Change

I live in Cardiff, a city that is forever changing. Buildings appear  and disappear, roads move, traffic changes direction and giant rugby balls crash into the castle. Sometimes the changes are so frequent that developers have to put up temporary maps to guide residents through the chaos. A couple of years ago, I took a photo of the derelict building below. Industrial subjects appeal to me, and I had this strange feeling that I needed to preserve the scene with my camera. Shortly afterwards, the building was knocked down and plans for new residential units were pinned to the fence. I have returned every few months since to document the changes in the site. The new buildings are almost complete now, and this is their story so far.

 

Click here to see more entries from this week’s photo challenge, Change.

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Beneath Your Feet

This week’s photo challenge is Beneath Your Feet. It’s an ironic subject matter for me as I’m currently sat on the sofa with a possible broken toe. My feet aren’t going anywhere for the moment.

When I’m travelling, I make a point of looking above me and also beneath my feet to seek out things that I wouldn’t otherwise notice. I particularly like taking photos of unusual surfaces beneath my feet.

In Iceland, I walked onto a frozen lake…

In Death Valley I walked on salt…

I  like to have snow beneath my feet (or skis) whenever possible…

And, most recently, I got the chance to experience a glacier beneath my feet while walking in crampons in Alaska…

Off-Season

This week’s photo challenge is perfect for me.

For many years, when I was working seasons, I didn’t have an off-season. I would go wherever the people and the work were. However, I would still experience the off-season in my hometown of Blackpool when I returned to visit.

Due to the Illuminations, we have an unusually long season in Blackpool. Once the tourists do leave, the locals come out to play (albeit it in extra layers to keep warm). If you look closely, you can see snow on the fells in the background of this shot.

Click here to take part in this week’s Photo Challenge.

Motion

This is one of the many photos I took when travelling by train between Innsbruck in Austria, and Pisa in Italy. Although the majority of the landscape was a blur (those trains move fast!), I could still see differences as we crossed over the border between the two countries. The increased number of mopeds was a sure sign that we were travelling further into Italy.

Click here to join in this week’s photo challenge.

Early Bird

I am not naturally an early bird. However, I do like getting up early. If I can drag myself out of bed, I find those early hours much more productive. I particularly like getting up early when I’m travelling. It means I get to visit places when they’re nice and quiet (I don’t like crowds), and I get to take people-free photos like the one of the leaning tower of Pisa above 🙂

Click here if you’d like to join in with this week’s photo challenge.

Wall

This week’s photo challenge (click here to take part) has made me realise just how many photos I take of walls.

I take A LOT of photos of street art on walls…

Sometimes it’s the textures that draw me in…

I even got to walk around the top of the city walls when I visited Lucca…

Scale

This week’s photo challenge is all about Scale (click here to see more entries). I love playing about with scale when I’m taking photos. Like in this shot that I took in Death Valley. Although is caused me a few cuts to my legs and hands, I was intrigued by the salt floor that we were walking on. I held the camera as low as I could and then pointed it up towards two of my travel companions who were picking their way across the difficult landscape. Casey (in the background) almost looks like a subbuteo figure that I’ve placed on top of a rock.

Serenity

The Photo Challenge this week is Serenity. This isn’t something that I’m finding a lot of in my life at the moment. However, when things do get super stressful and chaotic, my method of finding some serenity is to go to the nearest coastline and look out at the horizon. I grew up by the coast, and whenever things got tough and suffocating as a child, looking out to sea helped me to calm down. The horizon between sky and sea is a reminder to me that there are always other lands out there to explore, space to be found when you need it and infinite lives that can be led. Even when my life has taken me to living in land-locked countries, I always seem to find my way back to the sea.

My hometown of Blackpool, Lancashire is where it all started for me…

I’ve seen many horizons all over the world…

Skirnkle Bay was definitely worth the effort.

Even in the middle of massive summer storms in Kefalonia, looking out at the horizon still helped me to feel serene (although the earthquakes afterwards would slightly reduce that feeling!)…

Click here to see more entries from this week’s Photo Challenge.

Shadowed

One winter shadow and one summer shadow. I’m hoping to see my shadow on snow again in a couple of weeks when I travel to Andorra for a ski holiday. The beach shot reminds me that, although it is wet, very windy and miserable here in Wales at the moment, we do have nice weather sometimes and I will be able to visit the beach again one day.

Click here to see more entries from this week’s photo challenge.

New

Seeing as one of my personal goals is to visit at least one new place and try one new activity every year, I thought this week’s photo challenge would be a good opportunity to look back at the new places I’ve visited and the activities I’ve tried since starting this blog.

My trip to Pisa was as amazing cultural experience…

Pottery is something that I’ve always wanted to try, and I seemed to always just miss out on the opportunity until I enrolled on the one day workshop at the Howardian Centre in Cardiff…

Sleeping ‘rough’ in St Davids 2 car park in Cardiff as part of the Sleep Easy Challenge helped to raise awareness of the issues surrounding homelessness. We also raised enough money to keep an emergency room open at the YMCA hostel. Click the link to see an updated comment from Mandy Caddy about this year’s event and how you can get involved…

Taking part in the Cardiff Photo Marathon saw 400 of us running around the city like mad people for 12 hours, desperately trying to find our next shot. I was exhausted by the time I handed in my memory card, but it was a great experience…

I volunteered at an eco-campsite in Anglesey, North Wales for a week. I later found out from my mum that this was possibly not my first time visiting Anglesey, although if I have been before it was when I was a baby and I don’t remember it…

I’ve visited London lots of times, but every time I go there I found another part of the huge city that I haven’t explored before…

I decided to visit Boulogne-sur-mer, France because it is accessible by bus from Cardiff. I love that I live in Wales, yet I can be in a foreign country with a totally different culture within a day…

The high ropes course at Go Ape is not something I would have signed up for before, but I agreed to try it as part of a friend’s hen weekend. Even though I’m petrified of heights, I conquered my fear and completed the whole course…

Completing my first 5k was a reminder to myself of what I can achieve…

There are some new activities that I’m not very good at, and some that I just plain suck at. Archery is one of those activities…

New places that involve snow I can ski on are always my favourite. In January 2014 I went to Pila, Italy (not to be confused with Pisa, see above) with my parents and their friend…

My initial reason for visiting Iceland was to see the Northern Lights, but I discovered so much more whilst I was there. I can’t wait to go back some day and explore more of the island…

I love being an aunty, and getting to try new activities with my nephew, nieces and godchildren make them even more special. I hadn’t planned to go mountain carting, my niece and nephew chose the activity and I’m so glad they did…

Learning to scythe was also a skill I never thought I’d acquire, until my volunteer work at the community garden led me to Phil the scythe master…This post is part of the Photo Challenge ‘New’. Click here to see more entries and a photo of a really cute baby.