Disposable Barcelona.

I could never say anything about Barcelona better than Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé, so let’s just cut to the chase and let them do their thing:

These pictures are an attempt to follow that up…

One of the best days we had was when we left Barcelona for Montserrat.

Sadly leaving Barcelona wasn’t very easy. Not only because we’d had such a great time and developed an attachment to the place, but also because Monarch Airlines are TERRIBLE and our flight was delayed. Here are some pictures that make that experience look like it was actually quite pleasant. Don’t be fooled by them, and don’t EVER fly with Monarch.

Don’t worry, we sent them several angry tweets.

Disposable Porto.

There’s nothing wrong with staying in tents at music festivals, I’d do it. I have done it. I’d do it again. But it’s great when you go to a music festival and you don’t have to stay in a tent. Bed beats tent, okay?

Optimus Primavera Sound gave us a great excuse to visit Porto. We stayed in a Port wine themed hostel, found out what Azulejo tiles are, and discovered that Blur are actually still pretty great at playing live music. Not that we took any pictures of them or anyone else playing music at the festival, but we definitely did go and it was totally righteous.

Disposable Switzerland.

That which lies dormant may one day erupt.

This first post on Shot Simple for quite a long time may not grab you as the most dramatic of volcanic activity, but I’m still quite excited about it.

Having a Swiss mother has meant that I’ve had the good fortune to enjoy countless trips to the land of Toblerone. On this particular trip to Switzerland it was my great pleasure to show one of my favourite places to my favourite person. I’m pretty sure she liked it. Sorry that this sounds well cheesy. Ha! CHEESY! Get it?! Emmental??!

 

Disposable Bear and Deer.

Adam, being a true gentleman, wanted his special lady Annie to have the final say on what the theme of their wedding would be.  Adam is wise.  Although he no doubt wanted a medieval, Game of Thrones, awesome broadsword-fest of a wedding, his wisdom advised him against provoking the wrath of a bride-to-be by dictating to Annie what she should do on a day that is typically such a massive deal to lady-folk.

Let it be known that I don’t normally use the term “lady-folk”, it just seemed appropriate to use it as it sounds like the parlance of medieval times.  I digress…

Turns out Annie is awesome and also wanted a kick ass medieval, Game of Thrones, awesome broadsword-fest of a wedding.  More on that later.

Before the wedding Adam needed to celebrate getting hitched to the girl that he is no doubt made for, by being as manly as possible.  A fellowship of seven noblemen made their way into the Floridian wilderness for two nights and and two days of drinking, fighting, eating, fire building, tree chopping, hiking, crocodile infested water swimming, puking, masculine mayhem.  We almost ran out of clean drinking water, it was extreme.  But we survived.  We are a band of brothers, bound together by the experience we shared in Myakka State Forest.  Or whatever.

There was a wedding to arrange, so we thought it would be best to get back to civilisation.  It looks like most of what we did to prepare involved sunglasses.

There follows a picture of a pretty okay location for a wedding.

What do you know about Doug tattoos?

The couple now known as Lord and Lady Berliner met many moons ago, when Annie the deer of house Troup pranced forth from Colorado towards the bear Adam, from house Berliner.  They dated for a time, and things went so well that a matrimonial union of their houses struck them as an excellent idea.  I was called on to be a groomsman, although the preferred term for this occasion was GROOM’S KNIGHT.  We knights were furnished with fine blades, and stood with Adam during the service, ready to fight off any blaggard that dared oppose the proceedings.   Nobody did dare, which is a relief because I didn’t want to have to kill a man.  The ceremony went off without a hitch.  We drank the king’s wine and also his beer.  And ate his fine BBQ foods.  And exquisite donuts.  And danced and made merry.  Pippin was there too.

Nine times out of ten themed weddings are totally cringeworthy, but the Deer and the Bear pulled it off.  And I’m not just saying that because I got a sweet dagger and drinking horn out of it.  I was there with my dagger, drinking the king’s spiced wine from my drinking horn and it just made sense.  Adam and Annie had a wedding that truly portrayed their wonderful characters; characters which would have been compromised if things had gone down any other way.

HAIL HOUSE BERLINER!

Disposable Horsell Common.

We tied a disposable camera to a tree again, look:

This time the tree was one of the several trees that can be found hanging out on Horsell Common, by the sandpits.  You know the place.

Those less fortunate souls who have never taken in the leafy, sandpitty, and a little bit lakey/pondy vistas of the place locals call “H-Comm”* are missing out.  Ignore how that sounds like a really terrible plug from the Woking tourist board and get yourselves down there as soon as you possibly can.  Afterwards, take a stroll into Woking town centre and marvel at the real live Martian that was excavated from the very sandpits pictured in the following pictures**.  I guarantee you’ll “ooh” and “aah” more than the punters at the annual Woking fireworks night***.

