One of the pleasures of a stay by the sea is an early morning walk on the beach. The waves lapping the shore, the sound of sea birds, a gentle breeze … a tranquil spot in which to recharge the batteries. But what most of us regard as a welcome break from our day to day lives is for others a place of work, and hard work at that.
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When Newcastle United reached the last 32 of the Europa League in 2013 we held our breath to see what team we would be drawn against, dreaming of a February trip to warmer climes, maybe Italy, Spain or Portugal. Instead we got Metalist Kharkiv, a team we had never heard of, in the eastern depths of chilly Ukraine. Would we go? You bet we would!
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Please don’t ask me to pick my favourite landscape – it’s impossible. I love the drama of high mountain ranges, and the huge open skies of the desert; the haunting light that illuminates certain lands close to our poles, and grassy savannahs strewn with baobab trees; gentle green rolling hills, and roaring waterfalls.
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Everyone needs food to survive, but some of us are fortunate enough to be able to appreciate not just as a necessity of life but also one of its pleasures. And when food becomes not only delicious to eat but also beautiful to look at, it is truly a special treat.
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Today, everyone is arguably a photographer, shooting images with their phone cameras almost every day. But when I started, as a child in the 1960s, photography was a hobby, and a relatively expensive one at that. Only the keenest photographers went on the journey from taking family snapshots to an obsession with getting the best from a camera, trying to create something both memorable and beautiful.
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I can’t remember the last time it snowed properly here. It’s not something I’ve ever welcomed. Living in a city my experience of snow has been largely negative. It messes with our transport system and makes getting anywhere a nightmare; it looks pretty only for a matter of hours and then turns to brown slush; and if the weather stays cold the slush then turns to slick ice patches which (as a person with zero sense of balance) I dread!
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Weaving his way expertly between the throngs of sellers and buyers, our driver and new friend Habib led us deep into the heart of the market. The place was so packed it was hard to make progress at times, especially with the occasional car or bush taxi trying to squeeze through the crowds, and the many porters with their wheelbarrows shouting at everyone to make way.
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Any photographer knows that light is everything, and that the best light is often found at the beginning or end of the day. Sometimes you can plan to be in the right place at the right time, but sometimes it just happens.
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Despite the invasion of modern living in many parts of their country, the Maasai cling proudly to their traditional way of life. They never cultivate land (they consider it demeaning) but instead graze cattle, which hold a god-like status in their culture. The cows provide almost everything they need to live: meat, skin, milk, dung for the walls and floor of their huts, and warm blood extracted from the neck of a live cow and mixed with milk as an iron rich food.
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None of us are able, at the moment, to gather new travel memories. Perhaps for that reason, the recollections of travels past become all the more precious. And what better way to trigger these memories than browsing through your mementos – old photographs, scrapbooks perhaps, and for those of us who buy them, objects and souvenirs.
