How I see the world - through a lens

I am a regular reader of Wanderlust magazine which always poses a particular question to everyone they interview:

‘Mountain, desert, ocean or jungle - which are you ?’

When I consider what I would reply, I am always torn between desert and mountains as both landscapes create in me the same sense of awe. For this entry though, I will focus (pun intended!) on deserts.

Syria

We were fortunate to have travelled in Syria in 1996, and therefore long before the current troubles facing the country erupted. It was there that I first experienced the vastness of a desert sky, as our bus travelled the long distances between sights. One day I should share my old slides of that trip here but for now here is just one, taken at a remote desert fuel station.

Tunisia

Here’s an even older photo, showing my very first taste of the desert, on the edge of the Sahara in Tunisia in 1986 – our first sunset camel ride.

Namibia

A more recent holiday in Africa took us to Namibia, where we hired a car to explore independently. Our route took in both the Kalahari and Namib Deserts, which are very different – the former more scrub, the latter classic sand dunes.

Kalahari sunset

The ultimate desert experience here was our balloon flight over the dunes at sunrise:

Arizona and Utah

The number of old photos in this blog is emphasising for me how long my attraction to desert landscapes has lasted. Here is a selection from a road trip through the desert states of the US south west back in 1993.

Uzbekistan

While on a Silk Road tour of Uzbekistan in 2007 we spent one night in a yurt in the Kyzylkum Desert. This is the 16th largest desert in the world and its name means Red Sand in the Turkic language, although as you can see, where we camped the sand was more yellow than red!

And again we had the obligatory sunset camel ride:

Rajasthan

These sunset camel rides are becoming a bit of a recurring theme! Here’s our most recent one, in the deserts of western Rajasthan (with apologies for reposting photos of a trip already shared on a separate blog here):

Chile

Most recently I have had my ‘desert fix’ in the Atacama region of Chile. As with Rajasthan, I have shared many photos of that trip on a separate blog here, but here are just a few of my favourites to finish this entry:

Water in the desert, at the Salar de Atacama

In recent years I have become interested in street photography – both taking my own photos and in the work of others. There is something of the ‘thrill of the chase’ in hunting down these serendipitous moments when the right person walks into the right place to create a striking image for your lens.

Wikipedia defines street photography as featuring ‘unmediated chance encounters and random incidents within public places.’ While not necessarily urban, or even on a street, these chance encounters are of course more likely to happen where people gather in numbers.

Here is a selection of what I consider to be my more successful images to date, starting close to home:

London

Portobello Road Market

A zoom lens lets you get in close while remaining unobserved:

At a festival on Regent Street

The Tube is a fruitful place to spot interesting characters:

And art exhibitions create opportunities too, as visitors interact with the displays:

Elsewhere in Europe opportunities abound too ...

Bologna

Tallinn

Human statues

These will expect a tip if you take their photo as they pose, but they often look more interesting when on a break:

In Bologna

New York City

Is there a better place in the world than NYC for photographing life on the street? I don’t think so:

Near Broadway

India

In India much of daily life is played out on the streets, so it seems almost superfluous to describe these photos as street photography! But they make an interesting contrast to those taken in the western world (with apologies to those who have already seen these in my travel blogs):

And to finish, a selection from a few other parts of the world:

I enjoy photographing all sorts of architectural details (more may appear later in this blog) but there is something especially interesting about doors and windows. In a plain building, they are often the most decorative feature, and always they invite you to wonder about what lies within.

I have visited a number of European cities or even entire countries whose windows and/or doors have drawn me to photograph them in significant numbers. Let’s start with some of my favourites.

Iceland

For the most part Iceland is memorable for its landscapes rather than its architecture, but both in Reykjavik and elsewhere I found its colourful corrugated metal houses very photogenic:

Riga

The capital of Latvia is best known, architecturally, for its glorious Art Nouveau buildings (which will surely feature sooner or later in my blogs here). But to the south of the old town lies another district that I found equally captivating photographically-speaking, Latgale, more usually known as Maskavas forštate or the Moscow District. This is a traditional working-class area with a mixed population (Russian, Latvian, Jewish and more). The architecture is a mix of faded Art Nouveau grandeur and traditional 19th-century wooden homes that seem quite rural in character and a little out of place so close to a city centre. Here there are few tourists, but a photo around every corner and a rough-edged picturesqueness if you take the time to search it out.

