This is another trip across the Pennines from Manchester, to the West Yorkshire town of Halifax.
The main attraction was The Piece Hall, a grand cloth trading building recently restored as a place to shop and pass the time.
It’s a magnificent piece of architecture, now with a modern piazza at its heart. My rain-speckled visit also took in the beautiful cathedral – and even a wonderful town centre Art Deco elephant. Handsome place, well worth seeing.
You have to visit the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque at least twice on a visit to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. By the dazzling light of day, this beguiling building teems with visitors and can be hot work. But it remains open until long after sunset, and is transformed by illuminations which unveil a magical spectrum of colours, shimmering reflections and accentuate the wonderful lines and shapes created by this wonder of architecture.
After dark, the visitors have thinned out and lurk as silhouettes, and you can find stretches of the mosque are your own. The grounds are lit with warm, golden lamps which add to the atmosphere. And as for night photography, the lighting means that a tripod isn’t essential or even necessary. You must definitely take a night stroll around this building if you’re ever in this Middle Eastern city.
Normal people take photographs of their hotel rooms when they go on holiday. I don’t, no matter how plush they are. I prowl about the premises, looking for sleek lines and very long corridors, even taking sly shots of other guests passing through these places of temporary abode. I stayed at The Blue Water at Wadduwa in Sri Lanka and the Traders Hotel, Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
A lakeside vision. The stillness of the water. A tantalising view of the other shore. The symmetry of the carefully cultivated and pruned trees. Only the best is good enough for royalty, in this case the royals of Sweden. I captured this view at the castle of Gripsholm, set on an island 60km to the west to the Swedish capital Stockholm on a Scandinavian summer’s day. Well worth a visit…
I was about to take the staircase to the District and Circle line Underground platform at Blackfriars station, in the heart of the City of London.
It was empty. This is a rare pleasure, creating space to take some shots. The stairs and the handrail on the descent are full of lines, shapes, curves, angles and symmetry. Some everyday magic that is a feast for the camera.
I edited the colour shot to emphasise its vibrancy. The stairs and walls were given a soft focus to draw the eye to the ordinary – yet ornate – handrails.
The goalposts shift in this other shot, as it captures two people at the bottom of the stairs. Its editing is a deep, moody monochrome. A case of the camera telling two stories from the same spot.
Which one gets your seal of approval?…
