While travelling is always a wonderful treat, part of the pleasure lies in having the memories of the sights seen and experiences lived to look back on later. And the photos of course; always photos! At the end of the past few years, I’ve enjoyed compiling a summary of my travels, so here is this year’s version.
-
-
If like me you enjoy searching out and photographing small details that capture the unique stories of a city, then spotting these relics of Florence’s past will certainly appeal. These 'buchette del vino' or ‘wine windows’ date back to the 1500s when the Medici family allowed nobles who owned vineyards outside the city walls to sell wine tax-free.
-
Opinion is very much divided on the topic of street art and graffiti. Some dislike it all, regardless of the skill (or lack of it) of the artist. They feel it disfigures a cityscape, rather than enhances it. Others love it for its rebellious nature, again regardless of the skill (or lack of it) of the artist.
-
My surprise birthday trip to Florence, a city I’ve long wanted to visit, was naturally wonderful. In three days of rather mixed weather (one wet, one cloudy, one sunny) we managed to see many of its sights (but missed more than we saw), wandered its streets, ate gelati every day and excellent meals every evening, and slept well in a beautiful old house in the Borgo Santa Croce.
-
Last week I paid a brief visit to Liverpool. I stayed only one night and saw only a fraction of what the city has to offer. The weather was dull and grey, best suited to monochrome photography.
-
There are some places that stay with you forever, whether you spend just a few hours there or many days. Places that almost haunt you. Places you long to return to some day. Sometimes you fulfil that longing and return, maybe often. And sometimes you never go back, but never forget.
-
Christiane Ritter spent a winter in the harshest conditions that Svalbard can offer. Living in a tiny hut with her husband and another trapper, but sometimes left alone there for many days. Constant darkness, cut off from the world by snow and ice; her Arctic was not my Arctic. But I think editing some of my photos in black and white has helped to emphasise what sense of bleakness I did find in this stunning environment.
-
The Arctic is a magical place, wild, bleak, hauntingly beautiful. It is also, surprisingly perhaps, full of colour. However there are plenty of scenes that lend themselves to black and white photography too.
-
Who hasn’t been mesmerised at times by the sight and sound of the sea? Watching the movement of waves, whether on the shore or from a ship, can be almost hypnotising, or so I find.
-
Although all black and white photos are monochrome photos, not all monochrome photos have to be black and white. Monochrome comes from the Greek monochromos meaning ‘having one colour’. But why shouldn’t that one colour be green, beige, or orange? Or for that matter, grey, red or blue?
