Keeping up my resolution of taking at least one photo a day was very easy in the first part of February and much less so towards the end of the month. For the first two weeks we were in Costa Rica and I was in travel photography heaven – and overload! When we got home however the weather was cold and I was jet-lagged. It was hard to get motivated to look for images among the familiar scenes of home after the novelties of travelling.
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I started this year with the intention of doing the 365 challenge, taking and sharing at least one photo a day. Having seen a reference to Blipfoto as a platform for this, I signed up; only to find that what I thought was free membership actually carried a fee after the first month. Sneaky! So I abandoned Blipfoto and with it my short-lived challenge. Instead I thought I would share some of my favourite January images here.
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If you have lived in a city for a long while, maybe all your life, you find yourself photographing its sights less and less, however lovely there may be. Do I really need another photo of the Tower of London? Of St Paul’s Cathedral? Of the river Thames?
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On the outskirts of Nairobi is a very special place, where orphaned baby elephants find safety and refuge… Thus I started a blog post last May about the amazing work being done at the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage. Imagine how thrilled I was when many of those residents made their way, in sculptural form, to London’s Spitalfields Market!
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Although we love to travel, we have always spent Christmas at home in England. Not for us the snowy ski slopes of the Alps, or the tropical shores of the Caribbean or Far East. Tempting as the latter sound, we save trips to warmer climes for February, when the long chilly season is really dragging. Christmas is a time for the comforts of home, and for family.
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When the Domesday Book was written, in 1086, what is now the pleasant London suburb of Ruislip was known as Rislepe, ‘leaping place on the river where rushes grow’. The book also tells us that it had more pigs than human inhabitants. These pigs roamed the extensive woodlands; and Ruislip Woods remain to this day, although smaller than they once were.
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If you want to find street art in London (and I mean LOTS of street art) you could do far worse than to head to Shoreditch. This trendy (albeit some say ex-trendy) district is a mecca for enthusiasts, both those who create and those, like me, who go to admire.
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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.
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The Gardens at Kew in west London date back to the mid 18th century, when they were founded by George III’s mother Princess Augusta. Today the gardens’ plant collections are the most diverse of any botanic garden in the world.
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Artist Ben Wilson is the ‘Chewing Gum Man’. While he has produced many other artworks, it is his minute and detailed creations on discarded blobs of chewing gum that have brought him fame. And one of the best places to see them is on London’s Millennium Bridge.
