Category Archives: Photography

Photo Of The Day — The Woman In Red in Vimoutiers

Seriously — it’s moments like this that make you smile.

This tiny little woman in a red jacket wouldn’t have even been shoulder height on me. And there she was on a Saturday afternoon, dressed in her bright red wool jacket and making her way through the French town of Vimoutiers in Normandy. I hope I’m still getting around that well when I’m her esteemed age!

Old woman in a red coat walking in front of a historic church in Vimoutiers, Normandy, France.

Black and White from Ballarat

Just a quick flashback to a walk around the lake in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia in the winter. With the exception of one bizarrely bright bird, absolutely nothing was colourful that day and the wind was icy cold and quite gusty.

I briefly glanced at these when I first took them, but since we were already up to our eyeballs in packing boxes and mess, I didn’t have the energy to devote any time or inspiration to them back in August.

Here I am back in France, happily and cozily parked in front of the fire in December, and now I’m glad I saved these for the right time. Some of these are potential book covers or perfect for doing a matte and frame treatment. I can tell when my heart is happy again because my productivity level just soars. That’s a lovely thing to be able to say at my age!

All of the images in this short photo essay are from Lake Wendouree in Ballarat. Enjoy!

Unidentified woman and child walk along the lakeside on a cold winter day.

Partially submerged tree and water grasses in a rain-swollen lake.

A bench at the edge of a swollen lake.

Wind whipped dunegrass alongside the water’s edge of a lake.

And finally — the ONE SPOT of colour…

An Australian bird with a bright red face and deep blue chest picks its way through the marsh grass of an inland lake.

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©Deborah Harmes and ©A Wanderful Life
Please respect the words and images on this page.
All rights reserved.

Calm Determination

This has been an odd week weather-wise and the heavy-soggy-blustery nature of it all finally took a bit of a break today. I feel rather relieved since I don’t sleep well when it feels as if the house is going to lift off the foundations. We’ve had cyclonic bursts of wind hammering the sides of the house along with constant, heavy rain — then it all swirls and hits the exact opposite side of the building. Rain alternates with hail. The temperatures plunge and snow falls then melts. Most unsettling…

The mood of the weather is rather a match to the mood of the world right now — but I choose not to focus on that.

The house has been on the market for two weeks — and now we wait. Oddly, since I am not always known for saintly levels of patience, I am feeling quite calm and purposeful.

Really looking forward to what will be coming in the post in the next few days. I’ve waited and waited until the time was right and the PRODUCT was right size-wise. I no longer enjoy huge honking camera bodies with humongous lenses dangling off the front. They make my wrists and shoulders ache and they’re a pain to worry about because they’re so expensive to replace if damaged or stolen. And with the ever-smaller equipment nowadays, it seems like the right time to downsize before we leave here.

On Sunday I bought a GoPro Hero 4 Session at a 20% off sale. Then I got accessories like hand grips, telescoping mono-pod, foam-cube protectors and the like, and a bike handlebar mount for Mark to try it out. And since this toy-sized video camera is so tiny, it will fit into a purse. It is seriously teeny-tiny — and we noticed that the Tour de France riders were all using them during the last few weeks.

I’m ready to start making videos in addition to doing still photography and my agencies in London and New York have asked if I plan to add that sort of additional artwork to my portfolio since it now sells so well. Even wee burst videos of 2-ish minutes at 8 megapixel clarity seem to do well!

Happy that I will get ANOTHER my-brain-will-never-get-old-and-fuddly learning curve with a new editing program (ask me again how I feel about that statement in a week!) to master.

And other than the %^&*£@! flu that we’ve both picked up from all of the %^&*£@! sick people in Ballarat — life is good!

Growing The Group

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A very quick note today…

Time for some growth!

I’ve added a SUBSCRIBE form to the side column — and that enables you to receive a very quick email whenever I have posted new content.

Whether you are using a computer, a tablet, or a mobile device — please do sign up so that you can stay up to date on where we are and what we are up to.

Copyright
©Deborah Harmes and ©A Wanderful Life Please respect the words and images on this page. All rights reserved.

Adaptation

A detail of a startled man holding his head in his hands on one of the side arches of the medieval Marktkirche in Hannover, Germany.

Advice from friends who are experienced writers/bloggers/journalists is usually quite welcome — but the ‘Oh no!’ image above reflects a dilemma that I’ve been dealing with. Before we strike off into the world again, I’m taking a bit of a stand about adapting what will be on this site. Here’s why.

