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Gallery: pick a word (December)
One of my favourite poems, by one of my favourite poets, is about words. Some may say that’s not so surprising, when I like to use so many of them! And now again I am facing the task posed by Paula in her monthly Pick a Word challenge. Five words, five photos inspired by those words.
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Gallery: seeing the Sage in black and white
If you take a walk along the Quayside in Newcastle you are unlikely to miss the striking building on the far side of the Tyne, in Gateshead. Situated in the shadow of the Tyne Bridge this is a concert venue with two main auditoria, a rehearsal space, a music education centre and a leisure destination with several bars and eating places. It is also a must-see, and must photograph, building!
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Gallery: Himalaya vistas near Pokhara
High in the hills above Pokhara the inhabitants of small villages live much as they have always done. Theirs is a life of hard work, farming a land of steep fields and terraces. But while the work is hard, the backdrop is stunning. I wonder how often they pause to appreciate their surroundings, raising a weary head to gaze in wonder at these mountains as I did?
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Gallery: sunrise over the Himalayas
We’d planned to spend our last day in Pokhara taking it easy. Swimming in the beautiful hotel pool, a walk by the lake, maybe a bit of shopping. But some things can’t be missed, and surely sunrise over the Himalayas is one of those things?!
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In Bandipur, an ancient hilltop town
Strung out along a ridge in the Himalayan foothills lies the ancient town of Bandipur. It has only been fully accessible by road since 1998. The ridge is just 200 metres long and barely wide enough to accommodate the main street and the buildings that line it. Behind the houses the mountainside falls away steeply. The small market gardens farmed by the inhabitants are accessible only by steps cut into the hillside.
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Gallery: last chance to see (or possibly not!)
Tina’s proposal that for the last Lens Artists challenge of the year we share some shots taken in 2022 but not yet shared for any of the challenges sounds a simple ask. But I decided to make it harder for myself by searching out some favourite images not yet shared in any post.
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Gallery: feeling the blues, again
Some time ago I shared some favourite ‘blue’ images, accompanied by a quote from a favourite Blue song. But the world has an inexhaustible supply of shades of blue. So I’ve trawled through the photos from recent trips, and some older ones, to see what blues I could find that haven’t been shared before.
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A walk in a Tharu village
The Tharu are a people of the forest. They have lived for centuries in the lowlands of southern Nepal and northern India. Often persecuted, they have now been recognised by the Nepali government as an official nationality. But their lives are still not easy.
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Gallery: perfect patterns around the world
It could be argued that every photograph is a pattern. A flat two-dimensional representation of a scene broken down into shapes, and each shape into pixels. The technology in our cameras stitches the pixels together to reproduce the scene, while we as photographers choose and compose that scene.
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Ealing, the Queen of the Suburbs?
In 1902 Charles Jones, Ealing’s borough surveyor, published a book. In it he referred to Ealing as the ‘Queen of Suburbs’. His aim of course was to promote the area as a place to live.
