image – OZTHOUGHTS

More strange and disturbing images to fire your imagination

Once again I have found an intriguing collection of images that I hope will be of use to you guys as sparks to your ideas. In other words, I hope that the images below will give you ideas for stories as opposed to using them in stories.

So, lets get started on them……………

Now this is a restaurant with a difference! A weirdly odd and somewhat Edwardian effect. Many years ago whilst on a winter tour of Scotland with the Little Angel Puppet Theatre we found ourselves at John O’Groats which has a truly odd restaurant as well – and when we arrived there, a totally empty place (it was January after all) we were greeted by this odd building and Hawaiian guitar music blaring out of a public address system… All very odd.

One or other of these two odd images should give you ideas for a story….. Though certainly with a Gothic feel I would imagine.

From the sublime to the ridiculous now.

I would imagine that this silly photo could be the basis for a Sci-Fi story at the very least……. Whilst it is a simple bit of image jiggery-poky and is also mildly funny, it could be the basis of a story about a world in which people’s bodies are manipulated for some reason….. What do you think?

This is simply silly…………… But it is a new look at an old legend perhaps?

Now I have selected three more odd or curious images that give me pause for thought, each one of which seem to me to be ripe with an internal story.

What is happening in them and could one perhaps use all three of them in one story?

Well, perhaps one might use the first two in one story, but I am damned if I can see how one might use the third image in the same story as the first two.

And to finish with, here is a collection of creatures that one would not like to come up against on a dark and stormy night – or even on a sunny day come to think of it! I have no idea what or who they are, I suspect it is some sort of Swiss (or Scandinavian) religious ceremony that has been stolen (as is the case with just about all Christian festivals) from a pre-Christian festival. But whatever it actually is all about, it seems to me to be begging for a story to use it as a central feature of the story. So, lets see what you can do with this one!

If any of these images have been a help for you in any way, please do let me know what you used them for.

More Strange And Weird Images To Fire Your Imagination

Once more I look into the weird world of other people’s imagination, this time via the photographs of Erik Johansson who manipulates his photos to create a totally different and obviously impossible vision, also a collection of simply weird photos of real people – which defy the imagination I confess, but which could be the starting point of some very odd stories, so this is possibly useful for teachers to stir the imagination of their students.

So, here is the first of Erik Johansson’s odd world………………..

He seems to be fascinated by this sort of idea, he has a lot of images that have a landscape pouring over a huge drop, for example this one…..

A different take on essentially the same story are a series of photos he has produced that show water pouring from paintings or similar, as in this one….

He also seems to love creating images that are totally impossible in one way or another, and one of his favourite methods of achieving this is to combine reality with an impossible action, as in this one, which shows both an ice-cream melting, but a cut off arm also melting… Odd…………

And as a last look into his strange world, we have his mania for altering perspective, a bit like Escher in this respect, so here we have a totally impossible room to ponder upon……..

And now, to open a real can of worms, a totally extraordinary view of the real world, real people in very strange situations, some of which I am totally at a loss to explain, such as this one… What on earth is that little person?

Or this one….. Another strange and essentially wrong set of people. What on earth are they doing?

And this one simply defies explanation. These people seem to be totally ignoring that very strange little being, though one of them seems to be feeding it… Hmmmmmmmmmm………..

And as the last image, I am totally bemused by this one. The guy dressed in Arabic clothing seems to be signing a serious contract, but why oh why are there three enormous “things” wearing Arabic woman’s clothing? Damned if I know………..

Anyhow, I hope that one or more of these strange images will spark off an idea in your mind and help you to write the Great Novel that you have been struggling to create for some years already.

David Zinn – Creator Of Fantastic Street Art

A friend recently introduced me to the work of David Zinn, an Ann Arbor based commercial artist, who in his spare time goes out with a box of chalk and creates the most wonderful images on the street, simply for the fun of it.

Typically his street art-work consists of whimsical visual jokes making use of street furniture, bricks or any other fixed object on the street as you will see in the images below. Apparently he has been happily drawing on pavements and similar since about 1987, and has frequently been a feature of the various street festivals they have there, more about these in the videos below.

As he is actually a commercial artist, he obviously earns his living from the various creations that he makes, not least being these superb (but temporary) chalk drawings. So he photographs them and turns them into books, calendars and other such useful things, which he then sells via his website.. So if what you see here amuses you, drop by his site and see if there is anything there you would like to own, and make him into a happy man by so doing. Here is the link you need to achieve that:

http://zinnart.com/

OK, so enough of his blurb stuff, what does his work actually look like? Well here is a small sample of the thousands of images he has created over the years on various pavements all over the world.

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Or these……………….

