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Gallery: pick a word (November 2023)
While a photo can tell a story without the need for words, and words can do likewise without any illustration, the combination of both can be more powerful than either. Each month Paula challenges us to find photos to match her chosen words. Some seem easy to ‘illustrate’, others I genuinely find challenging. But it’s an exercise I always enjoy!
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Gallery: empty spaces
It may seem contradictory to suggest that we photograph empty space. Shouldn’t a photo be OF something? But if we set our subject against a large area of relative emptiness and create ‘breathing room’ around our subject, we can help the viewer to see that subject differently.
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Gallery: look up, look down
When you first start using a camera, the tendency is to look straight ahead at a scene. We get caught up in what we see right in front of us. We may look ahead, to the left and right, down and even behind us, but many times we forget to look up.
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Gallery: seeing Madagascar in black and white
Madagascar is a colourful country! The landscapes are beautiful and for the most part lush and green. The wildlife is often colourful too. And in villages and towns there are lively markets, while hotel grounds are planted with pretty flowers. And yet, I can never resist the temptation to experiment with black and white edits
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Gallery: full frame impact
In photography, when you choose to fill the frame with your subject, leaving out everything that surrounds it, you remove all distractions and by doing so force the viewer to look only at this one thing. This can be very impactful.
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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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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 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.
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Gallery: pick a word (September 2023)
I think we all hope our words will mean something, and many of us hope that our photographs will too. Paula’s Pick a Word challenge gives us a chance each month to consider her words and pair them with our photos.
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Gallery: tell us why
Picking favourites is never easy. People ask me, what is your favourite place you have visited, and I usually struggle to choose. If I’m permitted a top five or top ten it’s easier; but ask me tomorrow and I may come up with a different list. And ask me WHY it is a favourite, and I may find it hard to articulate why one place ranks higher than another in my travel memories.
