So today I am aiming to make you all hungry! Oaxaca is often dubbed the gastronomic capital of Mexico, so where better place to go on a food tour with a local?
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While I hope I can say of many of my photos that it ‘tells a story’, I have chosen to call this particular gallery 'Every picture tells a story' for a reason. As a song (and album) title, it fits perfectly with my theme, mixing images with music.
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We can photograph our subject simply as it is, a faithful record. We can get creative, perhaps using black and white or playing with tone and structure, to produce an image close to the original but not purely representational of it. Or we can interpret the subject with such freedom that it becomes something other than it once was, an abstraction.
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When I told people we were going to Mexico, a frequent piece of advice was, make sure you visit Oaxaca. It’s beautiful, they said, and the food is amazing! The advice however was unnecessary, as the city was already on my must-see list. And Oaxaca de Juárez, to give it its full name, definitely lived up to my expectations.
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The Torre dell'Elefante was built in 1307 when Cagliari was under Pisan rule. It takes its name from the small carving of an elephant on a ledge part way up.
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A bonus I didn’t expect when joining a local photography group was that one of the members would own a patch of woodland. A wood that at the moment is full not of picnicking bears but of bluebells and other early spring flowers.
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It would be unusual if we weren’t motivated to pick our camera when we see a beautiful flower, an awe-inspiring landscape, an attractive or characterful person, an elegant building. But it would be a shame to restrict our photography only to those more obvious subjects. We can also look for the photogenic in everyday objects, looking at them with fresh eyes to appreciate their forms and textures.
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How does it feel to stand in the middle of a living geology lesson? To see for yourself the many ways the world’s surface has been shaped over the millennia into often fantastical shapes? Go to Iceland, and you will find out. There almost every view tells you something about the power of fire or water to carve, split or even destroy rock.
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I have a theory about penguins, which is that no one can watch one for any length of time without smiling. Certainly the truth of that theory was proved when we visited Antarctica and saw them for ourselves. Part of the appeal is that they walk upright, looking almost human. And they’re always so smartly dressed!
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In 1531 a peasant, Juan Diego, reported seeing an apparition of the Virgin Mary on the hill of Tepeyac, today swallowed up in the metropolis of Mexico City. The Virgin, he said, spoke to him in in Nahuatl, his first language, asking that a church be built on the site in her honour.