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So now you have a reasonable idea of his work, and have met his main character, the charming Sluggo – that sort of green creature with eyes on stalks. Sluggo, and a flying pig named Philomena are two creatures who figure very largely in Zinn’s work, and are justly both famous and much loved in Ann Arbor where they appear at very regular intervals on the streets. Continue reading “David Zinn – Creator Of Fantastic Street Art”

More Odd Images For Teachers

Here are some more photos I have found that I felt would be useful for language or writing teachers. If you look at the following images, each and everyone of them should spark off ideas in the fantasy of your students be they kids or adults.

I try and find images that I feel are sufficiently strange or thought provoking so that they are guaranteed to make anyone looking at them stop, think and make up a story about how the situation captured in the photos came about.

For instance, look at this one and stop and consider what it is you are looking at. Why is he there, getting something out of the wall, putting something into the wall…? What is the backstory behind his being there in that strange and empty place? What country? When? and so on.

As you can see, an image such as this can lead to endless questions, and thus, if handled correctly, can generate an almost endless stream of ideas.

Or what to think of this one?

What on earth is that guy doing? It seems to me that there are almost endless possibilities in this image. Why has he apparently dug a small hole in an apparently perfectly good road surface? I can imagine that it should be possible to write a short story based on this image, one that probably gives away the reason for the man poking his head into that small hole in the very last sentence of the story?

Continue reading “More Odd Images For Teachers”

Curious And Odd Images

Once again I have made a small collection of images that I think could be useful as idea generators, pictures that kids could easily use to set their fantasy off in order to write entertaining and quirky stories. And of course, not only kids, all sorts and ages of us could use one or more of these images to be the start point of a story.

This is a photo of what Brisbane used to look like, which is not really important. The reason I chose this image is that it shows a town that was very much a frontier town, farm animals wandering around the street, a mud street you may note… So it seemed to me that there must be dozens of stories lurking in this straight-forward looking photo…

Go for it, and let me know what you (or your students) make of it please.

This is plain weird…. Apparently it is a photo of a gang of KKK idiots on a group outing…. What fun they all seem to be having – or at least if they were honest (and brave enough) to show their faces it might be possible to see how they are all laughing and having a great time on that Ferris Wheel… Anyhow, politics and decency to one side for a minute, this is an epically odd image seems to me, and once again, surely any of you could find a story in it?

Apparently this is a photo of an abandoned Lunatic Asylum, has to be a story there I feel….

Continue reading “Curious And Odd Images”

Strange Images For Creative Writing

Continuing my search for images that might be useful to give kids the needed nudge to start to write creatively, here is a collection of extremely odd images of even odder people doing odd things.

To be honest, most of these images seem to me to be completely impossible to find any sort of rational explanation for, but that is precisely why I have chosen them, as in order to explain them one needs to let fantasy rip, and venture out into the uncharted regions of one’s imagination.

You see what I mean? Try and find an explanation for this one that is not totally insane.

OK, even Yetis need to get to work I suppose……..

Don’t even ask what she is doing!!!!

This must be part of some sort of Balkan or Scandinavian folk dance?

Um, yes…………………….

No idea! But I find the creature on the left deeply worrying…. And why on earth would she want to sit on a small alligator I wonder.

Continue reading “Strange Images For Creative Writing”

More Curious Photos To Play With

Here are some more images that I thought might be helpful to you teachers to get your student’s minds moving. Show them one or more of these and suggest they use them as a starting point for a story. In fact these images can be used by anyone for a similar purpose.

And for the rest of us, well, they are simply curious, and thought provoking. At least I find them so. All of them were taken in the 19th Century, some as early as 1820, and none later than 1890, so all the people in them are now long dead and buried. This is an aspect of such old photos that never fails to move me. One gazes at the features of these people, and wonders about their lives, their hopes and dreams, and were their lives good ones or sad ones.. did they live to a ripe old age, or did they die the day after the photo was taken?

So many questions are asked by these images – endless material for thinking and creating.

So here you go… A load of images, with no explanations about any of them,as I prefer to leave that up to your imagination.

Continue reading “More Curious Photos To Play With”

Odd And Curious Images

Here are another load of odd and intriguing (and mostly inexplicable) images that might be used to spark off a creative writing class in a school, or simply to give your imagination a challenge – What on earth are they all about????

I shan’t attempt to put any sort of title or comment by these images, but simply bung them here and leave it up to you to make of them what you can…. So let your mind go free and see what you can make using these images.

Continue reading “Odd And Curious Images”

Amazing And Intriguing Image

In my continuing search for weird and wonderful images that might help teachers inspire their students to flights of fantasy in their writing, I have just found a truly wonderful one.

There absolutely has to be a story in this image, any red blooded writer would be able to put together at the very least some sort of short story about what on earth was happening in this church out in the middle of nowhere – apparently.

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Please do come back and let us share whatever this image produces…. I am intrigued to know what young and fertile minds might make of it.