Pictures Of Passports Past
Images from mine and my wife’s past passports, featuring visa stamps and horrific passport photos of the two of us in our respective youths. Not as horrific as the photos in our current passports, though, so there is that. The image on the front of the old British passport in black. I once passed through Athens security with this passport upside down, back to front, and closed, and was still waved through because of the respect it held throughout the world. Or because of the indifference of the security person. I’d like to think it was the former as there had only recently been a terrorist activity – a bombing, I think – in Greece when I was travelling. As you can see, my passport was issued in Gwent. And that’s all you can see. Behold my youthful narrowness and lopsided, spiky hair! Rest assured that with age has come width and more evenly-dispersed, less spiky hair. It would be fair to say that I am more difficult to push off balance these days. My wife – she wasn’t back then – dressed in her arctic warfare uniform. At a guess. She was, apparently, very hungover when this passport photograph was taken. An immigration stamp from my wife’s passport when she visited family in the United States. A visa stamp from my wife’s passport, again for the United States. My wife made a border crossing from the United States into the wilds of Canada and all she got was this lousy customs stamp. From our first European-style passport and from our honeymoon where we jetted off to Asia for a cruise this is my Chinese visa stamp. Photos from that cruise can be found on my Flickr stream: Honeymoon – Far East Cruise. Stamps from our honeymoon: Hong Kong, Singapore, and China. More passport stamps from our honeymoon cruise on board the Diamond Princess: Vietnam and Japan. Final immigration stamps from the honeymoon cruise and that particular passport: Taiwan and Thailand. One of several almost identical stamps in the current passport because the only place we’ve been since renewing is the United States. It’s a real shame you can’t carry passport stamps over from one passport to the next, losing that stampy history every ten years when you renew. However, the next set of stamps we should be getting will all be from South America as that’s the next area of the world we’re heading to. Not for a little while yet but looking forward to getting a few more pages of the passport filled in with...
Deal Pier
On a recent trip to Kent we spent a couple of hours in Deal as we knew it had a castle there and we do like a good castle. But we also like piers and we saw that Deal had one of those too. This necessitated a walk down it and led my wife to remark that Deal Pier was "without a doubt the ugliest pier I've ever seen." Well, ugliness is in the eye of the beholder and it just so happens I didn't share my wife's opinion. Deal Pier is a wonderful example of a simple, brutalist structure; raw concrete and rusting iron creating great lines and shapes everywhere you look. What sort of beast couldn't possibly like that? Please don't tell my wife I just called her a beast. #brutalism #brutalist #blackandwhitephotography #monochromeworld #pier #Kent #clouds #architecture #sea #shadow Google+: View post on...
On The White Cliffs Of Dover
We took a short break recently, spending a few days exploring the county of Kent which describes itself as "the garden of England." I don't know that I'd describe it that way myself but I suppose my first choice description of "far better than Norfolk" – whilst wholly accurate – might be a tad contentious. We explored castles, we visited stately homes, we wandered down piers (and up them too as failure to do so leads to death from exposure or seagull abduction), and a good time was had. We also decided to take a walk along part of the famous white cliffs of Dover (spoiler: no bluebirds were spotted) in order to reach the South Foreland Lighthouse. This, incidentally, is something you too should do should you ever find yourself in the area; there's a rather lovely teahouse there but the personal tour of the lighthouse itself which (pun alert) illuminates the history of the world's first electric-powered building of this type is the (further pun alert) highlight of the visit. I think I'm out of lighthouse-related puns now. The clifftop walk was wonderful, if a little tiring. The windy conditions made the excursion especially exhilirating. Fellow walkers could be seen standing horrifically close to the edge. Sheer faces of chalk stood out marvellously against the blue sky and brownish water. France could be seen on the horizon. France was so close, in fact, that our phones switched to a French network. Many curse words were uttered as we turned off data roaming to avoid excessive charges even though we were on home soil. All-in-all, fun. This photo is from the walk along the white cliffs. Mark, I said to myself. Mark, what composition says iconic White Cliffs of Dover image to you? The answer, of course, was Dame Vera Lynn leading lemmings over the edge to land on and repel Norman invaders because that's how my brain works. So here's a spiky, bushy tree-type thing and some grass. Google+: View post on...
Norway Cruise – Crown Princess
I've finally finished going through the photos I took on our cruise through the Norwegian fjords on board the Crown Princess. Nothing too arty, nothing heavily processed, just a little bit of cleaning up, and a very, very small selection of the pictures taken. You don't want to see them all; trust me. Pictures in this album are in no particular order and feature various fjords, Geiranger, Olden, Stavanger, Bergen, and Flåm. The cruise itself was great (second time for us with +Princess Cruises) and Norway's got some stunning scenery. And all this means I might soon return to taking pictures and posting regularly again! Oh happy day! Google+: View post on...
Filtered Fjord
I know, I know… I haven't posted anything in ages. I have an excuse. I took just under one billion photos on my recent Norwegian cruise and you know how it is when you have just under one billion photos to look through and say to yourself: "That's okay… exposure tweak… that's okay… sharpen that a smidge… that's not that great but I'll keep it… that's a variation on the previous three shots but I don't want to delete it… that's okay… that's bloody awful… that's okay…" Yeah, so it's all taking a while. Anyway, this morning I've been going through the last of my shots around the Geirangerfjorden and it was on this part of the trip that I started playing around with a set of filters that I'd bought especially. As someone who typically shoots street-style the need to work with graduated ND and coloured filters is pretty rare (and in my case completely new) so there were quite a few "oh dear, that's just horrendous" moments. Still, there were some that I thought worked pretty funkily and here's one from late evening leaving Geiranger, shot from our cabin balcony on board the Crown Princess. Google+: View post on...
Crown Princess – Norwegian Fjords Cruise – Southampton and Bergen
Many, many moons ago I went on a cruise for my honeymoon – I took my wife with me as it seemed appropriate to do so – and followed that up with a post on this site giving out cruise tips for first-timers: Your First Princess Cruise. This proved to be a popular post for those people looking for hints about cruising the seas. More importantly, it gave me and my wife a bit of a taste for holidaying aboard large ships. So much so, in fact, that we decided we’d do it again some day. We just did. In the first week of September we took our second cruise, again on board one of the ships run by Princess – the Crown Princess – and this time taking a short little vacation to the Norwegian Fjords. This post forms the first of five posts describing the trip; the posts will be spaced out according to just how long it takes me to go through the photos I took on each of the days (I might have taken quite a few). Southampton The cruise started and ended at Southampton. This was due to Princess’s UK policy of surrounding a lovely holiday with something truly terrible just to make it seem even better. No, of course it isn’t! However, I am from Portsmouth and am obligated by law to mock the city down the coast at every opportunity under penalty of mutilation. Anyway, the cruise started at Southampton and thanks to a wonderful piece of luck with regards to timing not only was our cruise ship leaving that day but so were three others, and preparations were underway for the Southampton boat show too; the result of all this a long delay getting from the car park to the ship. Somewhere in the order of three hours to be precise. Still, we were calm and relaxed because we’d arrived early. Some other people weren’t so calm and relaxed and we can only wonder what the fellow passengers of the woman due to depart on the Ventura had to deal with when she finally got on board her ship. When we boarded the Crown Princess, however, we had a very pleasant surprise almost immediately. We’d paid for an inside cabin – it’s because we’re not millionaires in case you’re wondering – but the reason we went on this cruise was due to an email deal where we could get a free upgrade to ocean view (i.e. a window). I’d actually had a very nice email discussion with one of Princess’s cruise specialists – Rachel Vane – in order to confirm this...
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