male sat feeling pretty good about life, but I had to laugh later when it looked at my shots. It looks like he was holding a cigarette in his front paw...

[IzzieK]

That was a nice story, Trev...Very entertaining...

[RBSinTo]

This shot was taken about ten years ago while I spent about a year of my weekends meeting and photographing a group of homeless people who lived on a street corner in downtown Toronto.
The young woman's name is Karen, and she was in effect the Spokesperson for the group, and the one I had to negotiate with before I could photograph them. She always asked me for incredibly large amounts of money which invariably ended up being about five dollars.
One day when she and I were talking, in the midst of the conversation she turned and pointed to another person in the group and told me very casually that he had raped her. I was shocked, but she acted as if that was simply a normal occurance and didn't even express anger that it had happened. It was simply part of life on the streets.
On this particular day she was sitting together with a friend, who as I recall had been a boxer in his previous life.
And they let me take this informal portrait.

[rpcrowe]

I knew what I wanted at the hydroplane races in San Diego's Mission Bay and I planned my shooting location appropriately. Luckily they supplied a map of the course.

I wanted shots of the boats coming out of a curve so that the white "rooster-tail" wake of the hydroplane was the background for the shot. It worked!





Then I decided that I wanted a slightly different angle and climbed down from the bluff where I had been shooting to beach level and got this type of shot. I liked showing that the boats were hydroplaning (that's what hydroplanes are supposed to do) with a goodly part (sometimes all of) the pontoons in the air.



However, that beach was off limits to photographers but with a tripod and a long lens plus wearing a photo vest, I must have looked like an event photographer. No one chased me away...

I was watching television news coverage of the next days event and was shocked to see that one of the boats had gone out of control at about a hundred miles an hour and ran up onto the beach. Exactly where I was standing the previous day