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The Big Picture: Saint John, New Brunswick
It was a foggy, sleepy Sunday morning in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. The dead outnumbered the living - at least in the Old Burying Ground. I spent the morning wandering around downtown, thinking about my grandma who grew up here and never stopped reminiscing about the days on Princess Street. She had red ringlets and doughy dimples and said “oh my land” instead of anything even resembling a swear. Have you ever visited a place with family significance? You ought to. Perhaps memories of a place are embedded in our DNA...RIP Grandma Starr, 1916-2008.
The Big Picture: Caribbean Scene
The Big Picture: Parisian Rapunzel
A Rocky Start to the Day
The Big Picture: Wigwam Motel
Screw political correctness: on my recent solo road trip through Arizona (story coming soon to The Toronto Star), one of the highlights was The Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, AZ.
The adorable concrete and steel tents, built in 1950 on a stretch of old Route 66, rent for under $60 US per night. Interiors feature the original wood furnishings and a surprisingly understated native theme. Outside, classic cars evoke the days of cowboys n’ Indians on TV and wholesome family vacations.
www.galerie-kokopelli.com/wigwam
The Big Picture: Scenes from a Storybook
To anybody who pooh-poohs England on a regular basis, citing overcast skies and drizzly days, I offer this: the delightful, magical place in Lewes, East Sussex known as Southover Grange. The grounds of this circa 1572 mansion are now a glorious public garden that explodes with colour every spring. I shot this view today while I caught up with my English friend Kat in the park. We watched children happily darting about the lawn without a care in the world. It was amazing to think that kids had probably been doing just that for some 400 years!
Note the manor house on the left and Lewes Castle up in the right hand corner. Oh - and the bored teens, who probably suffer from the universal affliction of not appreciating anything at all. It’s ok, I have enough of it to cover them.
The Big Picture: Want Chips with That?
The Big Picture: Whitechapel's Junk Hunk
I was strolling through East London (a.k.a. Jack the Rippersville) yesterday and couldn’t believe my eyes when I spied this chap who looked like he had walked into a London fog some time around 1892 and emerged from it in 2009. Wearing this retro outfit, he was standing in front of an old fashioned store organizing old books.
Was he a ghost? A jet-lag induced hallucination? An extra in a new Sherlock Holmes made-for-TV movie? No, he was Andrew Coram, owner of Beedell Coram Antiques (86a Commercial Street), which is probably more photogenic than it is shoppable.
I had a peek inside but couldn’t get much further than the front door as junk threatened to eat me alive from the feet up. Everything from loose film to portraits of dour Englishmen was haphazardly stacked every which way. So instead I settled upon simply talking to Andrew, who was just as eccentric as I had hoped. What else do you expect from a person who plucks a dirty bowler hat from a trashcan and wears it with such effortless panache?
The Big Picture: How 'bout dem apples?
“Stop!!” I squealed at my driver, as we sped wildly through rural Macedonia.
It took a fair bit of effort for him to do so, since our average speed was about 120 kilometres per hour (a Sunday drive by Macedonian standards).
Out of nowhere, half a dozen women had appeared by the side of the road, each manning one of these identical apple stands. I simply HAD to photograph them, which means I was obligated to buy their wares ($2 got me enough to keep the doctor at bay for a good week or so).
Gotta be honest: the fruit was mealy as heck. But what a juicy photo!
The Big PIcture: Flipping England
Three things I love:
The English Countryside
A Nice Dollop of Sunshine
Sheep that Mind Their Own Business
Speaking of which, Flip just released HD versions in Canada, which excites me tremendously. I’ve got myself the Flip Ultra HD, which I shall be testing out next week when I visit London, Edinburgh and Glasgow.