Category: Photo Journals

Photo Journals, Travels, Travels: Canada

Toronto Islands, Canada

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Been to Toronto? Been out to Toronto Islands? Probably not… you might not realise what you’re missing, then!

It’s a pretty quick ferry trip from the CBD, and there’s a surprising amount going on there – well, there is in more inclement weather. It was a bit quieter when we visited. Normally operational are things like the Centreville Amusement Park and the Far Enough Farm and the Frisbee Golf Course and some eateries and what not. But we visited in the bitter winter cold of New Year’s Day, January 1st 2015. It was the coldest I can ever remember feeling, but it was beautiful… We wandered around for a while, away from the other visitors of the island, enjoying the time to just be quiet and take notice of the little things; husband looking at the ice built up on the branches in the water, me walking aimlessly through the piles of orange and brown leaves.

You can read a lot about the history of the islands and their offerings on the website, and I’d rather not just regurgitate their information, but basically, the island broke away from the mainland courtesy of a nasty storm in the mid 1800s. A lot of people now know the Islands as being home to Hanlan’s Point, home to one of the world’s great clothing optional beaches (seriously), an area known in the late 1800s as something like Canada’s Coney Island.

While we didn’t quite make it to the beach, it was really nice to walk around the quieter part of the island without any crowds. I guess it’d be a little different in summer, given the amount of activities actually offered there, but it was so peaceful and calm when we were there. It was the perfect spot to spend a little time reflecting on the year that had just been, the year that was beginning, to just take some time out of a crazy few weeks of travel and let my mind wonder for a while, without worrying about plane schedules and itineraries and what not.

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Photo Journals, Travels, Travels: America

Photo Journal: Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge at sundown

I totally didn’t plan to be crossing the bridge at dusk. I’d intended on crossing in daylight, to get some cool photos. But I got distracted by pie. I regret nothing, because Four & Twenty Blackbirds makes a damn good pie.

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But, turns out that it was all for the best (pie usually is), and I got the most gorgeous shots on our way back to Manhattan… Also, if you head over there and want to walk it, the entry to the walk way on the Brooklyn side is the corner Adams and Tillary. Wish someone had told us that. Would have saved about 2km walking to find the entrance. Probably lucky – I had some pie to walk off.

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Photo Journals, Travels, Travels: Egypt

Photo Journal: Philae Temple, Egypt

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It’s funny; it didn’t seem to matter how many temples we visited in Egypt, they were all so different, and all so beautiful in their own ways. Philae Temple was a favourite for me, because it felt so secluded, isolated, and so peaceful.

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Located on a little island in the middle of Lake Nasser, it’s believed to have been founded around 370 BC. “Philae” translates roughly to “the end,” because it’s location defined the southern limit of Egypt at the time it was built.

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Much like Abu Simbel, also located on Lake Nasser, the original site of Philae temple was actually flooded, making it yet another wonder that was thankfully relocated and therefore saved for countless generations to come. It’s not located on an island called Agilika.

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One of the things that really stood out for me were the intricate lotus petal designs that crowned the columns throughout the complex. The lotus features prominently in a LOT of the temples we saw, and held special symbolic meaning to the Ancient Egyptians, representing creation, rebirth, the sun.

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For the most part, the hieroglyphs were still incredibly in tact, considering the age of the temple, and we did see something that completely amazed me: ancient graffiti. Below is one of the images I captured of a Coptic cross, defiantly etched over the original hieroglyphs by early Coptic Christians. They actually made their way through the temple defacing a lot of the original reliefs and art work, and it’s believed that a Christian altar was actually erected around 500 AD, in the courtyard.

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My most concrete memory of this place, though, was the view that greeted us towards the end of our wanderings. Lake Nasser, in all its sparkly glory under the midday Aswan sun. It was perfect, and always will be in my memory.

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Photo Journals, Travels, Travels: Asia

Photo Journal: The streets of Saigon

I found Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) to be a fascinating city when I first visited in 2014, and really wish I’d had more time there. It was very busy, the traffic was insane and every time we went to cross the road felt like we were tempting fate just a little more. I felt like the people of the city would have really had some stories to tell, if I’d only had the time (and an interpreter) to listen.

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Photo Journals, Travels, Travels: Asia

Photo Journal: Street food women of Thailand

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In Thailand, as in a lot of South East Asian countries, it seems to be the women who shoulder a good portion of the work. You see them up early, trawling through markets, heaving baskets full of fresh fruit, often with a child or two in tow. They are the ones who sell the market goods, who purchase them, who cook them and then sell them. They’re the ones who run the show, they are strong, often silent, with wiry strong bodies and faces that tell of a tougher life than I could ever imagine.

This woman really caught my attention in Koh Samui. Husband and I had been walking around way off the main drag all morning, and sat down at a street food vendor for a lunch of pad thai, when this lady ambled up, baskets teetering on her small shoulder, and parked herself on a tiny plastic stool. To our complete amazement, she had somehow set up her portable kitchen, complete with meat grilling over charcoal and condiments, in the middle of the street in under 30 seconds.