A Doll's House

Went to the Lyceum this morning for another of the National Theatre of Scotland's excellent 'social media calls'. This one was for the new version of Ibsen's A Doll's House by Zinnie Harris. The media call included someone recording a bit of dialogue for the radio and several familiar faces from the local press pack. I was there on the strength of my 'daily photoblog' rather than as a speculative freelance photographer and so stayed on after the photo session with Eve, the NTS social media person, for a bit of a chat with the writer and director and the one other blogger who was there today. I've been to a few NTS media calls now and they are usually an excellent opportunity to find out a bit more about the play, as well as get some good pictures. In a typical example of Edinburgh's 'big villageness' the other blogger knows L and in fact had a one act play put on by the now sadly defunct theatre group Big Village that I was involved with.
The media call featured a couple of run-throughs of a powerful scene between Nora, played by Amy Manson, and Neil, played by Brian McCardie. This is Amy composing herself afterwards. As part of the media call this time there was the opportunity to get a couple of tickets to see the preview so I will be going to see the performance tonight.

This is also blip number 1000, although as I've described before it's still 100 shy of that number of consecutive blips as I started slowly to begin with. And while my first blip appears to be from December 2009, that was actually a months later backblip when I discovered I'd signed up but not started posting images.
This is what I consider to be my first blip, when I backblipped my college trip to Paris in 2010, having talked about blip with my friend and fellow student seaurchin while we were there.
This is when I started blipping 'properly' - every day without a break.
This was my first Blipday, that made it into the local paper. (Still my most viewed picture I think - small beer by the standards of the stars of blip, but several hundred all the same.)
This got a load of stars and won me the weekly blipthefestivals competition that week and a trip to the Edinburgh Miltary Tattoo.
This was my second Blipday when I got a bit numbers-obsessed.
And this one made it into the See Us selection that documents Scottish Creativity in 2012 and goes up on the wall in the exhibition that opens on Friday in Edinburgh.

For me, blip can be different things. Some days it's all I can do to get a picture up here. Any picture. Just to keep the sequence going. Other days there are so many to choose from. Or I'll got out to take one picture and come back with a load of them. Sometimes I'll take the picture to mark the day. Other times I'll only be inspired to write once I've chosen the image for the day. Sometimes the picture and the text may not have all that much to do with each other as I use blip as a diary and a place to think about things. I tend to return to sport, especially football, politics and theatre quite a bit, but also like to remember other events.

As everyone says on such days, but no less true for that, thanks to Joe for the idea and the guys at BlipCentral for keeping it going so well. Thanks too to all my friends on Blipfoto, some I knew before, others I've met since and some I have never met in person but feel like close friends having shared so many images of our lives. People all over the world. I never seem able to keep up with them all as much as I'd like, and often I'll just look when there isn't time to comment on them all.

So to finish with I'll point you in the direction of a few personal favourites, but you could just as easily dip into any of the blippers I subscribe to or in fact the myriad of others out there.
I've already mentioned seaurchin who got me started. She doesn't seem to get to blip quite as much these days, but her pictures of family life, of skyscapes, of landscapes and of plants big and small so often delight me.

One of the stars of Blipfoto is jkj10 and her fantastic portraits, usually taken with natural light. Another blipper who has broken away from the daily fix, but whenever she posts her pictures are a pleasure.

From the 'first family of Blipfoto, I always like to look out what maxellis is up to.

Blipfoto is great to show you what other people see in your own city. In Edinburgh I always enjoy Lali's World.
And it is also an opportunity to see places you have visited like Akureyri, Iceland or Paris or Oslo.
And places you have never been to like Finland or Russia or, or... I could go on for ages, but should stop now!

Thank you all :-)