Tallinn

In Tallinn it was not windows but doors that caught my eye, and my lens. As I walked around the oldest parts of the city, both the lower and upper towns, I was struck by the large number of beautiful wooden doors on the old buildings, and took lots of photos:

Portugal

A Virtual Tourist Euromeeting (read more about what that is here: You can kill a website but you can't kill friendships) brought me to Portugal’s Algarve. I don’t generally do “sun, sea and sand” holidays but in addition to the usual excellent company of VT friends I also found here plenty of history and some beautiful old buildings in the heart of Faro and even touristy Albufeira. I was especially struck here by the many old wooden doors with filigree metal inlays covering their windows. These seem to be part of a clever design – behind the metalwork are shutters that can be opened to let cool air into the house without any loss of security.

The doors often also have the traditional hand-shaped door knockers known as the Hand of Fatima or Mãos de Fátima in Portuguese:

These are more prevalent in Muslim countries on the whole, but very common here too – possibly due to the old Moorish influence which pervades other aspects of the architecture. There are various stories about them, for example that they protect the house from evil. I also read that where there are two knockers on a door one is male and one female, and that visitors would be expected to use the one appropriate to their own gender. As each had a different sound the women of the household would know whether or not they could open the door.

Sibiu

Another Virtual Tourist meeting brought me to Sibiu in Romania, where many of the roof tops have these distinctive small windows often referred to as the “eyes of Sibiu”:

But there were other windows, and doors too, that caught my eye:

Italy

One of my favourite regions of Italy is Marche, with its ancient stone village atop the rolling hills. Here are a few photos from there:

New Mexico

Further afield, the adobe architecture of New Mexico really appealed to me, and the insertion of often brightly painted wooden window or door frames in the earthen walls makes for interesting contrasts:

Morocco

Whether ornate Islamic architecture or more humble homes, there are plenty of photogenic window and doors to be found in Marrakesh and elsewhere in Morocco. The following photos were taken on two visits to Marrakesh:

Window and door details, Marrakesh

Cuenca

Cuenca is known in Ecuador for the attractiveness of its old doors, both on major buildings such as churches but also, as in these photos, on regular houses:

Japan

While for the most part Japan is a modern country, you can still find plenty of example of its traditional architecture, with paper screen walls and the calm geometrical simplicity of its doors and windows, as here in the old merchant houses of Takayama:

During the Edo period Takayama was largely a merchant, rather than a samurai, town, and its architecture reflects that fact. The streets of the old town are lined with houses of a style that accommodated both family and business life. The light inside these houses was beautiful, and the contrast of the heavy dark beams, the lighter lacquered wood used for door frames, pillars etc., and the translucent paper screens was captivating:

And let’s finish with a selection from elsewhere in the world:

Door, Bibi Khanum Mosque, Samarkand

What is it that makes a ruined building so photogenic? Why would a building that is no longer fit for the purpose for which it was constructed somehow look better, in an artistic sense, than it did when complete and fit for purpose? And yet, such is often the case.

The ruins in my photos here range in age from very ancient (the temples of Tikal and Lamanai) to pretty recent (Hiroshima). In some cases the destruction is due to the passing of time, in others it was down to a natural catastrophe or even a deliberate act of man. But all are picturesque in some way, at least to my eye.

Tikal

Tikal is considered one of the greatest sites of the ancient Mayan World. It contains the tallest pre-Columbian structure now standing in the Americas, Temple IV, and many others besides, all scattered across a wide area, and many still hidden by jungle growth and the accumulation of centuries of earth. Those that have been excavated, and (in some cases) restored, tower above the tree tops, giving rise to the nickname that was quoted to us several times by locals: the “New York of Guatemala”. Well, New York it isn’t, but it is all the more amazing for that. To reflect that these massive structures were built so long ago (between the late 7th and early 9th centuries), and without the use of technology, is truly awesome.

