Iceland is geography

I went to Iceland a month ago, and was agog looking at the landscape. Iceland is a living geography lesson, with amazing landforms all over.

So, a game of spot-the-landform - Geysir hot spring, a hill (don't know its name), Gullfoss waterfall and Faxi waterfall.

And some more - Kerið crater, Strokkur geyser, Hvítá gorge and another hill (don't know its name either)

I made my photos black and white because the weather was mainly grey during my visit - except for Sunday, when the sun came out, and colour emerged: blue waters at the Blue Lagoon, and Reykjavik harbour

Transbritannia

Flights from London to Iceland fly over a lot of water, a little part of Iceland, but mostly over the length of Britain.

Take a look at these aerial photos of mountains, valleys, islands, cities and towns - mine are mainly of Scotland and the north of England, because it was cloudy down south.

Glasgow airport

The Firth of Forth, and Forth Road Bridge
The iconic Forth (rail) Bridge is just about visible in background, behind clouds.

River valley in Scotland
I haven't been able to identify this one.

Stornoway and Isle of LewisStornoway is in the left middle-ground.

Loch Linnhe
Two photos of Loch Linnhe - one of the north-western edge, and one where its two sides nearly meet.

Robin Rigg wind farm
I identified this as it was the only wind farm with 60 turbines.

Liverpool, the Mersey and Birkinhead
The lower half of the photo is Liverpool.

London » Lyon

I went by Eurostar from London to Lyon in November, full of plans to take photos of the journey - until I realised my camera's battery was empty.

So instead, I took out a notebook and got drawing the sights and landmarks the train passed - here they are as one animation.



Once I got to Lyon, I charged the camera and explored the sights - taking these photographs.

Cork to London, from above

I've been flying back and forwards between Cork and London for nearly 6 and a half years now. Inspired by my last post with google maps screenshots of geographical landscapes, here are a variety of aerial photographs taken on my many flights between Ireland and the UK.

Britain from above

The first book I have read from my New Year reading list is Never Eat Shredded Wheat, which is all about the geography of the UK.

As the author described various features, like oxbow lakes, moraines, cliffs and so on, I looked them up on Google Maps (because aerial photography is great).

So here are some screenshots of fantastic British landscapes from Google Maps - I didn't keep a record of where these all are, but if you want to guess, leave a comment.

2012: Read of the Year

My big New Year Ambition this year is to read - specifically, read the long list of books below.

I've been keeping this list for years, and never really making headway into reading the books. I tend to get distracted by books in shops, libraries and end up reading them instead (in itself, no bad thing).

But this year, I'm reserving 2012 to read these books - and hopefully finding most of them in libraries too.

Charity paintings

Ages ago (before I started working there), I did a painting course at the Horniman Museum.

At the end of each class, there was usually some paint left over on our makeshift palettes (cereal packets). I hate to throw unused things away, so I would get this paint and smear it on to paper in the hope it would make interesting patterns and pictures.

And then I held on to these "paintings" for years...

A few months ago, I was giving some small picture frames to a charity shop, and thought how much nicer they'd look with images inside them.

So I dug out the paint-splash-paintings, added some circles, and put them in the frames. Here they are...

I wonder who bought them, and what they make of them...

Juraj's map of Slovakia

Even though it took me some time, I didn't have to look far to find someone to draw a map of Slovakia.


Juraj, who I work with, was happy to draw this great map of Slovakia. 

This takes my tally to 41 with only six countries to go: Monaco, San Marino, Andorra, Bosnia, Cyprus and Moldova.

Philipp's map of Luxembourg

There aren't many Luxembourgers in the world, but some of those in London meet at a pub every month. I went along, hoping to find someone to draw me a map.

The friendly gentlemen I found there happily helped, taking it in turns to draw the perfect map.

Luxembourg, they said, was shaped like a shoe on its side.

Phillippe's map shows some of Luxembourg's cities and towns including the small village Schengen which gives its name to Europe's open border visa arrangement. So three cheers for Luxembourg, the powerfully petit Grand Duchy.

