Our visit to Indochina was only just over two years ago, yet in some ways it feels like a world away. A world barely touched by Covid, in which we didn’t question our ability to travel. Took it for granted, perhaps? Looking back at my photos I wonder why we didn’t realise that the disease already causing deaths and chaos in China would spread to engulf the whole world. Were we like ostriches, our heads in the sand? Or was it such an alien concept that we couldn’t envisage it?
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On Iceland’s beautiful, but dangerous Reynisfjara black lava beach signs warn of the risks of getting too close to the water’s edge where ‘sneaker waves’ have been known to catch out unwary tourists and drag them out to sea. This has to be one of the classic Icelandic landscapes.
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Bulgaria’s capital city intrigues and charms me. It seems to be in a state of constant flux, built on layers of history. One minute you are walking on a Roman road, the next staring up at 1950s Stalinist monoliths. Gold-domed cathedrals and churches dominate the vistas along wide boulevards while in side streets elegant villas sit side-by-side with their crumbling, neglected cousins.
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It is a long while since I did a colour challenge, but I love the excuse they give me to rummage through my archives. So I’ve pulled together a selection for Terri’s Sunday Stills challenge this week. Her chosen colour is apricot, which I found a little hard to pin down. Is it orange? Is it pink? Is it maybe peach?
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One thing I learned during the pandemic was that it is possible to have a good time holidaying in my own country. With travel abroad impossible we turned to UK options and managed to have several lovely short trips in the spaces between lockdowns. And of course like everyone, we explored our immediate area more thoroughly than in the past, seeking out places we’d never previously visited or finding new surprises in old haunts.
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While the flat lands East Anglia may lack scenic drama the big skies that arch overhead are often awesome. As we drove up to Norfolk at the end of July the silvery tones of a dappled mackerel sky begged to be photographed. But we had a party to go to and no time to stop. The following day, disappointingly, the sky was a uniform grey and a little drizzly after overnight rain. Today’s photography was clearly going to be all about details and subjects to be found at ground level!
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One of my favourite types of holiday is a road trip in the US. To someone from a small island, the huge empty spaces and relatively quiet roads there evoke a sense of freedom and opportunity. Anything could happen here; anything could be just around the next corner.
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I can’t remember the last time I just sat, or lay, on a beach! For me a beautiful beach is a place to explore, to walk, to photograph. I love to hear the sound of the waves breaking on the shore and to watch their hypnotic rhythm. I like to peer at rock pools to see the mysteries within. And I enjoy the challenges of photographing ancient rocks; or driftwood shaped by water and the weather into sculptural forms.
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Nowhere in England is the summer solstice more famously celebrated than at Stonehenge. This ancient site has been a place of worship and celebration of the solstice for thousands of years. Every midsummer it draws crowds, some committed Druids, others merely curious observers, to watch as the sun rises behind the Heel Stone to the northeast, and its first rays shine into the heart of the stone circle.
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The animals went in two by two. And three, and four, and five, and more.
