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Gallery: seeking asymmetry in Madagascar
While I sometimes enjoy the harmony of a perfectly symmetrical shot, on the whole I find the asymmetrical more interesting. An image that is off-centre is more dynamic and encourages the eye to explore rather than settling in one spot.
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A postcard from Madagascar: black and white ruffed lemur
I photographed this black and white ruffed lemur on Lemur Island, a private reserve in the grounds of one of the Andisibe lodges.
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A postcard from Madagascar: dwarf chameleons
These tiny creatures are Brookesia Minima chameleons. Our guide found them for us on a walk in the Montaigne d'Ambre national park, by rifling through leaf litter at the base of a tree.
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A postcard from Madagascar: a tenrec
This is a tenrec, specifically I believe a lowland streaked tenrec. We saw him on a night walk in the Andasibe-Mantadia National Park area. Tenrecs are endemic to Madagascar and this particular species lives in the eastern part of the country.
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A stroll in Chicago’s Old Town
Old Town is not, somewhat to my surprise, the old heart of Chicago, but rather one of its neighbourhoods. It takes its name from art fairs held in this area in the 1940s, ‘Old Town Holidays’. However, it is certainly home to many buildings older than most in the city. There are Victorian era houses and even one of just seven buildings to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
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Gallery: signs of the times
Our world is full of signs, both those we erect ourselves to convey a message, and the more subtle ones we can read in landscapes and nature. The latter include the signs that speak of changing seasons, like autumn leaves or buds on trees. There are signs in the rocks telling of seismic changes in the earth’s crust, or more subtly speaking of people that came before us.
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Gallery: autumn scenes around the world
In his poem 'To Autumn' John Keats describes the autumn we all know and love, with lingering warm weather and bountiful harvests. But he also celebrates later autumn days, when winter seems just over the horizon. Both have their beauty.
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Gallery: seeing Ealing in black and white
It was the advent of the Great Western Railway in the mid nineteenth century that led to the scattered villages of Ealing, Gunnersbury and Pitshanger merging into unbroken residential areas, centred around the new station in what is now Ealing Broadway.
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Gallery: the skyscrapers of Chicago
The mass production of inexpensive steel in the mid 19th century made it possible for urban planners to bring to life the idea of skyscrapers. And it all started in Chicago. The method had been tested in Liverpool, England, on the five storey Oriel Chambers building. But it was in Chicago that the capacity of steel to support taller buildings was first exploited.
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Gallery: the tension of opposites
Contrast must be one of the most used words in photography. Usually we are talking about the lighting conditions for an image; the contrast between the light and dark areas. Sometimes it can be hard to balance these, if the contrast is great.
