The village of Narlai in Rajasthan would be completely off the tourist track were it not for the hotel that has been created in the former hunting lodge of Jodhpur’s royal family. It is a small village which faces some of the same challenges as rural communities everywhere. Its population is declining as younger people drift away, tempted by big city life and its wider opportunities.
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'I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.' With this sentence Karen Blixen opens her account of life on a coffee plantation just outside Nairobi. It was the 1920s, and this was British East Africa, not Kenya - part of the (by then fading) British Empire. The book presents a vivid, if at times uncomfortable, picture of African colonial life and the relationships between colonists and native inhabitants.
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The world as we see it is full of colour. So it may seem counter-intuitive to take black and white photos, but by draining an image of colour you can draw attention to its other qualities. Texture, contrasting tones, patterns and shapes can all be more obvious in a monochrome shot.
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It feels as if I have always loved travelling, but where did that love come from? Not my childhood experiences, for sure, although the seeds may have been sown then. My first holidays were of the ‘bucket and spade’ variety, on the Kent coast within easy reach by train of our London home.
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It was the morning after the storm in Pyongyang, and even quite small children, dressed ready for school, assembled on street corners armed with buckets, mops, brooms – all doing their bit to keep the city clean. They were engaged in a civic duty that will be theirs for the rest of their lives. Elsewhere, on the Taedong River that runs through the centre of the city, a flotilla of small boats was gathering weeds that had accumulated, washed down by the heavy rain of yesterday.
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Roswell would be a totally unremarkable town were it not for a single event - an event that quite possibly didn’t even happen, or at least not in the way that many believe it to have done. In the summer of 1947 a local man found some odd-looking debris on a ranch some 30 miles north of the town. Many of those who believe in UFOs are convinced that he had found a crashed spaceship, complete with its alien pilot who died in the crash. Sceptics are equally convinced that it was no such thing. But whatever the truth of…
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The scent of wood smoke hangs in the air. Children play in the dusty soil. Small pigs, chickens and dogs wander at will between the wooden houses. And inside one a blacksmith is at work, shaping a machete over glowing coals. This is Phou Taen Khamu, home to some of the Khamu people, one of Laos’ minority ethnic tribes.
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When photographing flowers I like to get really ‘up close and personal’; to peer deep into their hearts. And if an insect such as a bee wants to join me on that adventure, so much the better.
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Nestled among the dramatic peaks of the Japanese Alps lies the high plateau of Kamikochi; the name means ‘Where the gods descended’. The Azusa River flows through a valley formed by great elemental upheavals, including glaciers and volcanic eruptions, over many thousands of years.
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Sofia’s St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral is not only a place of worship but also a memorial and a symbol of gratitude – the gratitude of the Bulgarian people to the Russian and Bulgarian soldiers who had earned the country its freedom.
