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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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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There's nothing like a carnival parade to stir up the emotions. There’s the anticipation among the spectators as they wait for the parade to arrive – can we see it in the distance yet? The excitement when finally it arrives, with all the colour and spectacle. The joy on the faces of the participants in the parade as they see the reactions. And the slight feeling of let-down when it has passed, seemingly so quickly after the long wait.
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Turn your back on a hungry giraffe who knows you have a pocketful of her favourite treats and you can expect to be ‘nudged’ into handing over the goodies. Stacey was quick to remind me, with a gentle head butt, that she expected my full attention, but it was more playful than painful. And as she was happy to pose for photos in return for the pellets I dropped on to her thick purplish-grey tongue, we were each rewarded by our encounter.
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The year that has just past will remain long in all our memories, no doubt, and not for the best of reasons. A year ago the new coronavirus was just seeping into our consciousnesses and we had no idea how it would turn our lives upside down. We certainly know that now!
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Travel is not just about the places we travel to; it is about the people we meet along the way. And when such meetings develop into friendships that are sustained long after the journey has been completed, that is precious indeed.
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Angels typically fly or float in the air, but not this one. The Angel of the North is firmly rooted in the ground, in recognition of the miners who once toiled beneath this spot. Whether you arrive in Newcastle or Gateshead by road or by rail, you'll be greeted as you approach the city by this amazing figure of an angel with outstretched arms, who appears to be watching over travellers.
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When you press the shutter on your camera you capture a fleeting moment, and when you share the photograph with others you share that moment. If you play around with a photo enough, it will end up very far from where it started, and yet a trace of that moment remains.
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The Hoh rainforest is an ancient, almost enchanted place, green and mysterious. Some of its trees have stood here for over a thousand years, long before European explorers came to this continent. Draped with mosses and ferns they seem to stand outside time; a haven of stillness in an ever-shifting world.
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I have lived in Ealing for 39 years, and in our present home in South Ealing for 34 years, but I never knew until very recently that Margot Fonteyn lived near here, or that Agatha Christie’s parents are buried in our local cemetery. I didn’t know that Spencer Walpole, who was Home Secretary under three different Tory governments in the mid-19th century, is also buried there.