In the past, it seemed easy to just classify this as a travel blog and it led to some good writing and photography assignments since I used it as a showcase. BUT, the advice to just leave this site in that one category never really sat well with me.

From this point on, I am going back to the original idea for this site and that will include several of my own eclectic interests alongside more mainstream topics. You’ll be seeing a mix of articles ranging from photo essays and stand-alone photo of the day posts, travel articles that are sprinkled with photos, updates about our progress, occasional whinging about whatever is an obstacle to overcome, and sometimes the content is going to be topical social commentary, historical research, political reflections, and more.

I feel strongly that since the world is shifting so rapidly, it’s important for me to go back to longer journalistic articles that give a real feel for places or which inform the readers of the current ‘vibe’ versus the tourism office public relations spiel. If people are trying to decide between travelling in or relocating to Country A or Country B — wouldn’t they rather have accurate boots-on-the-ground reporting about what’s unfolding in that place and perhaps some history about what the forces are that are creating these changes?

This site has never been monetised with promotional tours or free hotel stays or anything else of any monetary value. If they had been, I would have made a note of disclaimer and that rule will also apply in the future.

I’d like to feel comfortable doing long-form essays, op-ed pieces, or outright critiques about places, people, and situations without feeling like I have to take the Ebay feedback approach of always saying something nice so that I get good reciprocal feedback. When it applies to real world issues, that’s not a helpful or truthful approach.

So come along for the ride as we finish this house in the next few weeks, sell it (send us some positive vibes!), pack, and head overseas to old fave places that make our hearts sing and new places that we’ll be both working in and exploring as future settling-down options.

We’re certainly never going to get into a boring rut if we live like this for the rest of our lives, eh?

By The Sea in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, UK

By the sea is where I wish I was right now. But in lieu of that reality, here’s a flashback photo essay from a trip to the lovely seaside town of Aldeburgh in Suffolk in the UK.

By the way, not ALL beaches are sandy. This one is a perfect example of that. Enjoy!

Medieval Moot Hall in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, UK, built in 1520, with the village memorial cross to the left.

A seagull sitting atop one of the medieval brick chimneys on Moot Hall,.

Fishing boats on a gravel, sometimes called shingle, beach in the UK.

Close-up of a the beautifully coloured pieces of stone comprising a gravel beach, sometimes called a shingle beach, in the UK.

Hot Pants and Big Hair

It was such a retro look that my head fairly well snapped when I saw it on ample display in Newcastle Upon Tyne in the north of England. Really ‘Big Hair’ on women of all ages. I don’t think I’ve seen such a generous use of the teasing comb and cans of hairspray to create that sort of back-combed volume since the 1960s.

What was even funnier was that we were in a vintage bookstore at one point during our four weeks up there and there was a book on sale that was a ‘Look Back to 1960s Newcastle’ — and all of the women in that book would have been the mothers or grandmothers of the people we were seeing on the streets. Some of the folks in the North of England seem to have gotten stuck in a time warp!

Regional trends included the messy buns — the sort of teased up and pinned up look that Brigitte Bardot used to do so well — or tight buns — teased up and smoothed into not-a-hair-out-of-place firmness with gel or hairspray. And we saw this look on women from teenagers to senior citizens. We were checking out at the grocery store one afternoon and it was everything I could do to not snap a quick pic with my iPhone of the middle-aged check-out clerk who had a bright red beehive hairdo that was towering above her small face!

Then there was the range of hot pants on display (on some icy days in February?) — thankfully on the really young girls and not on the middle-aged gals who shared their love of Big Hair with a large percentage of the Newcastle demographic. Interesting too that once we returned to London and Norfolk from our month up north, we never saw a beehive, teased bun, or hotpants look down there!

Apologies for the graininess of some of these. I did snap a few of them on my phone!

Teased up back-combed hair on young girls in a Newcastle mall going from the most bouffant on the left to the least voluminous on the right. This was taken on an icy cold day at the end of February.

Interesting fashion and hair at the hardware superstore.

Two young girls with teased chunks of hair sitting on the floor in a shopping mall.

Two young girls with teased chunks of hair sitting on the tile floor in a shopping mall.

Hotpants (even on the coldest winter day!) and big teased up hair are very popular amongst the teenagers of Newcastle in the UK.

Hotpants (even on the coldest winter day!) and big teased up hair are very popular amongst many of the teenagers of Newcastle in the UK.