Photography

This article is considered to be In Character by its author.

Introduction

Photography by Zenariae Havraan

New Eden breathes with beauty, her sights swirl with the shimmering of light and carve their memory into the mind and heart. It's important to remember and understand that even though the great explorers were first, every place is seen anew by each person that stops to linger and admire, study or simply glance. Discovery feels like doing everything for the first time and all our impressions illuminate the surfaces and places we explore and reflect the greater, intangible mass of experience that defines us. My journey began superficially to appreciate the views, the veils and loveliness of nebulae and stars because I became something I never wanted to be, a Capsuleer, but I've come to understand it as a privilege, one hopefully I will not waste.

This is a document of my journey and even when it ends I hope other people will be inspired by what I've seen and the feeling of being filled with light and love and the insight that even in the mundane or the dark we can reveal beauty that makes us feel perhaps not joyful but inspired or moved into improving ourselves, because when we do that, we improve the whole of humanity little by little. This is what photography as art means for me. We can never be free of darkness, but we can be full of compassion that allows us to explore even in chaos the power to illuminate and bring that awareness to other people.

Galleries

Curiosities and Mysteries

Devil's Dig Archaeological Site

The Devil’s Dig archaeological site is located in Otitoh in the Okkelen constellation. This is all very factual yes, and there’s no need for me to repeat what’s already been written about the place but I will add some thoughts on the so-called Sun Reader monolith I observed there, the monolith at Dead End and in those I’ve come across in some wormhole systems.

The New Eden monoliths are bizarre and possess lines unlike anything else encountered in the cluster. From a design perspective they don’t even closely match Talocan technology discoverable near these objects and the CONCORD description stating that they are full of stars is most curious. They show no evidence of decay to the harsh conditions of space, nor do the rogue drones at Devil’s Dig appear to have been able to convert or adapt the monolith to their own technology. This leads me to speculate that perhaps these objects are simply some kind of enormous space installation or artwork or perhaps that they even predate all of the known civilizations of New Eden. Oddly, I also discovered no ancient temple nearby at the Otitoh site that I could discern as a place of worship, only what looked like a Gallente station overrun by drones.

As an artist though I find the monoliths inspiring and majestic and I’ve spent hours simply in quiet contemplation near them. Their highly reflective surface captures the stars and colors of the cluster, rendering a beautiful painting of Maker’s creation and light. Perhaps this is why it is full of stars, in the same way that we gaze upon somebody’s eyes and see the reflection of ourselves within; we see the universe mirrored and illuminated at the cusp of our minds. The Sun Reader disturbed me though in its ostentatious eeriness, its obstinate silence and I fear that looking at it too long may polarize those feelings into an irrational obsession. It's kind of cute though.

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  The Temple?

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  Full of Stars

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  Infested Excavation Site

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  Devil's Dig Site

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  Devil's Dig Site

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Dead End Monolith

Genesis is the origin or the coming into being of something, the powerful act of creation. The Dead End Monolith shimmers silently with a majestic, eerie beauty in the Genesis Region, but reveals no secrets to its mystery, to its origins or how it came to be. Yet it is visible, and the most mysterious of things are often the most visible to taunt us with the reality that humans are so very small and do not know all there is to know. Only Maker could tell us, but that would spoil the journey he intended his creation, no?

Our own origins fall within several jumps of this object in the system of New Eden and ancient travelers from another visible and mysterious object, the Eve Gate. It shines with a blinding, radiant light, defiant against the darkness of space compared to the ossified blackness of the monolith that only reflects light from its surface. The two opposite poles of duality, light and dark, with a sliver of each in the other.

Do I dare to speculate on a connection between these two objects? The obdurate Monolith resembles nothing in design to any of the ancient civilizations of New Eden. What is it made of? Is there something inside? Was it already here when those travelers through the wormhole arrived? Does it possess some technology that opened the Eve Gate for those people? Are we simply an experiment of a silent, watchful consciousness that we cannot even begin to fathom? Only Maker could tell us.

