Keeping things simple doesn’t mean taking it easy. Sometimes it’s harder to leave things out when composing an image than to include them. There can be a temptation to cram everything in, to show it all in a single image. However, often your subject will have more impact on the viewer if it stands alone, free of clutter. This is something I try for in all my photography; leaving the non-essentials out of an image. But sometimes keeping it simple isn’t enough; I want to strip away almost everything to create a truly minimalist image.
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Most people visit Cape Verde for the classic three Ss: sun, sea and sand. We came mainly for the first of these, in search of some February warmth. In truth it wasn’t as warm as we’d hoped, so maybe it was a good thing we had relatively little interest in the other two.
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We have had a cooler than average May, although not with many showers until the end of the month. But the flowers are here in abundance! It was time to get out and about with my camera.
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Every picture tells a story. But sometimes it’s useful to have more than one picture to expand on the narrative. If one picture can tell a story, what more can three tell us? Here I’ve chosen to focus on some impressive buildings I’ve visited around the world. I’ll show you the overall appearance, share a detail that caught my eye and introduce you to a person or people I saw there. Hopefully this will bring these buildings to life in a way a single image could never do.
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A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
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When our first lockdown was introduced in March 2020 I knew I was going to find the coming weeks (as I naively thought then!) rather tough. I would miss my social life, my cinema visits, my travels and little treats such as coffee or breakfast in our favourite local haunts. I also knew that I would be helped enormously by focusing on the smaller pleasures of life: a sunset, a pretty flower, birdsong, a message from a friend …
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There’s a clue in the name! The Cardamom Hills in Kerala are famous for the growing of their namesake spice and many others besides. Peppercorns, vanilla, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and more are grown on the small farms here. But also coffee and different fruits such as banana, avocado and jack fruit.
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The massive radio telescopes of the Very Large Array, 27 of them, rise majestically out of New Mexico’s vast, otherwise almost empty, Plains of San Augustin like visitors from another world. But these are not visitors from another world, but searchers for such a world.
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Brick Lane, in London’s East End, was once among the poorest slums in the capital. It takes its name from the 15th century brick and tile production based in this area. Like all poor city districts it became a magnet for various groups of immigrants over the centuries. First Jews, then French Huguenots, then Irish established communities here over the centuries, and later Bangladeshi-Sylheti immigrants settled here and made the street famous for its restaurants.
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Who hasn’t explored a building, maybe an impressive fortress or palace, and had one of those ‘wow’ moments as you emerge from the darkness of the building to an arch or window revealing the lightness outside?
