Keeping things simple doesn’t mean taking it easy. Sometimes it’s harder to leave things out when composing an image than to include them. There can be a temptation to cram everything in, to show it all in a single image. However, often your subject will have more impact on the viewer if it stands alone, free of clutter. This is something I try for in all my photography; leaving the non-essentials out of an image. But sometimes keeping it simple isn’t enough; I want to strip away almost everything to create a truly minimalist image.
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I think I have always liked travelling by train. As a child I lived and grew up in London, so journeys on the Underground were regular occurrences. My childhood bedroom looked out across a playing field to Ruislip Gardens station in the depths of so-called Metroland. Of course there were also childhood journeys on ‘real’ trains. Before my father learned to drive and bought our first car we would take an annual trip to the seaside by train, usually to Westgate on Sea in Kent.
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Most people visit Cape Verde for the classic three Ss: sun, sea and sand. We came mainly for the first of these, in search of some February warmth. In truth it wasn’t as warm as we’d hoped, so maybe it was a good thing we had relatively little interest in the other two.
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I visit Newcastle so often I no longer consider myself a tourist, though local Geordies may disagree! But I recently saw it anew through the eyes of tourists when I hosted a group of former Virtual Tourist members for a weekend meeting in the city.
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Every picture tells a story. But sometimes it’s useful to have more than one picture to expand on the narrative. If one picture can tell a story, what more can three tell us? Here I’ve chosen to focus on some impressive buildings I’ve visited around the world. I’ll show you the overall appearance, share a detail that caught my eye and introduce you to a person or people I saw there. Hopefully this will bring these buildings to life in a way a single image could never do.
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One of the grandest sights on the Northumbrian coastline is that of Bamburgh Castle. It is a view that I never tire of. The castle stands on a massive outcrop of rock and towers over the sands below. Unlike many castles on this coast, it is still a family home, and thus far more complete than the ruins elsewhere. It is truly an impressive sight.
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A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
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Wat Phou is a pre-Angkorian Khmer Hindu temple at the foot of Mount Phou Khao. The Khmer chose this site because the unusual shape of the mountain peak seemed to them to resemble a Shiva linga. Today it was so hazy that the peak was hard to make out, but we had seen it yesterday in the late afternoon sunlight.
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On the slopes of Sandia Peak, above Albuquerque in New Mexico, we found a most unusual sight. As soon as I read about this quirky museum I knew that it was a ‘must see’. We both love those idiosyncratic places that seem to define a US road trip for us; and this is one of the best we have come across.
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There’s a clue in the name! The Cardamom Hills in Kerala are famous for the growing of their namesake spice and many others besides. Peppercorns, vanilla, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and more are grown on the small farms here. But also coffee and different fruits such as banana, avocado and jack fruit.
