About Thomas Fitzgerald

Thomas is a professional fine art photographer and writer specialising in photography related instructional books as well as travel writing and street photography. 

A Fun Week (Not)

A Fun Week (Not)

I want to apologise for the lack of updates this week. I've not had a very fun week. What started out as someone coughing on me in a line at the bank, turned into a cold, which I then thought was becoming the flu, ended up as a bad chest infection that had me taken to hospital by ambulance the other night with a fever and a ridiculously high heart rate. Special thanks to my Apple watch for the heads up on that one.

Still, it was my first time in an Ambulance so that was fun.
A little Bouncy.
The photographer in me was thinking: "Hmm, I could get some cool shots in here" while simultaneously being embarrassed at all the commotion while also kind of terrified. Oh well, chalk it up to another experience.

Unnecessary Dramatic Ambulance Shot added purely for effect! 

I do have a tendency to see the funny side of things after the fact, although I wasn't really laughing at the time. For example, in the clinic I went to first, the Doctor took a look at my pulse and was convinced that I had taken drugs or something.

He kept saying to me: "Are you sure you haven't taken anything? Cocaine?...."

Well, I've never been accused of that before. I didn't know whether or not I should be insulted that he thought I looked like someone who would be doing cocaine. Damn you holywood stereotypes!

He then decided to send me to hospital via an ambulance. In my mind I'm going back and forward between being worried I'm having a heart attack to thinking, "could I not just get a taxi?".

Apparently not.

When I got to the hospital, between being hooked up to various cables and tubes, I was distracting myself by pondering a very deep question. Why can't they standardise the term for emergency departments. In the US it's the ER. In the UK it's A&E (Accident and Emergency). Here we seem to be calling it the Emergency Department, or the ED (in this particular hospital any way). Is it just to be different? More importantly, why am I spending so much time thinking about such things at a time like this.

At one point this older doctor, (or nurse, I wasn't quite sure, they were all wearing the same colour scrubs) who seemed to be randomly walking about the ED glanced at my Heart monitor and with a sarcastic smirk said: "Hmm, that's a bit high isn't it" and then walked off. I guess he thought he was being funny.

I on the other hand, did not think that.

Eventually after several hours and some IV antibiotics and fluids they sent me home.

Anyway, the up shot of all this is that my week of carefully planned blog posts and photo shoots has kind of gone out the window. I did spend some quality time on the couch watching you tube videos of camera reviews in between re-watching "Friends" on blu-ray. Hopefully, your regularly scheduled programming will resume next week!


Things to photograph when you're stuck at home: Toy Photography

Things to photograph when you're stuck at home: Toy Photography

Using Photoshop Plugins in Affinity Photo

Using Photoshop Plugins in Affinity Photo