mind's a mess, i am nowhere. today is the last day in budapest and i have had too many goodbyes already, too many yet to come. people i have learned to love over the past summer, summer's been so long, and i don't even know if i'll ever see them again. uncertainty is a beautiful thing but leaves me hanging in the air, i'll go back to familiar places for now, strange, familiar faces, and slowly start waking up from the summer heat.

thank you.

model; rachel.
when she was here in budapest. good times, can't wait to see her next, in whatever part of this world.

this makes me happy. makes me think of people i love.



one week left in the beautiful country of hungary. it is insane to think about all the things that have happened, all the madness, it's like most of what you want from life packed into two months. mini-scale life. maybe not quite, but right now, everything feels grand and overwhelming. a break will feel good.
no photos. i have not been photographing much this summer and i hate the thought of it. once i get out of here and calm down a bit, i will get back on it and hopefully get a lot better.


20110705.
model; renáta @ diamond models rivercast

just some words about the place i am currently spending my life in. spending my life; sounds like i'm paying for something with it. what i do get in return though is the joy of good times, times that can only be found if experienced through the arrogance of a stranger in a country that he will never fully know. it annoys me, it's like living under the protection of some parenthood telling me i'm not allowed to play in the dirt, only seeing the city in the light it wants to be seen in.
it is a beautiful light though. the burning sun, once it calms down in the evening, the old pretty buildings dipped in the pink / orange / golden light, it gives you such a beautiful, fake peace. the people drying their clothes by the danube, the people selling lavender bouquets and useless batteries on the squares, the people asking you for two hundred forints in broken german and hungarian, all dipped in that gold, just no peace about them. in the end, it's the same everywhere, but seeing it in a foreign country, with pompous buildings and gloriously lit bridges as a backdrop, with prices in the supermarkets that make everything back at home seem overpriced and ridiculous, you feel more helpless.

two hundred forints, that's less than a euro and also the entrance fee for zöld pardon, one of the places of budapest that i would like to take home with me, especially since next summer, it will be replaced by a museum. shit would go down. dancing under stars, on wooden planks, until the first sign of tiredness. then the sprinklers go on, dancing under water showers with a swelling feeling of happiness that erases all exhaustion. until sunrise and beyond. szimpla, another place i want to take with me. i could live there, in the rundown walls full of scribbles and stories, between lamps that all make you dream of the people who might have cherished them once, in armchairs, dentists' chairs, bathtubs, under bikes with flowers growing out of them and so many more things to discover in every corner.
on a more serious side, work is good. home is good. people are good. i have more or less learnt understanding northern irish and scottish accents, i made friends with the world, and at work i make little paper boats. no actual boats, more like little boxes where we weigh and keep our samples, tablets, powders, but we call them boats which brings a little bit of romanticism into life at the lab. just a bit, but it's something. sometimes i even feel like a scientist, pouring things around, writing down numbers, stopping time. i'm at the cutting edge, the edge that cuts - i'm nowhere - but it's good to see what clever people can do in a lab. and it's good to see that they are the ones who love what they do. makes me feel kinda worthless.

budapest, steaming in the heat. summer is merciless, being on ancient buses, with fit hungarians looking out of the windows, light shirts and aviators, wind flowing through their hair, but only a small amount of air making it through the thick heat, standing next to old people with grim faces. i feel like it could be south america, which is beautiful because it finally feels like i'm somewhere else. also, time is dislocated, way too fast. i want a car from the fifties, a cigar and a spanish accent, but all i have for now is the rum. i love rum, and one of the highlights of my day is getting home from work and having a cold drink with ice cubes.

Like most of the others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right. I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top.
At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going.



as for photography, there's a lot to capture. let's see if i'll ever manage. the pictures are only in my head for now.

every day i see my dream
every day i see my
every day i see my dream.

i miss things. people. feelings.

...Then came noon, and morning withered like a lost dream. The sweat was torture and the rest of the day was littered with the dead remains of all those things that might have happened, but couldn't stand the heat. When the sun got hot enough it burned away all the illusions and I saw the place as it was - cheap, sullen, and garish - nothing good was going to happen here.
Sometimes at dusk, when you were trying to relax and not think about the general stagnation, the Garbage God would gather a handful of those choked-off morning hopes and dangle them somewhere just out of reach; they would hang in the breeze and make a sound like delicate glass bells, reminding you of something you never quite got hold of, and never would. It was a maddening image, and the only way to whip it was to hang on until dusk and banish the ghosts with rum.

20110522.
model; ellie.

great day out, not too many thoughts wasted on exams, some woods and some laughs. ellie hates me but that's ok cause she's amazing.

its hard to describe things these days. everything's a mixture of other things, feelings. i wish i were raving my youth away somewhere, with the people i love. a shadow passed, a shadow passed, yearning, yearning
at the same time, im slowly reaching for the ground where i am now. that's not too bad. you gotta get out, go far away
even this post is nothing but a mixture. of things that might matter, have mattered, will matter.

20110521.
model; allie.
make up; siobhan.
magic reflector guy; clarence. cause he's awesome.
directing and all; rajee. once again, this was his shoot... he's just too nice, letting me and my camera be there with them.

this shoot was rather nice. sun and friends and cameras :]

this reminds me of silence, rainy nights and red bokeh, of excitement in my fingertips and a hint of the feeling that maybe, just maybe, there are things in this world that are special.
its still there, the tingles and the energy, i wish i could do something with that feeling, do something worthwhile.

lift me up to the sun, to the sun, to the


here are just very few shots from a day of shooting in march!

20110322.
models; urvi, holly, sofia and helen, georgia, tori, wilf.
designs by michaela (http://www.michaelaknits.com/)
this was rajee's thing... i was just there with my camera.

summer tunes, summer is strange, strange as seashores and riversides.
had some incredible times in london and now love it like never before. i miss the loves and laughs and mindlessness and youth. now just shrouded in strangeness and mixed feelings, i want to complain but have nothing to complain about and all that's playing in my head is a bouncy tune and the energy to raveraverave.

but really, i have nothing to complain about. budapest is rather alright so far.


i have too many old photos to upload!

holly and helen, 20110323.
headwear by head full of feathers, thank you jen!




also, check out some of my photos in P+M Magazine from Japan:



downloadable on:
http://onimaga.com/

absolutely lovely magazine, absolutely lovely people behind it!