Month: January 2015

Santa Monica

Santa Monica most iconic landmark is its pier with its own Ferris wheel.

A Ferris wheel that never made it to the world’s tallest ever wheels as published on Wikipedia.

Here is the list of the tallest ever pleasure wheels:

  • 1893: the original Ferris Wheel was 80.4 meters (264 ft) tall. Chicago, US. No longer available and a city I have not visited yet.
  • 1895: the Great Wheel was built for the Empire of India Exhibition at Earls Court, London, UK, and was 94 meters (308 ft) tall. No longer available.
  • 1900: the Grande Roue de Paris was built for the Exposition Universelle, a world’s fair held in Paris, France. I did visit the Eiffel Tower, which counts as another iconic landmark in the city of light.
  • 1997: the Tempozan Ferris Wheel, in Osaka, Japan, opened to the public on July 12, and is 112.5 meters (369 ft) tall. I did visit Osaka, but did not take a ride on the Ferris wheel.
  • 1999: the Daikanransha at Palette Town in Odaiba, Japan, is 115 metres (377 ft) tall. Hmmm. I should visit Japan again.
  • 2000: the London Eye, in London, UK, is 135 meters (443 ft) tall. Check !
  • 2006: the Star of Nanchang, in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, China, opened for business in May and is 160 metres (525 ft) tall. Added to my Todo list.
  • 2008: the Singapore Flyer, in Singapore, is 165 meters (541 ft) tall. I really need to visit Inna and Harri.
  • 2014: the High Roller, in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, is 167.6 meters (550 ft) tall. It opened to the public on March 31, 2014, and is currently the world’s tallest Ferris wheel and has just been added to my new addiction of shooting Ferries wheels. Probably.

Pleasure Wheel

Let me know below in the comments if there is a different “Ferries” city I should add to my To Do list …

 

A New Hope – Part II

It has been awhile.

Almost 4 years ago a new “little” creative project was born here on this same spot when Me2 was introduced into our family.

While our “little” companion did not yet had its own website(s), he soon started to engage in my own IG account and spam my Facebook timeline with his plastic pictures.

One of the most epic shoots of Me2, never published on IG, is Me2 and the Sfinx shot at location in Malta, still available here on my own “livefeed”.
It was the beginning of a new era in Plastic.

Soon thereafter Me2 got his own IG account, followed by Flickr, WWW, SmugMug, Twitter, … (the whole package) and our little friend got wings of his own. Clearly separated from my own doings.

I have never made a secret here I am part of the Creative Crew behind this little fellow, yet Me2 has been kind of secret about it, putting rightfully the focus on himself.

When we were discussing the year ahead in the latest selfie shoot of Darth, Me2 flagged to me I should get more actively engaged again (he needed some “outing”) as he would have difficulties in getting his own ESTA approved to visit the USA. I must admit I was slightly flabbergasted.

A little plastic man of about 4 cm that has no problem in getting to travel to The Death Star™ and Beyond™, and post pictures on IG needed me for an ESTA.

Why ?

And then he told me.
He got himself not only stuck in plastic, he also got himself exposed in an art exhibition.

In Seattle.

I am soooo very proud to announce that Me2 (and so his  Chief Creative Crew Member, read me) got an exclusive Art Exhibition in Seattle together with Shelly Corbett (aka xxSJC) and Vesa Lehtimäki (aka Avanaut).

Darth
Running errands for Big Inc.

Expect some more Plastic in this New Year.

Me.

PS. If you are close to Seattle, Planet Earth do reserve the date. March 5th.

Turnaround

Turnarounds are scheduled events wherein an entire process unit of an industrial plant is taken offstream for an extended period for revamp and/or renewal. Turnaround is a blanket term that encompasses more specific terms such as Inspection & Testing, debottlenecking projects, revamps and catalyst regeneration projects.

Turnaround can also be used as a synonym of shutdowns and outages and 2014 has just gone into such a turnaround while 2015 is taken online by Planet Earth.

In Belgium we used to have a tradition of giving the turnaround mission statement in what most people call their New Years Resolution.

I am not going to turn this post into a promise of absolutes, with no more wine, commitments to daily gym sessions and only healthy veggie juices instead of caffeine for breakfast or committing to run half a marathon (these are just the healthy ones).

No such absolutes.
I am not taking myself into a full stop turnaround.

Yet I do want to take a next step in my creative passions in 2015 and take my photography to the next level.

A level I will be sharing here with you.

For now, I wish you a perfect turnaround into 2015.