I think we humans must always have considered flight as something magical. After all, we can travel easily over the ground but without some supporting device are unable to leave it. Consider how many mythical creatures have the power of flight, from fairies to winged horses to dragons.
-
-
There’s a temptation when we travel to try to cram everything in. To see every sight, explore every street and alleyway, visit every museum even! We fear we’ll go home and regret having missed something that others say is a must-see. Or worse perhaps, miss seeing that one thing that we could have been the first to discover and share.
-
The smallest things can trigger a memory: a song, a scent, a throwaway remark. Yesterday, for me, it was a single word, a place name: Monneville. Very many moons ago, in my teens, I spent about ten days living in Monneville as a pupil on my school’s French Exchange programme.
-
Travel is a luxury, one not everyone can indulge in. Those of us who have the resources and health to be able to indulge have a responsibility, I feel, to value the experiences it brings us. One way I try to do this is by capturing those experiences through my photography and through this blog.
-
Where do the seeds of an idea for a trip start? Maybe in a book or TV programme or a fellow blogger’s post? Maybe a friend comes back from a holiday full of enthusiasm for the place(s) visited? Or maybe you have memories of a place you loved and want to return to, having left so much of it as yet unexplored? For us California was such a place.
-
This weekend in Europe the clocks are being turned back. The already dark evenings will be darker as days are starting to shorten and nights lengthen. Finding light where we can becomes ever more precious.
-
One thing photography teaches us is that there are opportunities for images in the most unlikely places. Carrying a camera we see things differently, noticing not just the most obvious and beautiful scenes but also the potential in the less obvious.
-
A recurrent theme in this blog is my contention that people are pretty much the same the world over when it comes to the basics. We all want to feel safe, to have enough to eat and to feel connected to others whom we love. What I have mentioned less often, is that we all also want to have fun from time to time.
-
Is there such a thing as an ordinary object? And is ordinary the same for everyone? One thing that travel teaches is that one person’s ordinary can look extraordinary to another. The things we take for granted in our lives, the little things that make life easier, may not be the same in other parts of the world, or may not exist at all, at least for the average family.
-
Photography is all about contrasts of course. Without those variations in lightness and darkness our images would be dull and flat. Whether contrasting black and white in monochrome shots, or harmonising and contrasting the shades in our colour shots, effective contrast is key to a good result. But the term can also relate to our choice of subject matter.
