The purpose of this page is to let you know about me as a person, and what I do apart from my 10,000 hour photography project.
Lovely wife, dog, no kids = spare time, slightly obsessive personality, bit of a geek, but also run and go to the gym (OK, some geeks do this too), play golf, have a good set of friends, do all the usual social things apart from watching sport (although always grateful for tickets to Internationals at Twickenham), like good food, fine wine, and mix a gin & tonic that would anesthetize a dinosaur.
To indulge my inner geek, I’ve decided to share some of my top 10s as of 2017 …
Books:
- “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” – Stephen Covey
- “Tuesdays with Morrie” – Mitch Albom
- “Outliers” – Malcolm Gladwell
- “Quarantine” – Jim Crace
- “Creativity, the psychology of discovery and invention” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- “Godel, Esher and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” – Douglas Hofstadter
- “The Fabric of Reality” – David Deutsch
- “Plumdog” – Emma Chichester Clark
- “Mind over Matter (The epic crossing of the antarctic continent)” – Sir Ranulph Fiennes
- “The Jeeves Omnibus” – P G Wodehouse
Films:
- Pulp Fiction
- A Fish Called Wanda
- Gathering Storms
- Locke
- A Knights Tale
- Dinner for One
- The Godfather
- Leon
- I Daniel Blake
- Blade Runner
Art
- Pablo Picasso – cubist work, e.g., Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, etc.
- David Hockney – “Joiners” – Photo montages
- Gustav Klimpt – The Kiss, The Woman in Gold, etc
- Piet Mondrian – work post 1930, e.g., the Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow
- Salvador Dali – surrealist work including The Persistence of Memory
- Rene Magritte – surrealist works such as The Son of Man
- Georgia O’Keeffe – Flower Paintings
- Paul Klee – Colour theorist work such as Castle and Sun
- Edward Hopper – Nighthawks
- Edvard Munch – The Scream
Classical Music:
- JS Bach – Toccata & Fugue in D Minor
- Maurice Ravel – Bolero
- Sergei Prokofiev – Dance of the Knights from Romeo & Juliet
- Antonio Vivaldi – 4 Seasons: Spring
- Tchaikovsky – The Death Scene – Swan Lake
- Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphony 9 “Ode to Joy” – particularly as performed by the Opera Babes
- Carmin Burana/ Carl Orff – O Fortuna
- Karl Jenkins – Quirk: Allegretto from Palladio
- Sergei Rachmaninov – Piano Concerto No. 3
- Max Bruch – Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor
(Slightly more) Contemporary Music:
- Pulp – Common People
- Shivaree – Goodbye Moon (from Kill Bill)
- Ami Winehouse – Rehab (Pharoahe Monche remix)
- 5 Year’s Time – Noah and the Whale
- Killing me Softly – The Fugees
- Adele – Make You Feel My Love
- David Bowie – Life on Mars?
- Plain White Tees – Delila
- Eminem – Stan
- Van Morrison – Brown Eyed Girl
As mentioned before, the above are quickly assembled lists of what I consider to be my favourites at the time of starting my 10,000 hour journey of art education.
These lists will, I hope, change.