Pre-prayer ablutions at Eminonu Mosque

Pre-prayer ablutions at Eminonu Mosque, originally uploaded by somuchsoul.

I love this photo, taken on a recent trip to Istanbul. The little boy on the left wanted to copy the adult men and wash his feet too but quickly got fed up and decided to watch instead.

Oslo Opera House

A beautiful work of ar(t)chitecture...

...set against the natural beauty of the fjord.

Visit http://www.operaen.no/

The sidewalk critic / the art of looking upwards

London: the daily grind, the constant pace, the constant fervour. It is a living and breathing entity with emotions, feelings and moods, just like you or I. Does London reflect mood or cause mood? Is my own fate dependent on its fate? We shape it over time, we mark it with signs, paint it with art, decorate / demolish / rebuild. At the same time the city shapes us. It gives us personality, memory and purpose.

Lewis Mumford, New York's 'sidewalk critic', once said the most beautiful thing about cities. He said that cities are a product of time, a fact of nature and a place where mind takes form. Adding “With language itself, it remains mans greatest work of art.”

Lost in thought and surrounded by strangers, somewhere between Hackney Central and Dalston Kingsland, a peeling patch of graffiti on an old brick wall reminded me of Mumford’s words. Someone’s imprint on the city – I don’t know its circumstances, its author, its purpose. But it has caused me to think about it and is part of my own consciousness now. Would that old wall have caught my attention without it? I doubt it. Would the graffiti have had the same impact on me if it wasn’t for the wall? I’ll never know.

Unique and imperfect details cover London; they cover all cities. Look sideways, look upwards (the image above shows an off-kilter square in Alexandra Palace's roof), downwards – they’re there. They are what makes the city appealing: at once both brightening the mood (mine and London’s) and providing a focus to counter the daily grind.

Paris, February 09

Graffiti, Paris style! I love it! I spotted this while taking a detour down a narrow side street just off the plush Boulevard St. Germain. This interesting piece of street art was above an Accessorize shop. Parisian subversives sure understand irony-:) Angela Davis would be proud.

Umeda Skytower

Umeda Skytower, originally uploaded by Paul Knipe.

Just west of Osaka station is the Umeda Sky Building, a 40 story skyscraper that looks like a vast postmodern triumphal arch. Circular windows adorn the viewing gallery and they're like portholes onto a sc-fi metropolis. Rail networks dissect the city, raised expressways snake around buildings and through skyscrapers, helipads sit like jaunty crowns on the tallest structures. These two elderly Japanese ladies observed the scene in total silence. I still wonder what they were thinking. I took this with an old pocket sized 5 megapixal camera.