2014 was a funny year for me. Maybe not so funny as 1985, 1998, or 2009, but definitively more fun-oriented than the last two years.
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A bunch of friends used to regularly appear on Saturday night. There was always some weed and music in the room. In two of the photographs that form this opening picture, I set the self-timer of the camera for 10 seconds and entered the frame, so the company is here complete.
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Here you can see my friend Emil in various poses, signaling or explaining who knows what ... and in the following shot ...
... you can take a look at the parallel universe trapped inside his sunglasses. It's the same room :) but something in that reflection looks alien and weird. Well, to me at least, when I smoke enough to get in the state of mind that makes ordinary things look and feel deep and surreal.
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Sometimes a book, especially if filled with many pictures can be very entertaining for the weed-influenced mind. Here you can see my friend Zeljko flipping through an old encyclopedia from the sixties, titled SVIJET OKO NAS - which means THE WORLD AROUND US. This is a Yugoslav product of its time, so is very interesting to see the world of that period through a lens of communism. I have to make a post about that book one day. It's a fascinating read. And great to watch too. The design, illustrations, the priorities in the text, and the outlook on various aspects of life - all great, interesting stuff.
In this photograph, you can see my friend Denis, commonly known as @denisdenis here on HIVE. He's trying to catch one of the many squids that were floating around the room on that Saturday night. Squids are very intelligent Cephalopods that communicate through visual signals while changing the colors and patterns of their skin.
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Here you can see another group portrait. Under the hanging lamp this time. I like the way in which that lamp had lit the scene. You probably noticed some herbs and a bit of garlic hanging from the pendant. I don't know about ghosts and werewolves - but vampires are real. That much I know.
In this photograph, you can also see the back and front cover of the WORLD AROUND US vintage encyclopedia.
At that time I was also taking care of one city cat. A friend from Pula went on a business trip, and her pet stayed seven days in my house. You can see it in this photograph taken on that day, in the early afternoon. One of my cats is watching us from the outside.
Here you can see Emil, a little dog called Bepina on his left, and some "clever" cat food on the floor, on his right.
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In this series of four shots, our hands are the main protagonists.
In the right photograph of this oblique diptych, you can see me again. There are differences between that old me and the current one. Not big differences, but still, they are only the same person, not the same thing.
This is Emil again. In one of his iconic cool poses.
This is yet another group portrait taken with the self-timer on, so the scene includes me as well.
I had a pretty bad compact camera back then, in 2014. The thing wasn't so bad when it comes to its quality, although it was too simple for serious photography. The main problem was that it was half broken, filled with glitches, the zoom was stuttering and quite a few options and settings didn't work at all. The good thing about it was that I didn't care much about the well-being of the camera, so was ideal for photographing the parties.
Another great feature was a night shooting mode that delivered relatively clear and sharp greenish pictures in low light conditions. When translated into black and white through Photoshop, those night shots looked pretty cool. Definitely much better than the poor equipment would suggest.
Here you can see Zeljko contemplating some small, unidentified object in his hand ... and also, in the right half of the picture, the illustration on page 80 of the WORLD AROUND US book, that depicts the rainforest ecosystem.
Here you can see Denis and Emil. Although they smoked the same weed, they are in different moods in these two photographs.
Here, Emil is trying to move the ashtray with the power of concentrated thought. On the wall behind him, you can see an imaginary animal from some unknown planet, one of my many evolutionary SF-themed artworks.
Denis brought a bow that night. He had some arrows too. @denisdenis constructed that thing himself. He's always producing some weaponry.
We had some fun with that bow. And we broke a few things around the house, but nothing important was destroyed.
And that's it. The shadows on the wall looked pretty cool, and I have nothing more to say. As always in these posts on HIVE, the photographs are my work - THE END.