One of the (many) things I have missed during the pandemic has been that little frisson of excitement I feel when arriving at the airport to take off on a trip. Excitement tinged with a touch of anxiety too – not about flying (I love flying) but about the little details of a trip. Have I remembered everything? Did we lock the back door? Are we on time?
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Normally when I edit an image I do so with the intention of bringing out more clearly what I saw when I took it. However, sometimes it’s fun to take things to extremes.
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In recent years I’ve been fortunate to celebrate my birthday in a number of different places. A memorable day in Ecuador visiting Cotopaxi, which was somewhat spoiled by an attack of altitude sickness! An even more memorable one in Ranthambore National Park in India, where a guide promised to find me a birthday tiger – and did! A day spent travelling to the Atacama in Chile, one of my dream destinations. A number of birthdays in Paris, including my 40th when my husband surprised me with a weekend visit. And a lovely birthday weekend three years ago in Lucca, Italy.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