Lamanai

The Lamanai Maya ruins may be less extensive than those at sites elsewhere in Central America, but they are well worth a visit, whether or not you’ve been to some of the other sites. Lamanai means "submerged crocodile" in the Maya language. The site is notable for several reasons. It was occupied long after many other Maya sites had fallen into disuse and neglect (until at least 1650 AD) and unlike other sites, many of its temples were built in layers, each on top of a previous structure, rather than temples being torn down and built anew.

Hundreds of ruins are said to be still hidden in the undergrowth, and here and there you will get glimpses perhaps of a man-made hollow that was once a water reservoir, or a “hill” that almost certainly conceals the remains of a temple. But although on a much smaller scale than Tikal, there are still four notable temples which have been restored, three of which can be climbed.

Stela Temple (the stela is a replica, with the original in the museum)

And while we are in this part of the world ...

Antigua Guatemala

Antigua, or Antigua Guatemala to give it its full name, was the country’s third capital. It was founded in 1543 when an eruption of the Vulcan Agua destroyed the second capital in the valley of Almononga. In 1566 the city received the name of “Muy Noble y Muy Leal Ciudad de Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala” (Very Noble and Very Loyal City of Santiago of the Caballeros of Guatemala), or Santiago de Guatemala for short. Despite the ravages of several earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the city was the capital and economic centre of the whole Kingdom of Guatemala (today’s southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.). But in 1773 came the most destructive of all the earthquakes, the Santa Marta, and much of the city’s political and religious infrastructure was destroyed. And so the capital was moved yet again.

Details of cathedral ruins

Left largely in ruins the city might perhaps have crumbled away completely, but enough fabric and people remained to keep it alive. Today’s Santiago de Guatemala, Antigua, is a National Monument and it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979. At its heart is an almost perfect grid of streets and avenues, each of them a gem, lined with picturesque houses (many single storey because of the constant threat from the forces of nature) and dotted with the skeletons of those ruined colonial churches.

Iglesia el Carmen

Of course my own continent of Europe has more than enough ruins to keep my camera busy!

Pompeii and Herculaneum

These are possibly the most famous of European ruins, especially Pompeii. The temples and other buildings near its entrance command great views of Vesuvius beyond, making it easy to imagine your way back into history and the dreadful day in AD 79 when the city was engulfed by pumice and ash. There are grand villas and humble shops, extensive bath-house complexes, theatres and small restaurants – everything that the population would have needed for a comfortable existence in this busy town.

The small theatre

When Vesuvius erupted in AD 79 Herculaneum was buried in volcanic mud rather than in the lava which engulfed it perhaps more famous neighbour, Pompeii. It lay hidden and nearly intact for more than 1600 years until it was accidentally discovered by some workers digging a well in 1709. This has resulted in a different type of preservation of its ruins, with the mud doing relatively little damage to the buildings, instead slowly filling them from the bottom up.

Herculaneum was a smaller town with a wealthier population than Pompeii at the time of its destruction. You can easily imagine that the seaside villas would have been very desirable residences, and the lifestyle of those who occupied them would have been wonderful – sipping wine on the terraces overlooking the bay, with slaves catering to your every need, beautiful mosaics and friezes adorning the walls, a pleasant climate away from the hassles of the city. I loved wandering around envisaging all this – but then also contemplating the terror that must have descended on this peaceful spot when the inhabitants suddenly realised the enormity of what was happening to the mountain that looms over it.

Athens

Our only visit (to date) to Athens was a fleeting one, with the main aim being to take in a football match between our team, Newcastle United, and local team Panionios (not to be confused with the more famous Panathinaikos). But as always on our football trips we made sure to fit in some sightseeing and take in the ruins of the Acropolis and a few other places in the city.

Heidelberg

Mark Twain said of Heidelberg:
“A ruin must be rightly situated, to be effective. This one could not have been better placed. It stands upon a commanding elevation, it is buried in green woods, there is no level ground about it, but, on the contrary, there are wooded terraces upon terraces, and one looks down through shining leaves into profound chasms and abysses where twilight reigns and the sun cannot intrude.”

