Photos from this morning. Pollen and blossoms on a plank of wood. Simple but visually appealing.

More photos from today and two from yesterday below (see entire post).

And two from yesterday:

Yesterday afternoon.

Yesterday evening.

I recently got excited about the beauty of life and death and time as represented in skeletons, after finding the skull of a small mammal.

Happily, my recent fascination in these abandoned structures was indulged once again today upon finding a tortoise skeleton… Only it wasn’t completely abandoned — it had become a living community for other shelled creatures: snails!

What I found most striking, structurally, was how fragile the outer shell layer was. I was expecting a sort of hard enamel, a sort of marble solid covering affixed in one large piece — but its shell is attached in delicate, individual segments, more like human nail only coloured.

See all 5 pictures I took today on FlickR.

Went for another stroll and took some more pictures, which I have added to the batch I took the last time.

I’m at my parent’s house for a while and I took some photos this morning. More at flickr

Our train – one of many to arrive that day – shows up at the station and a sea of orange becomes a drop in the ocean of supporters already in Basel.

I was in Basel (Switzerland) yesterday to watch the Netherlands v Russia game with a few (mostly dutch) companions.

Apparently there were over 120,000 dutch supporters who descended upon Basel simply to support their team.

The Netherlands lost the game, but all my pictures were taken before the match, and the city was completely awash with orange (the national colour of the Netherlands). There wasn’t a single Russian supporter to be seen.

More photos after the jump.

At one point during the match there were three people cheering for Russia amid an entire square full of dutchmen, but it turned out they were all Germans.

Most people were already extremely drunk by the time I arrived at midday. Unfortunately for me the city was literally so packed full of people that it was bloody difficult to even get a beer, despite the many vendors.

In any case, it was wild – I’ve never witnessed such concentrated nationalism and excitement… and drunkenness. And the noise was incredible. It was like a statewide contest to make the loudest most annoying sounds by any means possible. And they gave it socks.

Above are some of my favourite shots, but there are some more here on flickr. Also go to that link to see any of these bigger.

I visited Heidelberg today with Justin and Kasina. I took some pictures. They’re on FlickR.

I’m in Tübingen and i’m online! Here are some photos of my stay so far.

I’m at my parents’ new house in Mallorca, for the Christmas period.

Today I rambled around the fields behind the house and took some pictures of dead animals’ bones (rat’s and sheep’s). Makes me glad i’m still in control of my own.

You can click the images to get a bigger version.

More after the jump.

I uploaded two new photographs (both to flickr and deviantphoto).

I had already uploaded most of the better photographs from my London trip to flickr. I’ve narrowed down the selection even more and uploaded the best of the best to my photography page (that is, via deviantphoto.eu):

http://jonathan.beaton.name/photo/

I determine which photos to upload here by first finding all the ones of merit, and then removing all the clichéd and uncreative ones. I do the same for the ones I upload to flickr, apart from the second screening process. So the ones on my site are the ones I think are particularly good, whereas the ones on flickr are just valuable memories that may or may not have artistic merit.

I went to an African Drum Workshop in the morning. It was really good fun! The effect of a whole room of drums is intense! Very powerful. I have an african drum at home (a djembe), but before now it’s been more of an ornament – despite being a good quality, fully functional instrument.

In the afternoon I went to the Makeup for TV/Film Workshop, and we basically just played with facepaints and airbrushes for a few hours. I took loads of pictures. I gave myself a StrawberryClock “tattoo”.

Click here to see the (now-complete) flickr photo-set.

A fun and productive week, I feel! If you completely ignore my appalling lack of actual academic work at college.

At lunch time (after most of my day’s classes), I sauntered on down to the Trinity Arts Festival’s Balloon Workshop thing. I thought I’d just snap some photos of people making balloon animals, and then head back to college for the rest of my classes.

I ended up staying there for almost 3 hours (missing a dutch class). It was great… I took photos, and updated the TAF photo set I made on Flickr:

After that, I went back to college with an inflatable sword and Pluto the dog under my arms, and attended an impressively boring German History lecture.

By the way, the guy who did the workshop has a website. Check out his impressive balloonery! Yes, he refers to himself as the Balloonatic.

Then I went and saw “For Your Consideration” on a whim, and fell asleep during it. I woke up as the credits began to roll. I have no idea what happens in the film after the main exposition.

Then, I went to the first TCD Filmmaker’s Society Screenwriting peer-review meeting (it’s not really called that – it’s not really called anything. That’s just the best description I can think of). There were five of us. We read eachothers screenplays and discussed them. It was very good. Now I really ought to finish my screenplay(s).

Tomorrow I’m going to try and attend more TAF things: An African Drumming Workshop and a Film Make-Up Workshop. And I’ll be taking pictures of course.

My favourite of the pictures I took today.

Some students were singing in Trinity’s front square today as part of the Trinity Arts Festival that’s on this week. Photographic Society members (hi) were called upon to document as much of the Arts Festival as possible, and this was the only event that I’ve been free to attend so far (since my timetable is chockablock).

I’ve uploaded a bunch of the pictures I took to Flickr. Click here!

I might update that photo set, if I attend any more of these events this week.