Sheron Long's Blog, page 27
February 23, 2015
Landscape Photography with a Deep Sense of Place
Homeward Bound II (Mount Shasta, CA)
© Roman Loranc
There is an empty canoe drifting in the Consumnes River in the Central Valley of California. It’s photographer Roman Loranc’s ride. His way of slipping gently into one of the landscapes he loves.
He is facing away from the escaping canoe, knee deep in the river, with his tripod steadied on the river bottom and his 4 x 5 camera trained on the forms just visible in the distant mist. He hasn’t yet noticed that he is stranded.
It doesn’t matter. He is in another world. A world where he is seeing, smelling, hearing, feeling, and tasting the scene he is photographing. He has lost himself in the moment.
The Phantom Canoe. Roman turned “being stranded” into a work of art
© Roman Loranc
A good landscape...
February 17, 2015
On London Streets: Gum Globs Become Art
Cigarette butts and gum litter are the bane of London’s walkways. Is there a creative solution?
art © Otto Schade; photo © Sheron Long
Gum litter is a problem you step into quite unknowingly. It’s a worldwide issue, but when in London, where 3.5 billion pieces of gum end up as litter every year, chances are you’ll sense the problem up close and personal, like on your shoe.
When this happens, most of us utter an epithet, get out of the sticky situation, and go on our way. But Londoner Ben Wilson, an outsider artist, has a more creative reaction. He transforms the disgusting gum globs into tiny underfoot paintings—spots of color that delight the eye of passersby.
The prettiest gum glob on the block
art © Ben Wilson; photo © Sheron Long
When painted, litter becomes art.
art © Ben Wilson; photo...
February 9, 2015
A Tale of Love Locks—Can Love Conquer All?
So many ways to say “I love you”
© Meredith Mullins
Once upon a time, there was a city of light known as the most romantic city on Earth. Paris opened its heart to lovers around the world. Romance in Paris was a part of life.
Couples strolled the banks of the Seine arm in arm, kissed in the secret (and not-so-secret) corners of the well-tended gardens, and paused to embrace on the graceful bridges.
Romantic Paris (a view from the Pont des Arts before the love-lock craze)
© Meredith Mullins
Then a heavy weight threatened life as romantics knew it. Love locks came to Paris. Tons of them. And the city of romance began to feel the strain of too much love.
A new kind of love (view from the Pont des Arts today)
© Meredith Mullins
The love-lock craze arrived in 2008. Locks...
February 2, 2015
Paris Celebrates the Circus Arts of Tomorrow
American Matthew Richardson suspended in his whirling cyr wheel at the Cirque de Demain
© Meredith Mullins
Jugglers. Contortionists. Acrobats. Who doesn’t love the circus arts—graceful whirlers, sure-footed balancers, and people who fly through the air?
Performers spinning, hanging, tumbling, climbing, somersaulting, diving, stretching, and moving their bodies in mind-bending ways.
The Circus of Tomorrow is in town—the 36th annual Paris Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain. There are no lions or tigers clawing the air, no elephants laboring to lift themselves toward the tent top, no cartoonish clowns emerging from tiny cars.
The beauty and grace of The Guangdong Troupe, bronze medalists from China
© Meredith Mullins
The Circus of Tomorrow is about young talent—a...
January 28, 2015
On Foot: A Walk Across America
The essential tool for a long walk
© Eva Boynton
For 22 years, Dr. John Francis explored much of the Americas on foot. A hundred years earlier, John Muir walked 1000 miles from Indianapolis to the Gulf of Mexico.
For Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, and Francis, founder of Planetwalk, on-foot travel led to environmental activism. For others, time on the road spent in long-distance walking led simply to gratifying “Oh, I see” moments.
Cirrus Wood is one of them. Following in the footsteps of his mentors—call them globe-trotters, great pedestrians, planet walkers, pilgrims, or simply people on foot—Wood took an 18-month walk across America through 16 states from San Francisco to Seattle and on to Maine.
His vehicle? A pair of sturdy hiking boots and his own two feet.
