World Culture 4 - The United Kingdom (4/1-4/7)

[ZapperZ]

World Culture 4 - The United Kingdom

We continue our running theme on major world cultures, and this week, it will be on the UK. The United Kingdom consists of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. So any clear and distinct theme depicting the culture, society, culinary, architecture, symbol, etc. are valid for this contest.

Please make sure that the photo shows a clear and unambiguous depiction of the theme, and not a "modified" version. For example, a picture of corn beef and cabbage will not qualify if the intention is to depict a cuisine of Northern Ireland. On the other hand, if you've personally snapped a photo of the Queen, then that qualifies.

Good luck!

Contest Rules:

1. Any digital photo or digitally-scanned photo relevant to the theme will be accepted within the contest period. In case there's a gray area, or you're not sure if the picture is suitable, check with me first.

2. Please resize your digital photo to no more than 800 x 600 or 600 x 800 pixels. You may also crop your picture if you wish. You are also allowed to adjust the brightness and contrast of your picture but these should not dramatically alter the look of the picture. But other than those, any form of picture editing or modification is not allowed. This is a photo contest, not a picture editing/special effect contest. You may add a watermark or your name/nickname to the photo for identification purposes.

3. Upload your photos to any of the photo servers such as imageshack or photobucket. Then post it the relevant contest thread and link your picture using the img command. PM me if you do not know how.

4. Only ONE picture per member per contest. Once a picture is posted, it cannot be changed other than a total withdrawl by that member from that week's photo contest. Exceptions will be made for modification to comply with the rules, such as resizing.

5. At the end of the contest period, I will open a poll and every PF member can vote for the picture they like best.

6. Note that in case we have a large number of entries, I will do the polling in more than one thread. If that's the case, you can vote in each of the polling threads. The photos will be assigned in the polling threads in the order they were submitted.

7. The photo of the subject must be something that you took directly, not via in intermediary medium, and not taken by someone else. Unless otherwise noted, a photo of another photo, painting, print, etc. does not qualify.

8. You can use a picture only once. Once it is used in a contest, it cannot be reused in another contest.

9. Please post only pictures meant for submission in this thread. Photos not meant for submission must not be posted in the contest thread. Posting of more than one photos by a member may result in an automatic disqualification from the week's contest.

Zz.

 

[OmCheeto]

...On the other hand, if you've personally snapped a photo of the Queen, then that qualifies.
...

Yay!

She's the one in the doorway, in blue. Circa 1982. Victoria BC, Canada​

As far as I can tell, this is the most expensive photo I ever took. It cost me roughly $600 in lost wages.

 

[AlexCaledin]

The new restaurant "Caledonia" in Samara, Russia.
http://kaledoniya.ru/
("Caledonia" is written in Russian; it's the ancient Latin name for Scotland.)

We have the "Churchill" restaurant here as well, with a "Whiskey Bar"
http://churchill.perfecto-group.ru/

 

[ZapperZ]

Uilleann pipes.

Zz.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Wolfson Microelectronics, headquartered in Edinburgh, UK

 

[jtbell]

From my second visit to London, in 1978, on the way back to the US after a trip through Scandinavia. Arrived from Holland via overnight ferry to Harwich, spent two nights in this hotel near Victoria Station before flying out.

The first visit was on the same trip, going in the other direction: flew in in the morning, took a double-decker bus tour, then the train to Harwich and the ferry to Holland. Didn't even spend the night!

One of these days I'll go back and do a proper visit.

 

[epenguin]

This was a difficult one. For the national culture thing one looks for something iconic and a number of readily recognised icons do suggest themselves. But they would tend to be iconic of London, or England or Scotland etc. But the UK? More difficult. Then I was struck that nothing could be more iconic of Britain than something like this. I use a photo I happened to have taken in 2011. I am not in the UK at the moment, but if I had been I could have gone out in any British town of any size and taken a worthy photo with the same specific theme.

I could have offered, staying in theme a far more colourful photo – the happening with the mass of red poppies at the Tower of London commemorating the WW1 centenary in 2014 that is probably quite widely known around the world. This did come in for some criticism and debate however. Anyway I decided this theme is not about a spectacle. Also for that reason I did not try to improve this photo, the the fact of the everyday dull surrounding is also in theme, although the majority of these monuments are given more elevation. They are usually of the ‘Tommy’ in fighting gear wearing his 'tin hat’ often burdened with his knapsack etc. This one however also represents in the bronze plaque you can see naval forces, and in the one on the other side are air forces. Where the scale and circumstances permit there is often a complete list of the names and dates of the local fallen of WW1 and often WW2 and other wars.

Ideally a picture should tell a story. This does but needs some additional comments. To avoid any cross cultural misunderstandings I should stay straight away that these monuments are not triumphalistic, or militaristic, nor are they ever misunderstood as such in Britain. Some account of them is given in the following quote from the art critic AA Gill, from an article in the Sunday Times 10 November 2014, actually in the context of the above mentioned controversy.

"The British memorial monuments to the servicemen of WW1 are something unique and with few exceptions do not have equivalents in other countries. This must be because the experience of war was more of a shock to The British than to other nations who had conscription and such massacres part of their expectations and indeed experience. It is hard to chose words that will not be attacked by somebody, but these monuments are to the heroism and sacrifice of an ordinary citizen army. We often pass then every day and being so familiar we are often not thinking about anything or noticing - but now and then we do notice and think, as we would probably not for a more rhetorical monument.

... War memorials in the sense and the form that we assume they should take were invented after the Great War. Not by artists, or at least solely by artists, not by chance or cultural osmosis, but by committees of men: civil servants, soldiers, architects and the great and the good, who felt they had a sacred duty to get this thing right after so much that had gone wrong. It was a collective and socialist endeavour. What they decided was that the memorials should commemorate and be centred on the sacrifice and the death of ordinary soldiers.

This was a new form. Before the Great War almost all military memorials were to generals or to classical evocations of victory — usually naked. Britain’s war memorials are noticeably and humbly more fit for purpose than those of any other European country. The British war graves, with their military precision and calm ripple of gravestones, the cap-badge reliefs of regiments invoking counties and distant countries, and through them other wars and the sad tide of national history, are unparalleled. The French tend to operatically expiring soldiers (poilus) collapsing into the arms of weeping angels. And the Russians have their colossal, belittling supermen

He comments two memorials very many people must have seen: the often remarked memorial in Paddjngton station and goes on

But Jagger’s greatest masterpiece is the artillery memorial at Hyde Park Corner, inarguably the finest piece of public statuary in the capital. Jagger understood the importance of kit to ordinary soldiers, how vital having stuff was. His men are laden with the stuff of war. They are the antithesis of the ethereal, classic nudes. They are transformed from clerks and engineers, from ploughmen and factory workers into soldiers by the mechanics and the business of war. All soldiers recognised the practicality and importance of these men.

The Tower of London happening I mentioned drew very large crowds. There I overheard a little girl of about 4 ask 'Dad, are all the people in the world here?'
'I think all the British people are' he replied.

 

[ZapperZ]

Final day to submit your photo for this contest.

Zz.