Thomas Struth @ Whitechapel Gallery

I went to see the Thomas Struth exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery.

Many of the photographs in the show are of city streets and urban landscapes. In some cases - like New York, Tokyo, Las Vegas - the architecture tells the location.

But in many, the architecture doesn't give away where the photograph was taken. The photographs lined up side-by-side highlight the same-ness of buildings, and (mainly) Western European architecture. It could be anywhere.

Only the street signs, the shop signs, and advertising gives clues to where the picture is.

Maybe it doesn't need to be obvious from the architecture where these streets are, but, somehow, it feels a little sad that it's not...

Notebooks are go

Remember the notebooks that I'm selling on Folksy? They're made from unused envelope paper, and covered in lovely old map paper.

I'm going to be selling them at an eco-event called New Gallery Jumble this coming Saturday 20 August - it's at 92 Peckham Road, sort of between Camberwell and Peckham, from 1pm until 5pm.

All the details can be found on facebook here, so do drop by if you can!

Steve's map of Malta

About six weeks ago, I put some ads up in art shop noticeboards hoping to find people to draw maps. And happily a reply from Steve from Malta popped up.

I met him the other day and he drew this lovely map of Malta.

"Malta looks a bit like a fish," Steve told me. I'd never noticed it before, but Steve - who is an illustrator and designer - obviously has a good eye for detail. He has also put in the original Maltese names of the islands Comino and Gozo.

We spent a nice couple of hours talking design, London, accents, geography, Scotland, African fabric, and all sorts of other interesting things.

He has a great website here: http://www.leftylemur.com with some excellently interesting design projects.

---

So now the idea of a new map of Europe is taking shape - I've only eight more maps to collect, with 'leads' for several of them. But the tiniest are the trickiest: Andorra, San Marino, Monaco! I may have to take a trip.

Baki's Kosovo map; Ladi's Albania map; Nikita's Czech map

I took a trip to Kilburn to the Queens Arms pub, which has recently become a centre for Kosovars and Albanians in London.

There, I met Baki and Ladi who drew their maps of Kosovo and Albania for me.

(Things were a bit complicated: all these guys were Albanian, some of them from Kosovo. So I asked Baki from Kosovo (who is Albanian) to draw Kosovo, and Ladi who is Albanian to draw Albania...)

Both were part of a group celebrating a friends' birthday. I stayed with them a while and had a wide-ranging conversation about tourism in Albania, Serbian women, mad people in Ireland who support Nazis, the NHS and how the name Adrian is very international.

Later, I realised that one of the bar staff came from Czech Republic, so asked her to draw a map for me. Nikita's response was, "are you really serious?" but she drew this great map anyway.

Gaļis' map of Latvia

In search of people to draw maps, I recently went to 72 Queensborough Terrace, a Latvian guesthouse and bar. There I met Gaļis who drew this map.

Gaļis was born in Liepāja where there are beautiful beaches. He has been living in London for 5 months, and wanted to practice his English, so we chatted for a while.

"You are most welcoming to stay," he said, encouraging me to spend a very fun/random evening, which included the following:

• A man who was considering visiting friends in Kyrgyzstan
  
  
• A man conducting anthropological experiments. I took part - he asked me to stare into my eyes in a mirror for 10 minutes. Weird.
  
  
• A strawberry cider called Fizz!
  
  
• Latvian versions of Cabaret and Those Were the Days with satirical political lyrics.
  
  
• A woman sat next to me. She told me that so many times others had tried to "con-queer Latvia". But she didn't let it bother her.
  
  
• I spent an hour talking to a man called Zinters who had fled Latvia after World War 2 to go to what he assumed was a safer Germany. From there, he was moved to England in a government guest worker scheme, working first in Yorkshire, then in Scotland. During the 1950s, he moved to Dublin, trained at the Royal College of Surgeons, worked as a brain surgeon, but eventually moved back to London. Later, he spent time in Uganda working under Idi Amin, left there, retrained to be a radiologist and eventually settled in Mansfield. Wow.
  
  
• One of the final things Zinters said to me was, "Ireland: it's for the Irish, but Britain: it's for everyone".