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Gallery: a tangled web
I am always on the look out for interesting details to capture with my camera. I find it fascinating when the everyday can be made to look beautiful or remarkable when only a small part is picked out by my lens.
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Another slice of North Korean history in Kaesong
Kaesong is unusual among North Korean cities in having not been largely destroyed during the Korean War. It is also noteworthy as the only city to have changed hands as a result of the armistice agreement, having been part of South Korea from 1945 to 1950 until the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement brought it under North Korean control.
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A stroll around Las Vegas
No, not THAT one! Did you know that there’s another Las Vegas, in New Mexico? But unlike its more famous glitzy namesake this one is an appealing mix of slightly down-at-heel with trying-hard-to-revive itself.
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Gallery: looking on the pink side
We all know pink as the colour of romance, and most of us think of it as girly. It is also considered calming; paler shades of pink are sometimes used in prisons to calm inmates. And apparently sports teams have been known to paint the opposition changing room pink to make their players passive and less energetic.
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Gallery: the colourful street art of Brighton
When the Prince Regent (later King George IV) built his seaside retreat in the small fishing village of Brighthelmstone in 1842, he didn’t know what he was starting. Or maybe he did? After all, all the fashionable world of his time followed his lead in everything, so it was only to be expected that they would follow him to the town that soon became known as Brighton.
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Gallery: converging lines and the vanishing point
The number one rule of perspective is that lines that are parallel to each other appear to converge to the same point in the distance. This point is known as the vanishing point.
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A rare glimpse of history in North Korea
Once upon a time a king consulted geomancers to find the best place to locate the tomb of his beloved wife. The first one he asked recommended a place that, when he went to inspect it, seemed to him very inappropriate. So when he went to look at the suggestion of the second geomancer he was wary. He told officers in his revenue that he would climb the mountain alone to check it out. If they saw him wave his white handkerchief it would mean that he was displeased with…
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Gallery: the street art of Pioneer Square
Pioneer Square was once the heart of Seattle, home to the city’s first permanent white settlers. But in 1889 their wooden buildings burned in the Great Fire of Seattle, to be replaced by imposing brick and stone ones in the then-fashionable Romanesque Revival style of urban architecture. Today it is a vibrant district with plenty of street art.
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Gallery: the monks of Luang Prabang (a life in orange)
You only have to spend a few hours in Luang Prabang to see why this town regularly tops lists of travellers’ favourite places. Its laid-back vibe, its historic royal palace and perhaps most of all its beautiful Buddhist temples, over 30 in total. What struck me was the way that the monks and tourists co-exist, with full respect among (most of) the latter for the traditions of the former.
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Gallery: the perfect simplicity of a spiral staircase
Sometimes (often?) photography is more about serendipity than anything else. A purposeful photo outing is enjoyable of course, and often reaps great rewards; but arguably we derive the most pleasure from finding an unexpected subject for our lens just by chance? I visited a London gallery that I hadn’t been to before. The exhibition was not especially inspiring, but I fell in love with the gallery's spiral staircase. Or perhaps more accurately, I fell in love with the photographic possibilities it presented.
