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.
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A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
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There’s a clue in the name! The Cardamom Hills in Kerala are famous for the growing of their namesake spice and many others besides. Peppercorns, vanilla, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and more are grown on the small farms here. But also coffee and different fruits such as banana, avocado and jack fruit.
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Who hasn’t explored a building, maybe an impressive fortress or palace, and had one of those ‘wow’ moments as you emerge from the darkness of the building to an arch or window revealing the lightness outside?