50 photos I’m glad I took… part two

I posted part one of this a few weeks ago, and the response was generous and overwhelming. Thank you.

Taking a photo seems to trigger something in my brain. I don’t have the greatest memory, but of almost any moment I’ve captured with a photograph, I still recall what happened before the photo, after, what was being said, how I felt, what the weather was like and why I chose to take it, even if it’s not clear from the resulting image.

Every photo is a window, and I guess these are the windows you can look through to find me, hiding somewhere inside.

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Around me lies a graveyard of words; things I’ve written and abandoned, started and never finished, finished and never sent.

I’m working on that, attempting to reduce the death rate around me (this blog helps…), but until then, I look back fondly on any miraculous moment I’ve managed to get something out the door and into the world.

One of those moments, among my fondest, concerned my first full-length play, ‘A Million Beautiful Girls’.

I had finished the script and sent it to a benevolent genius I’m lucky to know, who not only offered to direct a public reading but also subsequently delivered a brilliant (and appropriately ‘beautiful’) cast.

To have people read what you write is an odd, but thrillingly nervous feeling. To have them do it aloud, and to have them bring it to life in front of you can barely be described, particularly by someone with my limited abilities.

I took the photo above, quality lacking, while sitting on the couch in the director’s living room, watching the cast blocking their movement.

And here’s the full cast on the night:

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When I left my job recently, one of my personal goals was to do more of the things I enjoy. Since cooking is something I’ve always enjoyed, up to the (hot) plate it stepped. After all, writing about food is now what I do for a living.

But very quickly, and beyond anything I’d anticipated, an obsession emerged.

Now I spend all my money on ingredients, ‘waste’ hours a day in the kitchen and, yes, have started making up my own recipes. This photo, which first appeared in this blog post, was of the first dish I came up.

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Speaking of food…

When travelling, my wife and I make a point of eating the most appropriate local food in the most memorable setting. Meals almost become the foundation of each day’s sightseeing.

Of these, possibly the most memorable was the big pot of fish stew we shared as the sun set over the Mediterranean, in the tiny Italian village of Vernazza.

Vernazza forms a part of Cinque Terre, a National Park in which five tiny towns cling to the North-Western Italian coast, accessible only via train or by following the challenging hike that links them.

On a very sunny Spring day, Christie in her high-heels, we set out from Vernazza and took in one town after another.

After the most challenging of the hikes, we turned a corner and were poked directly in the heart by this view…

I’ve only ever felt this way once before, standing on the east rim of the Grand Canyon, my eyes refusing to accept what was being offered. Oddly, the feeling is almost an underwhelmed one, since the subconscious part of the brain that turns these images into thoughts and feelings just refused to believe that it was looking at anything more than a nice picture.

And yet, there it is. Places like this do exist.

Whenever I have a bad day, a day I just think is out to get me, I remember that once I stood in this position, looking at this view, and the world instantly seems more wonderful.

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Similarly, in the town of Interlaken, nestled in the Swiss Alps between two lakes, a group (gaggle? flock?) of swans was taking advantage of an icy Spring morning, showing off their flying abilities to the lady-swans who looked on with indifference.

No sound but the splashing of water, no movement around us but the flapping of their wings and the ripples in the water.

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19 year-old Tristan needed to get away, so he filled up his car boot with CDs, installed a CD player in his car and drove from Melbourne to Sydney.

There, he had many adventures, including sitting his camera down on a beautiful Sydney day and taking a photo of himself sitting in The Rocks.

In the end, he learned that sometimes, the only company you need is your own.

Five years later, he took this handsome photo:

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Some other travel-inspired shots…

A girl walks on water in Bordeaux, France. The French seem stereotypically indifferent upon discovering the second coming of Christ in a nine year-old girl.

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Dining in New York City.

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Morning on the Murray River.

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The village of Grindelwald, shadowed by the Swiss Alps.

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Vegas wears its heart on its sleeve and its boobs in your face.

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The next instalment, a couple of weeks away, isn’t as focussed on travel. It’s about friends and family, and includes my favourite all-time photo of Christie.

Tags: Europe, Italy, photography, plays, travel, USA, Writing