I guess this one is about textures. For some reason, the material used above the stone line has cracked in the sun whereas the material used below has not. Presumably this is by design and whilst this is a very cheap construction, the effect is nonetheless stunning if only by highlighting this random effect created by the forces of nature. This photo was taken at the Hatta Heritage Site in the UAE.
Paris has such amazing contrasts and I frequently find these ‘time-travel’ moments where the slow, lazy and peaceful past meets the hyper, frantic and fast-paced present. So when I saw this older gentleman occasionally drawing circles with the base of his wine glass on the cafe table whilst spending 30 minutes on the front page of his magazine I had to take a snap. All around him, the chill of an early April morning (yes – he was sipping away at 10am) was motivating passers-by to quicken the pace lest the wind mess up their hair. If asked, I’m sure he would say something along the lines that the young bordeaux they served at this particular cafe must be given plenty of opportunity to breathe in order to release its full bouquet. A taste that brings him back to a memory of picking blackberries along the Garonne in late August when his family would escape from Paris to visit his cousins on the coast.
I gave this photo a light touch with an impressionistic paintbrush in Gimp - just to give it more of a “Parisian” flavour.
Not much to say about this photo except that Dubai’s “Old Town” is very pretty when lit up at night.
I can’t remember taking this photo. But when I looked over the rushes from over a thousand or so snaps I took at a wedding of a close friend that took place at an ashram on the outskirts of Bangalore, I noticed that I had caught this school boy as he was gazing into the distance to the right of the frame (the symbolic future?) hoping to catch an early glimpse of the city bus that will take him at least a few kilometres closer to his math class. His bags look heavy with books and his legs look thin but his expression does not begrudge the weight of his study. And whilst the backdrop certainly doesn’t convey opulence by any stretch of the term (just off to the right, a bunch of chickens were pecking away at the street garbage including the corpse of another chicken!), he obviously takes pride in his education – chosing to keep his tie and uniform clean and pressed. I hope Lady Luck is kind to him and he will have the opportunity to take his study in the direction he desires.
Fraser Island is the place to go to in Australia to see the purest dingos. The beach is gorgeous too but apparently is too dangerous to swim in because the island is a breeding place for sharks. So you spend a lot of time zooming around the shoreline in these 4x4s. Clearly, this photo (which I took with a Minolta XTi back in the day) doesn’t adhere to the law of thirds. However, the effect is nonetheless interesting because my eyes want to drag these cars away from the edge of the photo like the pulling of the tide (into the first vertical third and closer to the dangerous waters). But because they fail at this, there is some tension that is built in the photo. A tension that for me compliments the feeling of whipping along this ocean highway hoping not to run into soft sand and flip the car with dingos on the left, sharks on the right and 40 degrees of ozone free sun burning a hole in the roof. Truly a sensational experience!
Probably one of my favourite photos and one of my first – I took this in Firenze about a decade ago just after I bought my first real camera: a Nikon F80 SLR. I think I shot everything I could point a lense at that summer and this happened to be a small detailed door knocker down some side street. I love how the detail in the eye is brought out in this high contrast pic. I admit I did some touching up to ensure the background was perfectly black but this was done ages ago using MicroSoft’s Image Composer (is this software even around anymore?). Does that count? Should it matter?
When the skies open up in Vietnam during monsoon season you can barely see a foot in front of you. People still get caught outside and if it happens to you, you might be offered a “one-size-fits-all” plastic poncho, which in my case came down to just above my knees. This was shot with a canon powershot which obviously had some trouble focusing and metering through the rain. The effect is a bit spooky – which is what like about this photo.
Goats. They eat anything. This one nearly chewed my hand off when I reached into my pocket for a quarter to drop into the feed machine at Chudleigh’s Apple Farm outside of Toronto. He looks pretty serious about his diet if you ask me.
Eastern Canada sells a lot of lobster so I find it incredible that a tiny road-side shop in the middle of nowhere in New Brunswick feels the right to make this claim. Presumably, the phone booth is nearby so you can call your friends once you’re drawn by the sign to stop and check out the shrimp. I also like this feature that canon powershots have where you can isolate one colour and leave the rest in b/w. It almost gives the boasting the credibility it needs. Almost I say because my eye is strangely drawn away from the red and instead prefers to wander around the b/w part of the photo. Sometimes looking at the phonebooth trying to imagine the last person to have used it (and what decade that may have been in). Sometimes looking to the woods wondering how often bear and racoons have been drawn to Ossie’s for a snack. Still, it was a memorable stop on the way to the airport in Saint John after a weekend destination wedding of a close friend.
I rarely take photos of people. Maybe because I find it difficult to keep a camera trained at someone without them getting self conscious and then posing in a deliberate but an unnatural way. At least that is the case with many Westerners who, once they see a camera, immediately start imagining what they will look like if the shutter goes off. And then contort their faces and bodies to resemble David Hasselhoff or Scarlett Johansson or whoever. This girl probably held this pose for less than a second as she paused to think of another word in English she could use to convince me to buy more of her woven bracelets. But the whole time she was focused on her dealmaking: “you buy”, “nice price”, “business is business”. I admire that kind of focus and wish her all the best (and bought a few bracelets).