Photography Adventure #3: Meadow Magic

August 10, 2015 Dorija Parsley

From my left way up to the dark sky and down on my right I see the borders of our galaxy. The milky way all blooming in an August nights gloom. I live my dream - I live at the sea. Not only at the sea - I live IN the sea. Helgoland isn’t set at the water, it is far away in the north sea and contains out of sea shores as it is such a tiny piece of land. Often I make a late night run or walk around the island just to remember where I am and what my personal paradise feels like. while letting some music on my earphones give the rhythm to my steps, with my hips I start invisibly dancing. The beauty and whole sense of living here is to have the treasure just seconds away from the home door. It is above fantastic to be able to reach the beach and escape to the meditation zone within minutes.

When I go out past sunset it is like going to my very own personal Church. Here is where in my mind I pray in positive vibrations rather than thoughts, and above all I sense gratefulness. Here I sense - God remembers what I crave for, and I don’t really need to think in sentences. Stars replace candles, last bits of the setting sun replace all the golden framed imagery and the the smell of salted waves seals the whole deal of sacredness.

My Church feels more like a safety zone that way. I remember my own dreams and my real me doesn’t have to hide anymore neither fit in some kind of shapes.

The lighthouse scans the sky in ever same steps reminding us of how far away we actually are. The windmills in the far north join my earphone music with their collectively blinking red lights.

When I start heading home I am clean and free again. Super free, filled with air and freedom for the eye in such a tiny closed pinch of land miles and miles away from mainland. No real place to escape, and yet feeling more free and connected than ever.

How ever life goes on and no matter how much longer I stay here, this island will always stay the place for me, where I found peace and for a few seconds there decoded the sense of life.

Photos underneath of when Indre Winterrain was visiting and we went out for more photographic adventure.

Photography Adventure #1: Blue Smoke

July 13, 2015 Dorija Parsley

a few years ago i discovered Tumblr (for those who don't know - it's a blogging platform for all sorts of media, but mostly used for images. this platform is used a lot to re-blog other people's images on the own tumblr blog; and so at the end you have a blog mainly with a collection of images from anyone who once shared an image on the web or on another tumblr blog). those image collecting tumbler blogs - which offer an on-growing collection of images dedicated to a certain theme, or colour, or mood.. - those are addicting. since i was writing my Bachelor theses, and then later my Master thesis, i kept on looking for tumbler blogs like this on the web just to distract myself and get lifted up a little bit from the grey studying monotony. i would say around 60% of the time that i actually had dedicated for my studies that day went on jumping from one image blog to another. just watching, scrolling, getting one inspiring moment after another. at that time i was admiring and observing and thinking 'oh wow! oh wow!.. oh wow....'. there were photographies and drawings i had never seen in any album, in any exhibition, any photography book. it would be images of dreamy meadows, girly things, flowers, witchcrafty details, mountains.. its hard to just describe. today i can say this activity pretty much shaped my eye for what i want my photography to look like. the aesthetics, the compositions, the mood and colour combinations. at the end of this post i will put a few link examples for what i mean.now after have said all of this i am very happy to say that since recently i started creating more and more images on my own. usually in the past and of course still with a pleasure today i captured images on my travels and weddings the way i found them or the way i saw them. today more and more i try to put things and people in a scene and challenge myself with certain uncontrollable conditions. these images bellow are a result of one recent experiment: putting a person in a scene in a pre-defined outfit in a pre-chosen location at a certain time of a day. adding a requisite to all of that, like a colourful smoke torch that i don't know anything about but had seen it on many of the tumbler blogs mentioned above . i am starting to feel deeper satisfied with the fact that i am getting closer to the image aesthetics which i have admired so much once. i can actually be a creator of one of those dreamy image.

now these are a few of the images i created together with Indre when she recently visited me on my current home - the island Helgoland.

as promised i am sharing a few of my most influential imagery blogs:

http://fiebre.tumblr.com/ http://shawnlowe.tumblr.com/ http://www.carissagallo.com/ http://juliatrotti.tumblr.com/ http://cabinporn.com/ http://madfuture.com/

now of course todays Pinterest and Instagram had made it a bit different and i mainly scroll through those sites today instead of Tumblr. yet it's just a little tribute and a thankful thought that i dedicate the creators and participants of Tumblr ,-)

Helgoland Friday

July 11, 2015 Dorija Parsley

oh how delightful it is. the silence, the calmness of island life. sometimes is does get on your nerves a lot, but then again, in those good mood moments and days, life is so blissful and beautiful on an island..on a friday afternoon i met Nadja for a tour in the Helgoland ornithological station - second oldest in the world. in there many voluntary helpers work for the sake of gathering information about the most seldom bird kinds of Europe and World. they help the wild breeding couples with their babies, like the guillemots, which jump out of their nests into the water in order to learn to fly (they actually jump into the sea so they can learn to fly from there and survive on the fish they find on the surfice of the water). the little hour of nature joy was followed by a delightful best friday night Bulgarian dinner which Nadja made specially for me. pure relaxing, pure joking, talking sense and nonsense.. and water-colouring!

