I’m not a fan of living in the past. Nostalgia can be a dangerous exercise and too often people look back with rose-tinted glasses at a past that never really existed. But I do enjoy looking through sepia-tinted glasses from time to time!
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When the Spanish invaded and conquered much of the American south west, one of their first acts was to build missions. They claimed they were saving the souls of the indigenous ‘heathens’ but they had a much more worldly agenda. Their motivation was to subdue, control and in due course employ the local population to exploit the resources of their newly acquired territory.
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If you visit a city only to see its famous sights, you are missing out on much of what makes that city what it is. The people who live there may do so against the backdrop of its grand buildings, iconic monuments, parks and so on, but for the most part those things are of secondary importance to their daily lives. If you want to really get to know a city you need also to observe those people.
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Clouds can look beautiful, enhancing any photo of the sky. They can inspire us to see animals, palaces and more hidden in their shapes. And they can give us welcome shade on the hottest of days. But clouds also bring storms, rain and snow. They turn a summer picnic into a dash for shelter, and they hide a view you climbed a mountain to see.
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The Periodic Table tells us that our world is made up of 118 elements. But the elements of nature are different from chemical elements. They were used to simplify the complexity of nature and matter by ancient people.
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When I travel of course I take plenty of photos of the ‘big’ things I see. The landscapes, the city sights, the famous buildings and monuments, the wildlife, interesting people … The list is, if not endless, at least pretty long. But I’m also on the lookout for quirky details. The sort of thing that would never make it into a guidebook and which I come across by chance.
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I have always been drawn to the sea, especially at its wildest. As we made our way along the northern California coast on our recent road trip I delighted in trying to capture its power through my photographs.
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It is relatively easy to photograph a landscape. It doesn’t move as wildlife does, it doesn’t object as a person may do. But to photograph a landscape and be happy with the result is much more difficult. So often the grandeur of what we see fails to translate itself to the image and we are disappointed that the result doesn’t stir in us, or in others, the feeling we had when we were there. But we keep trying!
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When we stayed in Ferndale in northern California in late September the town was already going mad for Halloween. As we walked along the one main street decorators were out adorning shop fronts with orange bunting, placing numerous skeletons on all the buildings, and chatting to business owners about their own additions to the town’s displays. Of course it was all in fun, not to scare!
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Mono Lake is a graphic reminder of the consequences of human activity for the natural world. In 1941, the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (DWP) began diverting water from Mono Lake's tributary streams, sending it 350 miles south to meet the growing water demands of Los Angeles. The impact on the lake was dramatic.
