To Be Free Is To Have No Fear

To Be Free Is To Have No Fear

I'm as bad as anyone else, really.

I spend too much of my time trying to improve things, to make something better, or to upgrade - whatever the 'thing' is, there's a new one, and it looks better than whatever I've got. And this time of year just amplifies that feeling, many times over. Every second email shouts 'New! Shiny! Buy!'

But when you look around - really look - it's hard to miss the fact that actually, there are much bigger problems to solve in the world than the tiny incremental improvements I could make to my own life…

What We Love

By Patrick La Roque

The year of Trump and Kander's visual riposte, inescapable. The year of my mom's slow and painful passing. The year of Tokyo and Cologne and Brussels. The year of old and new friends. The year of Bowie and Cohen and Brubeck and Prince and Glenn...newsreels and soundtracks grinding to a halt in fits and starts and bitter scratches. 2016 has been a year of paradoxes: taketh, giveth, taketh away again.

Well, fucketh.

Below are the ones that matter, the things that bring me joy, the big and the small. As we wind down the year I'm standing defiant, right here, my feet firmly planted on these quaking grounds. I'm looking tomorrow square in its face, ready to begin anew. Ready to fight 'til my fists turn bloody and my legs give way.

What we love is all we have.
What we love is the ultimate celebration.

Moments of Cheer

By Kevin Mullins

As we come to the end of a very busy year for myself, both personally and professionally, I'm drawn back to a single day in March.

I'm not a gambling person, but once a year I head to the Cheltenham Festival or racing.  I'm always drawn to those that seem to have so much resting on a four legged beast as it rumbles over the turf.

It's been a year of turmoil for many, with huge choices being made in the political world, and for me, personally and professionally.

But one thing will always make me smile.....and that is other people smiling.

Keep smiling folks, and have a very wonderful end to 2016 and a most prosperous 2017.

Lose Yourself

By Flemming Bo Jensen

In that moment,
Everything feels right.
We are all in this together.
Celebrate the music.
Dance your cares away.
Worry's for another day. 
Music is the answer.
To your problems
Keep on moving
Then you can solve them.
Music sounds better with you!

(Credits/inspiration: Human Traffic, Eminem, Fraggle Rock, Danny Tenaglia, Stardust and others I may have forgotten) 

8XDEC16

OUR PERSONAL CHOICES THIS MONTH

Lost Lives

BY BERT STEPHANI

Time Gone By

Bobby Wellins | Saxophonist | 1936 - 2016

Photography & Text By Derek Clark

The jazz world lost another great musician last week. Tenor saxophonist Bobby Wellins passed away at the age of 80. I had the chance to photograph Bobby on the 23rd of May 2013 during the recording of the Culloden Moor Suite CD with The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra. These are the pictures I shot that day for the inside of the gatefold CD. We talked saxophones while he waited for the next take. Bobby found it interesting that I play sax and photograph musicians. It was a privilege to speak to him and an honour to stand a few feat away while he recorded the sax parts.

There's been a couple of times during the three years of shooting this jazz project (I don't even think I can call it a project anymore. It's just what I do) that I have questioned my motivation. Am I done? Have I got to the point where I'm shooting pictures I've already shot? Is this important in Scotland? After all this isn't New York or Paris during the jazz heyday. But I stick with it because I always come back with at least a few pictures that I'm proud of and that I would happily hang on a wall. I get to meet and photograph jazz legends from the UK and abroad, people that have been part of my Record/CD collection for years. But above all else, I get to shoot pictures for a few hours while listening to some of the most beautiful music I've had the pleasure of hearing. There hasn't been a gig went past that I haven't just stopped taking pictures and closed my eyes to hear the music. I mean REALLY hear the music.

It's so easy to get lost in the technical side of things while we're photographing whatever is in front of our lens, the aperture, the shutter speed...etc. But we need to set it and let it be sometimes. We need to take in the moment and witness it not just as photographers, but as human beings. Time is linear. It's here, it's gone and it will never be repeated. This could be the last day for any one of us, young or old. Live it like it was!

Tommy (Smith) put together a montage of my pictures from that day and set it to one of Bobby's tunes (below). I watched it in my car and realised, beyond all doubt, that the pictures I capture of this great music we call Jazz, are important!

Viva Las Vegas

Text and photographs by Charlene Winfred

At sunrise, the only beginning is the blear of eyes from an all nighter.

This is the city that never sleeps.

Here is where it's all possible: the rise and fall of fortunes, where night is the real day, and day is little more than a prelude to the opportunity of neon infused fortune.


This is the city that never wakes.

Where each step through the passage of time is a slip of cotton stamped with a grave man's countenance.

Time, money. Money, time.

If you have enough of one, you think you can buy the other.

In this city, more than most others, that which glitters looks a lot like gold.

Passing of Time

By Kevin Mullins

This month, we are looking, in the loosest sense at the passing of time.

I've spent a lot of time recently in London, which is around two hours from my home.  I live in a medieval village, in a 300 year old cottage.

Whenever I go to London I'm struck by the change that is happening, constantly, to the city.

These images haven't been shot consciously for this month's assignment.  Rather, they are a collection of snapshots that I felt helped me visually tell some kind of story about the passing of time that seems to be happening in London.

Wherever you go, you will see modern architecture squeezed in next to buildings of some kind of historic interest.

It offers a visual juxtaposition that is everywhere, when we open our eyes to it.

Time passes, that can't be helped, but I hope, given time, the historic elements of our great cities are allowed to remain, and breathe, in a cluttered architectural world.

A Question of Time

We live in interesting times of great contrast. Light versus dark. In the grand scheme of things, it will all be over in a blink of an eye. Right here, right now, it is easy to feel like Frodo.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” - J.R.R. Tolkien