Nadja is in love with this picture and the magic of lens aperture =)

i love this one picture on the right with the casual relaxing legs. i love the little details of the couch cover and the socks. hyper coziness when i see it. and then i lit the candles, so the water colouring could start.

a little jump to the day before. on Thursday we went out to watch the storm and waves around the island as we had a storm passing this area and cutting off any ship connection to the mainland for two days. so, wearing a winter coat again, we walked around the edges to experience the wind playing with our bodies and all sorts of greenery.

these water coloured flowers actually made me think about painting beautiful things again. and do it happened the night after.

back to Friday. after leaving Nadja's place i saw the sunset hour coming closer, the water so still after the stormy days, fresh summer breeze back up again. i decided to go for a kind of a sunset run session which was constantly interrupted by the beauty of every corner - i needed to stop and snap a picture on my phone. after all, all i can say is - i love this island, i love being a part of this nature, i love to be so much excited by the sky every time i go for a run. i love to be interrupted by the crazy sheep standing somewhere on the hill in bizarre compositions. right now - i just adore the smell of the rose hip along the beach. it's insane that this can be and is my nearly every day life at the moment. i recommend it to everyone. cities are great, but this - water all over in the horizon, sand on my skin, the greenery smell, seashells on strings.. this is actually the life environment i was wishing for. and somehow - i got it.

i wish all a good weekend.

ps: and leave some thoughts in a comment. i always appreciate <3

Boys from the North

April 6, 2015 Dorija Parsley

last week something nice happened. as a result of wind knots, opening hours and the speed of taken steps it meant to happen. two boys with their little sailing boat from the Norway fiords had to make a stop in Helgoland till the wind and storm passes the island. they got stuck in here for a week which led to some nice dinners, funny talks and sunset watching. now listen to this while you keep on reading and scroll down for a little iphone and camera photo mix.

here's a little fact. in Norway, or at least some parts, people actually say 'Helgoland!' as a gentle creative replacement for their word 'Helveta' which means hell. as it is a swearword the elderly ones try to protect the children like that, of course. i find it simply bizarre - the name of this one tiny one kilometre small island to be used somewhere in Scandinavia all the time for this noble (well..) reason. b i z a r r e .

* moon over the ocean *

now i'm following these two on their journey down to the Mediterranean Sea for another few months on facebook. just to add a little personal pinch to all this story - sometimes some things happen at the most needed moment, this was the case for me. dearest boys from the north - thank you so much for your company! you both reminded me of dear things for my heart.

A Book of Helgoland: In Tante Julies Haus by James Krüss

January 28, 2015 Dorija Parsley

Good Afternoon!

it's raining and it's windy on Helgoland Island once again today. For this what can be a more perfect time to get a cup of tea, lit a candle and get a book into your hands than this stormy nordic wintertime? maybe while still in bed cozy and warm.

I love children and juvenile books. I love Dr.Seuss and I love some lithuanian kids authors. I think though children literature is inseparable from the illustrators contribution. A great story or a poem when accompanied by a successful visual interpretation can strengthen the joy to read and lead the fantasy to even farther, even more intense dreamy places.

though I must admit i haven't done much reading recently, yet a few books found their way into my hands. and i am very glad about the coincidences that led me to get to know the work of James Krüss - a master of rhyme and one of greatest fathers of german children literature. And by all means a genuine treasure of Helgoland.

“In Tante Julies House” is the one perfect example how letters and drawings meet on each other in such a magnificent way!

James Krüss created this one beautiful house full of cozy things and authentic rooms, which belongs to Auntie Julie – a happy-go-lucky little folksy lady with a charming way to gather people around in her house and create beauty and poetry with them. (In some later years I could totally picture myself as Auntie Julie, just read and you’ll understand.)

But it gets even much more exciting to read when you have actually been on and had seen this tiny island. Krüss describes places and streets, long time rooted families and legends. Even though he actually writes about the old Helgoland he grew up in – a time between the two world wars, and unfortunately I must notice here that Helgoland was destroyed completely to it’s grounds at the WWII – you can feel a slightly bit of a familiar breeze in the air coming from one of the beaches when reading James Krüss if you are actually on the island at that moment of reading. I myself enjoy imagining how streets and architecture had actually looked like at that time. and while walking the coast and watching the cliffs one might even relive some of the described scenes in thus book.

Meanwhile the other important thing to notice is how great the illustrator Marei Schweitzer got the spirit of the described house and the told stories. Tiny little sketches go along with the pages, sometimes picturing the whole book character crew sitting in one of those theme rooms in Aunty Julies house at night, traveling somewhere deep in their own creative dreamworld.

For me I cherish the illustrators ability in this exact book - she puts little maritime pencil-like sketches all along, give a very atmospheric, very certain good mood which accompanies you all along the reading.

some iPhone macro lens captures.

ps: the book is in german, I don't know wether it’s possible to get it in english but at least for my german (speaking) friends and readers I absolutely recommend it!

pps: all iPhone photos edited with VSCO and some made with a Macro iPhone lens.