Heidelberg claims on a leaflet we picked up there to be “the world’s most famous castle”, and while that is definitely debatable, it is certainly very imposing and packed with history. It was built over a period of more than three hundred years during the 14th to 16th centuries, and therefore combines mainly Gothic and Renaissance styles of architecture. In 1693 it was blown up by the troops of Louis XIV, and the town burned to the ground. A few years later the residents, who had fled, returned to rebuild their town, using many stones from the castle as they did so, and it remained in ruins until 1742 when Elector Karl Theodor began to rebuild it. In 1764 however a bolt of lightning destroyed several buildings. The work was discontinued and the castle remains partly in ruins to this day.

Some English ruins

Many of our explorations closer to home are in the north east, on our regular trips to see family in Newcastle, so I can’t omit some of the wonderful ruins in that region.

Holy Island, or Lindisfarne, is, in my view, one of the most magical places in England. A small “semi-island” (that is, an island only at high tide), it has been a centre of spirituality since St Aidan founded a monastery here in the seventh century AD. Situated in the heart of the small village, the ruins of Lindisfarne Priory define what Holy Island is all about. This rich monastery on an isolated island was a prime target for Viking raiders who pillaged this coast. In 875, as a result of their repeated attacks, the monks left. But in 1150 Benedictine monks from Durham returned and built a new priory here. This was to survive until Henry VIII closed it in 1537, destroying the buildings and using some of the stones to build the island’s castle.

Today only a skeleton of the formerly imposing church remains, its so-called “rainbow arch” an evocative remnant of a vault-rib of the now-vanished tower. Around it are the foundations of the monastic buildings – kitchen, refectory, chapter house, cloister etc. With a little imagination you can start to visualise what life would have been like for this remote religious community – devoting their lives to the worship of God in this magical, spiritual place.

Where the River Tyne flows into the North Sea lies Tynemouth, with its ruined fortified priory on a headland just north of the river mouth.

This promontory has been a strategically important spot since the time of the Saxons, who named it Pen Bal (or Benebal) Crag and founded a priory here in the 7th century. In 651 King Oswin of Deira was murdered and his body brought to Tynemouth for burial, the first of three kings to be buried here. He was later canonised and his burial place became a shrine. But in 875 the Danes destroyed the priory, after repeated raids. By the 11th century it had long been abandoned and the burial place of St. Oswin forgotten. But when a young hermit, Edmund, reported seeing St. Oswin in a vision in which the saint showed him his tomb, that tomb was rediscovered and the monastery restored. The building of the Norman church began in 1090, and the whole monastery was substantially completed by the end of the 13th century. The priory was dissolved under Henry VIII in 1538 and the king took ownership of the neighbouring castle and strengthened the fortifications of this strategic site. The church also was left standing, possibly because of its importance as a landmark for shipping along this often treacherous coast.

This coast is also famous for its castles. A few, like Bamburgh, are still relatively intact (and therefore not included here) but others form rather dramatic ruins, none more so perhaps than Dunstanburgh which stands on a small headland north of the fishing village of Craster and is accessible from there only on foot.

Another favourite of mine is Warkworth which dominates the small village of the same name:

And of course we can’t talk about the ruins to be found in the north of England without mentioning the most extensive of them all – Hadrian’s Wall and the associated forts and mile castles. In the early years of the second century AD the northern limit of the Roman Empire lay in what is now the north of England. The Emperor Hadrian commanded a Wall to be built in order to keep "intact the empire", but probably also to assert the supremacy of Roman power. This wall had a series of forts at approximately five mile intervals, where soldiers guarding the frontier were stationed. Of those that still have some remains, Housesteads, or Vercovicium to give it its Roman name, is probably the best known and most visited:

Hadrian's Wall from Housesteads

Hiroshima

I will finish with a building whose ruins stand as testament to the horrors that man can inflict on man, the Genbaku Dōmu or Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima.

When, at 8.15 am on August 6th 1945, the first atomic bomb was detonated over Hiroshima, the city became in an instant one of the most famous in the world; but what city would ever have wanted that sort of fame?

