We only occasionally get the chance to watch a street artist at work. Somehow these works of art seem to appear almost magically on our streets, created perhaps overnight while we sleep? Some of course take many hours, even days, to complete. But others are much simpler and while they may have less impact still brighten our day.
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How many different kinds of transportation can you think of? The obvious include bikes, cars, planes, trains, boats. Of course our own two feet are a means of transport. Then there are the animals pressed into service such as horses, camels and donkeys. All over the world people make different transport choices depending on local customs and resources.
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One thing I learned during the pandemic was that it is possible to have a good time holidaying in my own country. With travel abroad impossible we turned to UK options and managed to have several lovely short trips in the spaces between lockdowns. And of course like everyone, we explored our immediate area more thoroughly than in the past, seeking out places we’d never previously visited or finding new surprises in old haunts.
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There is something about the idea of a corner. Who knows what might be around it? Whether on a city street or a quiet country lane, there is a sense of anticipation about what might be revealed.
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Thomas Jefferson said, 'The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.' This is a maxim I would do well to follow, but I too rarely succeed in doing so.
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Somehow, getting up early to watch a sunrise is so much easier when travelling. Of course it helps that the setting is usually both more beautiful and more interesting than the rooftops of our London suburbs above which we would normally see it rise.
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How many windows is too many? That was the question facing many seventeenth century property owners. In 1696 a window tax was introduced in England and Wales. The more windows a building had, the more its owner had to pay.
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There may be poetry in motion, but it’s not necessarily easy to capture that poetry in a still photograph. Despite that, we all try from time to time, and there are various techniques we can use.
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Let’s consider how much of your image is occupied by your main subject. Often the answer to that is, quite a lot of it. But you can take this to extremes, either filling the frame completely or leaving lots of empty space around your subject. Both can be effective, in different ways.
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For those of us who grew up in the sixties, groovy was the feeling we all aspired to. Groovy was exciting, fun, cool (another sixties word!) Too young to really be part of hippy culture, it nevertheless influenced my tastes in fashion and music. Getting ‘in the groove’ was where I wanted to be, even if as a schoolgirl I was probably very far from being so!
