swarm enough for ya?

Bees are fantastic: they're fuzzy and funny and make honey and look great on orange



but i'd never thought of them as wild -they just seem friendly and cute. I was wrong, of course. I'd never seen them swarm



not only is the size of the swarm impressive, but the noise it makes buzzes you down to the sternum



and when they settled down, they made a HUGE living branch of bees in a tree





but for some reason, i was the only one out there -everyone else in the street went hiding insides



i tell ya, bees are wild. I quite like wild.

freediving photography

Here's a set of my freediving photography. Combining passions doesn't always work -my dad used to say "I like licorice and i like mayonaise, but not necessarily together"- but in this case it is love squared.



The main man responsible for this explosion of images is Rob King, who was kind enough (or mad enough, after he'd seen how i treat my gopro) to lend me his housing and camera. The beginning of a love squared affair.

new world record: the Hecto-Feet-First

It has been a while since i did my last world record, mostly due to the extensive press tour afterwards, but also because of a lack of challenges: it appeared no one was able to eat an apple or take superman pants deeper. In these demanding categories, human kind had reached the edge of what was possible at this time.

So it was once again up to me to set myself a new challenge. My friend William Trubridge had done a fun little dip with a project he called 'the hectometer'



but i figured: "Why stop at meters? Why not feet? And then, to make things really interesting, why not flip the whole script and go feet first?"

As usual, they said it could not be done. But i say it can be Daan! (though my publicist insists i really shouldn't say that) So i went for it: the Hecto-Feet-First. I trained and trained until i had athlete's feet (once again, for some reason, my publicist objects to this term) and felt as ready as could be for this monumental task -never before had man been in this position, so you're never sure if you're actually ready. But late february 2012, on a little island in the Bahamas, new territory of human potential was about to be uncovered:



It was a resounding success, not only of athleticism, but of grace and camera-angles.

As always with these awe-inspiring feats of feet, i hope to entice the world to rethink boundaries, to push limits, to go beyond the comfort of the usual. What else can we do feet first? What else can we do in reverse?

Flip the script, my friends, and you'll get, ehm, tpircs, written upside down.

Kingston Sound Communities

Last month i was involved as a photographer in the Kingston Sound Communities project, a series of introductions to music for various communities within Kingston. The groups were as varied as the borough itself: there were kids, elderly, people with additional needs, women only, mixed groups -a celebration of diversity. The project was set up by Kim Perkins, a fantastic community musician, who led the groups along with Roshi Nasehi, Kirsty Williams and Phil Mullen, in cooperation with Kingston Adult Education.

It was a great joy to do -from being on the floor with the kids to laughing with the people with additional needs to seeing the adult choirs slowly getting comfortable singing together. It culminated in a wonderful concert



and an exhibition, opened by the Deputy Mayor and all (fancy fancy), currently going on at Kingston Market place till april 10th



where Thomas, one of the volunteers, reinforced that old truism that people will always look for themselves first in pictures



For those who can't drop by, but still wanna check it out, some of the work is here

All the Queen's Ravens at Hootananny

Here's 3 of the fantastic All the Queen's Ravens performances last friday at the Hootananny
(interesting effect: due to strange light and Charlie's sun?-what's-sun?-complexion she appears to be black and white)

Georgina Miller, UK pool champ

This weekend Georgina Miller came first at the UK pool freediving championships in Liverpool, with a PB in dynamic of 131 meters and a fat new UK record static of 6:20



here's a video by Sean Peters of her entire static



and she did all this while having to pee and with the entrance boarded up



but more factually, and impressively, she did it while running a physically and mentally very demanding business as a landscape gardener: http://www.georginamillergardens.co.uk/ 



Well impressive lady, that one. And blissfully odd taste in men.

poetry

Sometimes, what you feel inside just has to come out, don't it? While cat-sitting for friends, i felt compelled to share with them my innermost thoughts, feelings and stirrings -i do have those, you know. And it was only fitting that i'd share them in the form of the fridge magnets they use to tell each other sweet things.

This was 2 weeks ago. Yesterday i get this picture send -they had found my words of hope, love and life-affirmation and i'm sure taken it to heart. Or maybe to bowels.


picture by Brittany Trubridge

Gotta love poetry. It comes from deep within, and vacates the body in a peristaltic verbal vowel movement, leaving us satisfied and cleansed.

Some of it is shit, though.

swimming through bubble rings

leaving paradise

Why would you ever leave paradise?



I mean voluntarily, not just with your head bowed in shame because you ate its forbidden fruit. I left because my ticket said it was time to leave, which is a ridiculous reason; it's a schlep and a half to get to the place, getting back is even worse (cause you're traveling in the wrong direction), so you best stay long as you can. But my bank account also went from silently weeping in the corner to screaming its head off, so i'd come to the end of the road anyway.



Now that i'm back to what i guess is reality and normality (with my kind of brain, both concepts are forever in question and rarely within reach), i can tell you a couple of things about paradise. It's an odd place to get into:



but once in there is that sense of infinite beauty



with the kind of views and blues usually reserved for, well, movies about paradise



and some beautiful people





who are there to cherish the blue and the sun



but even the clouds are pretty



and even the rain is sunny



and fantastically fat



the insects are HUGE



the birds tiny



the fish quite sociable



as are the lizards -though they prefer to be outside



whereas the porcupine fish likes to be inside



and the frogs like monofins



the corals are smart and angelic



and can come in the shape of a rubber ducky



of course, this is modern day paradise, so there's quite a lot of plastic shit about



which has its own sad visual poetry



but other than that, it is remarkably pristine and crowd-free



and it seems paradise takes over civilization more than the other way round



so i'm happy to report that the tree of wisdom is safe and sound



and that i obviously have yet to partake from its fruit



but during the journey back into civilization i had a thought



you don't really know about love until you've had your heart broken, or about life until someone you love dies. In paradise, happiness is a state rather than a moment. I hope the memory of that state adds value to future moments.

And i hope to be back in paradise as soon as bank accountably possible.

messing about in Dean's Blue Hole

new entry in the series 'very serious freediving vids'

Georgina and the many shapes of the Blue Hole

Igor Liberti told me about this spot in the Blue Hole, where you can take enormous overview pictures of the whole thing (when the conditions are clear and the visibility is good). He's taken so many great pictures there that they're calling it Iggy's spot. I went down there to take pictures of Georgina a couple of days ago, and what struck me -once i got over the slightly scary doomy feeling of having a massive stone roof hanging over your head at 15 meters deep- are the shapes the hole can make. From some angles it's almost square



but it can also be oval



and there even are triangles



i adore Iggy's spot now, for its mystical, slightly gloomy character, and that sense of almost ghostly space and light it can give you. Hope you enjoy the set