So here I was, away from the town I had grown up in, ended up back in, and back in the city I had left.
Let me explain that. We had moved from Vancouver to Barcelona, the pandemic forced us to move from Barcelona to the tiny town I grew up in, and then once we realized we wouldn't be going back to Europe any time soon, we started making our way to the coast, ending up in Vancouver, the city we had left.
Make sense?
Well anyhow we were back in Vancouver, eventually to make our way to Vancouver Island where we planned on living for the for seeable future. We were full of optimism and hope, tentatively positive and seeing the sun shining for the first time in what felt like a very long, very dark time.
One of the great positives of going to Vancouver is visiting with some of our best friends in the whole world. They have two little kids and are the most incredible family, we love them to death, and cherish every moment we can spend with them. We stayed at their house for a few days while we were on our way to the island just to spend some time with them, and while we were there my friend told me about and old abandoned mansion nearby that was in the process of being torn down.
He wanted to go explore it and take some photos with the family, an idea we were all for, so one day we went and wandered around the area taking photos of them and the kids. It was awesome.
While we were there I thought that it would be a really neat location to try and continue my project, so I told my friend to help me out and the next day we headed over to the spot.
We walked around the area looking for some locations that I had thought might work, and we decided to start with the abandoned tennis court. For this first shot I set up the camera as usual on self timer and just started walking. It wasn't quite was I was going for but I think the final product works ok.
My friend had the idea of The Manager playing tennis with his briefcase so we found an old tennis ball and he did some throws to me while I tried to smash it with the brief case. You can just barely see the ball in the center of this image.
We explored the tennis court a bit more, and I looked for some more angles.
Eventually my friend had the idea that I try pulling around the ancient automatic ball thrower machine so he took some photos of me towing it around. It was surprisingly heavy, and the rusty old wheels were tiny.
I really liked this location and I feel like the decay, overgrowth and filth of the place really added something to the photos. Maybe something psychological, or maybe some kind of statement about life and work, trading your time for money, the temporary nature of physical things, the fickleness of wealth.
Being in this broken down decaying old mansion complete with private tennis court, swimming pool, custom built fountains and gardens, in a city as expensive as Vancouver, was definitely a strange sort of experience. I think it adds an element to this project that I really like, though to be honest I don't feel I captured the full potential of it.
Maybe with some more time, dedication and planning I could have made something really incredible there, but we were on a deadline headed to Vancouver Island, and we wanted to spend time with our friends and try to relax more than work on my silly projects. So in the end I got what I got there.
That's not to say I didn't get anything I love. After this we headed to the swimming pool, and towards the end I managed to work on a few other ideas I had for this place. But that's for another post I think, this one has already gotten long enough.
As always thanks for reading this far! I hope you enjoyed the photos. I'd love to hear what you think of the project as well. If you want to see more photos from our travels, some other projects, and some of our professional work feel free to follow me @dexter-k on Hive.
If you're interested you can check out Part I of this project here: @dexter-k/the-manager-or-how-i-tried-to-make-something-out-of-the-most-depressing-episode-of-my-life
Part II here: @dexter-k/the-manager-part-ii-how-i-continued-my-project-of-walking-in-freezing-snow-barefoot
And Part III here: @dexter-k/the-manager-part-iii-exploring-new-places-and-different-ideas
As a side note like with my other recent posts I'm going to set payout on this one to liquid using reward.app. I'm going to be investing my rewards into @holozing. If you haven't heard of Holozing yet you can see what it's all about by following the community here: trending/hive-131131. It's an upcoming web3 game developed by @acidyo that I'm excited to join. I recommend you check it out, and get ready for the upcoming launch! I've been earning Zing from staking, HP delegation and liquidity pools for a few weeks now and I really think this project is going to be a success, so go check it out!