esperando el sol

Image | | andy townend

So I took my guitar
And I threw down some chords
And some words I could sing without shame

And I soon had a song
I played it around
For some friends but they all said the same

They said music’s for fools
You should go back to school
The future is prisons and math

So I did what they said
Now my children are fed
‘Cause they pay me to do what I’m asked

I forgot all my songs
The words now are wrong
And I burned my guitar in a rage

But the fire came to rest
In your white velvet breast
So somehow I just know that it’s safe

Lyrics by Low, Death of a Salesman

*images made with love with Nikon D850, Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8E VR*

dante

Image | | andy townend

‘..through me you go into a city of weeping
through me you go into eternal pain
through me you go amongst the lost people’
― dante alighieri, the inferno

The images which follow were made in, of all places, a convent.

The ‘Convento de las Duenas’, tucked away in a quiet corner of Salamanca.

One can only imagine what passed through the minds, and souls, of those who walked these cloisters, once upon a time.

A different world.

Or is it?

Perhaps not so much.

*all images made with fujifilm x100f with fixed 23mm (35mm full frame equivalent) lens, tweaked in lightroom cc with fujifilm acros filter added in post*

Unfinished business

Image | | andy townend

“The bulls are my best friends.”
I translated to Brett.
“You kill your friends?” she asked.
“Always,” he said in English, and laughed. “So they don’t kill me.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

Graffiti emblazoned remains of a disused bull-fighting arena nestle uncomfortably behind bars amidst an affluent ‘urbanización’. Eerie silence shrouds the abandoned amphitheatre. Distant echoes linger amidst the litter strewn pens. Serried rows of cold concrete stand in witness to battle and blood.

A stone’s throw away children laugh in a newly completed park. Football pitches and gym equipment laid out amidst newly planted trees serve a different purpose to this stone enclosed ring.

Unfinished business.

Images made with Fujifilm X100F with fixed 23mm (35mm FF equivalent) and processed in Lightroom and Analog Efex Pro 2.

toros

Image | | andy townend

Every man’s life ends the same way.
It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another
– Ernest Hemingway

With thanks to Felix and Mamen, and our fellow guests, for a beautiful evening full of light, good food and wine, and the opportunity to photographs the bulls on a glorious late summer evening.

Gracias a Felix y Mamen, y a nuestros compañeros invitados, por una hermosa noche llena de luz, buena comida y vino, y la oportunidad de fotografiar a los toros en una gloriosa tarde de verano.

*All images made with Nikon D700 with Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6 lens*

isla de soto

Image | | andy townend

our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty”

― albert einstein

misty ambiguity

twist

reedy

exhausted

haven

hoopoe, youpoe, weallpoe

crossed

fallen

if you’ve got it, flaunt it

nesting

setting goals

black redstart

bs

who am i?