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Wormhole Monoliths

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  Wormhole Horrors

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  A Cloud Obscuring a Sun

Jove Anomaly (Caroline's Star)

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  Vision from the Vale

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Geztic Shuttle

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  Geztic Shuttle

Nebulae

The Dust of Creation

When we think of space it’s only natural to point to a place, speak of a location or reminisce about somewhere visited. As Capsuleers, space defines us and shapes our path and our deeds in the present and beyond. Time doesn’t hurt us in the way that the emptiness of experience does. I would like to think that immortality is not our lot, or anyone’s, in such a fragile and narrow way. The passage of time and death eventually as a human condition ennobles us in the memory of those that follow after and the ones that walk the way with us.

Space to me then is about other people. It is the one thing that allows us transcendence, the becoming of an echo in the memory of those that love and cherish us. Not as an empty and hollow sound though, but as a color floating in the dust of creation, a blossom opening fragrant upon a tree, a stone carried along the river current to a boundless sea, or the gaze of an eye upon a treasure loved. Such things are with us, always.

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  Falling into a Red Sun

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  The Cloud Ring

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  Mysteries of LIght

Flowers

It may seem silly but some nebulae I’ve pondered remind me of the shape and color of flowers, fragile single blooms or a vibrant bunch alive in the void of space. It’s odd knowing that these objects in space came out of great upset, in a supernova or some other cosmic cataclysm. It’s a contradiction and confusion, such beauty from destruction.

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  Black Tsuubaaki

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  Orange Blossom

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  Sortet Spring

Celestial Objects

Shattered Worlds

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  Seyllin

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  3HQC-6

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  35-RK9

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  EAWE-2

The Beauty and Terror of Space

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  A Velvet Moth

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  ERKV-P

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  Pulsar Pretty

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  Rocks

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  Bathed in Light

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  The Cold Wind

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  Bleeding

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  Winds that Shake the Stars

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  The Wind of Night

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  Incantations of Immortality

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  In the Shadow of an Asteroid

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  Lost Clouds

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  Aedre's Orange

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  Gallente Fluffy

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  Rogue Drone Hideaway

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  Rocks Abundant

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  Floating into the LIght

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  Clear Water Springs - Friggi System

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  First Light in the New Eden System

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  A Rocky Bloom

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  CONCORD Swarm

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  Rifts into Obscurity

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  Twilight at the Eve Gate

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  Twisted Rocks

Structures and Human Whispers

Derelicts and Space Junk

The beauty of junk and things degenerating is captivating, a frozen and decaying reminder of our true mortality and there is a lot of it hovering about in space, hazardous to any ship if it happens to pass within a whisker and potentially fatal flotsam to any crew unskilled in navigating its danger. The beauty of the discarded should not be forgotten, but it is an irony that people should suffer the same fate as rubbish. A strange and mysterious loveliness possesses the dusty structures now floating empty and silent that were once witness to forgotten times. What people dwelled in those abandoned halls and what became of their voices? I fear that we will also one day be as a silent memory, erased and still upon the cold void of limitless space.

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  Frozen Corpse

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  Junk

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  Rogue Drone Hive

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  Rogue Drone Hive

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  Rogue Drone Hive

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  Space Junk

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  More Junk

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  Derelict Ruins

Starbases, Jumpgates and Human Habitations in Space

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  Jita 4-4

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  Roden Centre - Seyllin

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  Above the Storm - Samanuni XI

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  EIDI-N

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  Kasrasi

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  ERKV-P

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  Jove Observatory - Esoteria

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  The Serpent's Coil

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  Ruined Stargate

Monuments

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  Ammatar Burial Site

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  Caldari Monument in Luminaire

Anoikis and Sleepers

Unidentified Wormhole

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Circadian Seekers

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A Nightmare in Thera

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Drifters

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Rings of Uncertainty

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Eyes into Infinity and Identity

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Disturbed Sleepers

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Night Lights

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  Polestar and Magnetar

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Self Portraits - A Child of the Wind

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