Autumn comes stealthily. A touch of orange on a leaf. A few berries on a tree or bush. Late summer flowers starting to dominate our gardens. Conkers falling and squirrels out foraging in our local parks. It's my favourite season, although I'd like it even more if it weren't followed by winter, my least favourite!
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In the centre of Riga is an imposing house, which has come to symbolise the city. What would in any case be a grand Art Nouveau structure is made special by the presence of two large cats on the turrets at either end.
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Like many photographers, I shoot quite a lot of images of flowers and that’s the first thing I think of when asked to showcase macro photography (which technically-speaking I don’t do) or close-up photography (which I do a lot). After that, my next thought will be insects. And I already have a few posts here on those lines. So what to do when Amanda asks for close ups and macros for this week’s Friendly Friday Challenge? The following photos are all taken from my travel archives, specifically my early 2020 trip to Indochina. In all of them I tried to…
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How does it feel to step back in time and immerse ourselves in the world our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents knew? There are places where we can do just that, living museums that collate and preserve not just objects but the buildings that housed them and the environments in which those buildings sat. One such place is Beamish, in north east England.
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Like many such states, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea does public art on a big scale. The many statues of the Dear Leaders are well known, but perhaps a little less so is this rather astounding example, the Monument to the Three Charters for National Reunification.
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It takes a certain amount of sacrifice and discomfort to visit El Tatio. For one thing, you will sacrifice sleep, as all tours leave very early in the morning. The steam from the geysers is most active and visible at dawn, so you need to be there before sunrise. You must also be prepared to be very cold and to cope with altitude; the geyser field is at 4,200 metres above sea level. So is it worth it? Oh yes!
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Never go back, they say. And it’s a rule we tend to follow when it comes to travelling, but we make a few exceptions. And prime among those exceptions is Paris. We spent the first part of our honeymoon there, recently celebrated our fortieth anniversary there, and in between those two trips have visited together on five other occasions. And that doesn’t include a visit each back in our even more ancient and separate histories!
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Looking for the ‘ah-ha’ seems to me to be an excellent mantra for any photographer. Although in truth I sometimes search for that not by stepping back but by zooming in. For me the important thing is not to settle for the obvious, for the first angle that occurs to me.
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Paris is not alone in being as much a collection of villages as it is a single city; but its villages have to be among the most charming of any city's. And none more so perhaps than Montmartre, set high on a hill, with its basilica, the Sacré Coeur, visible from miles around.
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When you visit a city regularly, you can make time to explore new areas, as well as revisit favourite corners. And you can look for quirky details to photograph as well as the obvious sights. In Paris o, I was on the look out for colourful and interesting street art in the different neighbourhoods we explored.
