Well, I’m now thoroughly miffed!

I wasn’t thoroughly miffed mind you… not until a few moments ago. When I came onto the group blog to check the precise wording of the title for this month’s theme.

Y’see, I hadn’t actually found out what the theme was by checking the blog. Oh no. Darren had told me.
But knowing what he’s like I thought I’d best just check before uploading my contribution.

Which is when I became miffed. For the bloody toerag who’d posted the theme on the “this month’s theme” page had added a remark that’s damn well anticipated my pic. Hence the miffedness.

Anyway…

My pic this month is a bit of a crappy shot in terms of… well… pretty much everything really.
However, all its crappiness is well compensated by the fact that its rich in deep significance, symbolism, and… er… meaning! [Heh heh]

It all started with Darren telling me that this month’s theme was “13″.

“Bloody hell”, thinks I, “Chuff’s done it again!” His previous choice (“Street Antiquity”) had me really scratching my head, and this one just about topped that.
So, I simply have to interject a quick “Congratulations” to Chuff for compelling me to think. Something I try to avoid as much as possible but, let’s face it, that’s what the project’s supposed to be all about. So well done Chuff.

Anyway, I quickly rejected all the obvious things like a pic of the actual number etc…

But then I kept coming back to it. The number that is.

So then I began thinking in terms of the number, and pictured in my mind an image of maybe a calendar page of a big 13.
Elaborating on that I thought “Hmm… what about a Friday 13 calendar page?”.

Which led me to think of superstitions. Have that as the background maybe? Slightly out of focus. With, in the foreground, other symbols of superstition… a black cat; a horseshoe; maybe even a cracked mirror.

So I ran with that idea in my mind for a little while, but then rejected it simply on the basis that it would simply be yet another “set piece” made up of props… and I’m now getting bored with doing that type of shot for the project.

“What I need” thinks I, “is something real“.

But I was still stuck on the superstition interpretation, and so began to wonder what I could “say” about that in visual terms.

Well, here’s what my shot “says” about it…

There are “big” superstitions, and “little” superstitions.

Little ones like not stepping on the cracks between paving slabs, or not walking underneath ladders.
And big ones like those promulgated by so many of the formal religions.
And some things that we don’t even think of as superstitions yet which, to all intents and purposes, nevertheless still are.

Yet they all share one thing in common…

They all serve to limit us, to imprison us in a cage of our own making.
Which is a great shame. For beyond the bars of that cage is a great big world just waiting for us to throw off our shackles and go and play in.

So in my pic we have the bars of this cage (13 of course, just to reinforce the theme!) with the great big world beyond depicted, naturally, by a playground. A kids’ one of course… cos we’re all just big kids at heart.