Cirrus Wood Makes His...
January 19, 2015
Fashionable Generation Gap Revealed in Singapore
A style-swapping experiment in Singapore
© Qozop
Qozop’s Conceptual Photography Features Creative Clothes Swapping
If our eyes are the windows to our souls, are our clothes the curtains?
Clothes have always held a certain fascination.
Children love to dress up in grown-up outfits.
Fans flock to the red carpets of the world for a glimpse of glamour and the answer to the inevitable designer question: “Who are you wearing?”
Halloween costumes release the inner actor that lurks in all of us.
Fashion Week in trend-setting cities influences the future of style and color.
Cultural traditions are revealed through clothes of the past and present.
While clothes don’t “make the person,” they are an important part of culture, giving clues to our identity and impacting how we feel about ourselves.
Chinese mother and daughter make a fashion...
January 12, 2015
Bike Co-ops of Mexico: A Cyclist Movement
A repair class at a bike coop gets bikes moving and fuels a bigger cyclist movement.
© Ernesto Asecas
A bicycle can travel the globe, but any pedal-powered steed may need a tune-up along the way. On a cycle trip through California and Mexico, I walked into Casa Ciclista, a bicycle co-op in Guadalajara, looking for nothing more than a new chain. Instead, I emerged with a renewed sense of empowerment.
Little did I know a simple part replacement would gear me towards self sufficiency and a “hands-on” community looking to solve problems: themes of a cyclist movement in Mexico.
Hands at the collective helm
© Eva Boynton
Bike co-ops are participant-run spaces for a burgeoning bicycle culture in Mexico. Each is unique in how it creates a free space for people to unite, learn, and make...
January 8, 2015
Found in Costa Rica: Best New Year’s Resolution
A beach with no footprints is like the start of a New Year.
© Robert Long
Travel busts up routines and sends you off in new directions. Travel over the New Year does even more: it inspires you to set a new direction back home.
My New Year’s trip took me to Costa Rica—a democratic country with no standing army, a 79.9-year life expectancy (higher than the US), and an environmental record unsurpassed in the hemisphere.
Costa Rica, smaller in size than West Virginia, has 933 miles of coastline and beautiful beaches for finding insights to treasure.
© Peter Hermes Furian/iStock
And there’s more—Costa Rica has a free and mandatory education system with a literacy rate over 96%. I was sure to learn something!
I did. All the adventures of the week came together in the world’s best New Year’s...
December 8, 2014
The Art of Light: Fête des Lumières
The Lyon Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) is transformed through the art of light.
Lighting Design by Gilbert Coudène & Etienne Guiol
Photograph © Meredith Mullins
As soon as darkness falls, electricity pulses through the city. More than 70 light installations come to life, and thousands of revelers buzz in the streets. Energy is everywhere.
Palais Saint Pierre in Place des Terreaux
Lighting Design by Gilbert Coudène & Etienne Guiol
Photograph © Meredith Mullins
It’s Fête des Lumières in Lyon, France. Millions of people from all over the world come to celebrate this festive day—December 8—as well as the surrounding days. It is said to be the third largest world festival gathering, after Carnival in Rio and Oktoberfest in Munich.
A Tribute to MaryThe event began in 1852 as a tribute to the...
November 19, 2014
The Art of Traveling . . . Without Preconceptions
Goussainville Vieux Pays: the surprising ghost town just outside of Paris
© Meredith Mullins
I expected broken windows, graffiti, boarded up doors, wall-engulfing vines, dilapidation, decay, and, yes, even the occasional tumbleweed.
After all, Goussainville Vieux Pays had been described by many writers as a ghost town. A flurry of recent articles told the dramatic story of the exodus that had happened forty years earlier.
The images and words painted a bleak picture. A once-thriving farming village had died—an innocent victim of the invasive noise of a new airport.
No longer a paradise (the 19th century manor house)
© Meredith Mullins
The quiet rural town just north of Paris landed in the flight path of Charles de Gaulle airport in 1974. Jets came and went every few minutes, shaking the walls of the village...