Thanks to everyone who overcame the fear of taking pictures on a camera that was tied to a tree and wrapped in plastic like some sort of creepy photographic equivalent of Laura Palmer.

*Nobody calls it this.

**This isn’t an accurate account of how the Martian got there.

***This won’t happen.  I hear it’s actually impossible to “ooh” and “aah” harder than the punters at the annual Woking fireworks night.

Disposable Iceland.

Better late than never, eh kids?!

Last year I went to Iceland Airwaves in Reykjavik.  I also learned how to spell Reykjavik correctly.  Both of these things really happened and I can’t decide which I’m more happy about.

Alright, I’m slightly more excited that I saw the otherworldly beauty of Iceland.  It was windy and it looked like we were on the moon (yeah, I’ve been there too so I can totally make that comparison…).

 

 

Disposable Twelves.

Yesterday was the twelfth of the twelfth of the twelfth.  12/12/12 is the last date of it’s kind (you know, when all the numbers are all spookily the same) that I’ll probably ever see.  That is unless there are some serious advances in medicine that keep me alive for another 90 something years, but I’m not mega-bothered about being around for that long.  Don’t worry, my kids and my kids’ kids will be handling tings on the Shot Simple front by then.  Don’t you wish you were leaving a legacy like this?  I’m well influential.

Anywho, the following collection of photos are a memento of what life was like the day that all the numbers were the same.  It was a day that was freezing cold, and a bit too dark to not use a flash (or at least that’s what I found out when I got these beauties developed).  It was the last day that I spent working at the same place as my good friend Kevin.  He’s going off to raise his firstborn son in rural Canada, and I’m pleased that these photos will remind me of him.  He’s a great guy.  It was also a day that I went to a rave and then fell asleep on the bus home and woke up at the end of the line/world, or Edmonton.  It was a good day. Except for the Edmonton bit, that place sucks.

Disposable Scotland? and Denmark?

I found this disposable camera on my desk:

I had no idea where it had been and what was on it.  Could it contain material that would change lives and bring nations to their knees?

After a couple of months of letting it gather dust on my desk, I wasted no time in getting it down to the local Snappy Snaps.  They snappily (see what I did there?) developed the pictures and it turns out the camera held something far more wondrous than I could have ever conceived…

So, that was Scotland (I think) and I’m pretty sure we’re off to Denmark in these next pictures…

Done a Google and I’m 99.9% certain that this is the Danish flag!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Disposable Italy.

Summer this year in the UK wasn’t great, was it?  Not in terms of weather at least.  In the middle of September 2012 Italy came along and saved the day and provided summer for two intrepid explorers who were frankly fed up of the constant, nonsensical rain and lack of the much loved and desired sun.  They drank fine Tuscan wines, got hilarious at the leaning tower of Pisa, and walked around going “ooooh” and “ahhh” at the heart swelling, soul jolting beauty of the Cinque Terre.  This trip was not even ruined for them by the rudeness of the gelato vendors or by the time that they went to a restaurant and ate the most unimaginably abominable carbonara imaginable.  They shudder to imagine it now…

Yes, Italy in the later bit of summer 2012 held good times for these travellers.  Two disposable cameras worth of good times, look:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Disposable Paralympics.

I took a disposable camera to the Paralympics and used it to soak up the atmosphere in the Olympic Park, transforming the camera into some sort of sponge for pictures.  And now to ring out the sponge…

This disposable camera was filled with both success and failure.  It managed to make that bizarre bit of red roller coaster look great (something I previously thought IMPOSSIBLE), but it also dropped the ball on some of the inside shots.  One might argue I’m a bad workman blaming his tools here, but I don’t think that’s exactly the case.  When Shot Simple got started I decided not to edit or cut photos.  I promise to deliver all the pictures returned from the developers no matter what.  The result of this might be a mixed bag of pictures, but it is also an honest comment on how things in life sometimes don’t work in a way that is in keeping with what you like or would expect.  Deep, eh?

We went to see the swimming.  It was awesome.  Awesome is a word too often improperly used, but also one that accurately describes the achievements of the Paralympic athletes.

I took a picture of a particularly smiley Olympic steward, and a fella weaing a Union Jack blazer striking a Bolt pose.  These were set to be two of the best shots of the night, but Boots failed to extract them from the camera.  The tragedy of it all is almost unbearable.