The atomic bomb’s target was the Aioi Bridge but it missed this slightly and exploded almost directly above this building, which was at the time an exhibition hall known as the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. Because the blast was felt from immediately above, hitting the structure vertically, a surprising amount remained intact even though, of course, everyone inside was killed instantly.

For some years after the war the skeleton of the building remained as it was. There were some who felt it should be pulled down and the site redeveloped, while others argued for its restoration and yet others for its preservation as a ruin, to stand as a memorial to what had happened and to those who had lost their lives. The latter group won the day, and in 1966 the city council declared that it intended to preserve the building, undertaking only the minimal work necessary to ensuring its stability. In December 1996, the Atomic Bomb Dome was registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Its listing was based on its survival from a destructive force, the first use of nuclear weapons on human population, and importantly its representation as a symbol of peace.

In my last entry, Markets, I mentioned how much I enjoy taking photos of local people on my travels. Of course, people’s willingness to be photographed varies enormously from place to place – they certainly don’t always share my pleasure, I have to confess. I also have to confess to shooting candid photos on many occasions – not only because I realise that my chosen subject may be unwilling to pose but also (and primarily) because I prefer the natural look of an unposed portrait. That said, if anyone sees my camera and asks me to put it away or not take their photo, I always do so.

Africa

My experience of photographing people in the various African countries we have visited is quite variable. In Morocco I found most locals very wary of my camera – even to the point that on a recent visit I was challenged to show two men the photo they claimed I had just taken of them, when I had not actually done so. It was only when I showed them every image, right back to those of our flight the previous day, that they believed me. You can imagine that I was very careful not to alert anyone there when taking pictures, and to restrict myself to long range shots. Some of these may find their way into later entries, but this one is focused (literally) on faces.

But in sub-Saharan Africa, on trips to Senegal and the Gambia, I found people much less interested in me and my camera, and portraits were relatively easy to capture.

Gambia

I have already shared some images from the huge street market of Serekunda in my earlier entry on Markets, so here are just a few of the portrait shots I captured there:

Our tour to the small villages of villages of Albreda and Juffureh offered much better opportunities to take photos of local people. I described that tour as follows on my Virtual Tourist page about the Gambia:

Senegal

To visit the southern part of Senegal, as we did, you need to start in Banjul, Gambia, and catch the ferry across the river – a perfect people-watching and people-photographing opportunity:

Once in Senegal, we took every opportunity to get out and about from our hotel bases, and met local people wherever we went:

Local woman in Djifere

India

There is no difficulty in India in taking photos of the people. While a few may wave away your camera, most are tolerant of it and many not only willing but eager to pose. As I have said, I prefer a natural look to my photos, so while I will take the posed shots, and show or share them if asked, I usually take a few extra when my subject is less aware that I am doing so.

On both our recent visits to the country we have spent quite a lot of time driving (or rather, being driven) from town to town, and with all the activity to be seen on and beside the road there are plenty of opportunities to grab some candid shots. I already shared this photo in my Road to Jaipur blog, but it's one of my favourites and I can't resist also including it here:

Japan

This was another place where I found it very easy to get some good portrait shots, with many people willing to pose or to ignore my camera:

Wedding at the Meiji Shrine, Tokyo

Latin America

On occasion it is worth ‘paying’ for a shot. The lady below, in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, was happy to pose in return for our purchase of one of the little bead key-rings she was selling, while the guy in Jamaica was equally happy to be in my shot once I had bought a cold drink from his shack:

Others there though were perhaps just too spaced-out to notice my camera at all!

A few more of my favourites from that part of the world, taken on our recent trip to Chile, and a couple of years ago in Ecuador:

Kebab seller, Machuca, Chile

Europe

Special events often provide an opportunity for candid photography, such as the Old Town Days celebrations in Tallinn which I saw while at a Virtual Tourist meeting there in 2014, and the same city’s Medieval Days a year later on a return visit:

Musician and stall-holder, Tallinn Old Town Days

Closer to home

Here’s a selection from much closer to home, in London:

And finally, let us remember that portraits don’t always have to include the face to tell you something about the person portrayed, so here are three photos taken from behind the subject: