Have you heard of the Capture the Colour competition? You post your travel pics in blue, green, yellow white and red, to potentially win prizes.
I love the theme of this competition, and the concept of storytelling that is to go along with the photos. So while my photographs are nothing special visually, I thought that just for fun, I’d use this idea to take myself (and you) on a little armchair journey through some old memories.
Blue
Steel blue water, blue sky and a blue warship, all reflected in the cool blue glass facades of Manhattan skyscrapers…
In 2009, two Australian warships HMA Sydney and HMA Ballarat sailed into New York as part of the centenary celebration of the Great White Fleet. I was lucky enough to be one of four Aussie journalists taken out by the US Coastguard to greet the frigates. I will never forget the early morning salt-slap of water against my face as we headed out to the mouth of the Hudson River; nor the surge of patriotic pride that took me completely by surprise as Sydney churned into view, white-clad officers lining her deck, and the strains of a band playing “Down Under” bouncing over the waves.
Green
On a trek through the Sacred Valley in Peru, we came across this group of school children playing football. The players and the field appeared seemingly out of nowhere as we emerged from dense forest. What with the green field, the green mountains and the thick forest, it was as though these boys were playing inside a green globe, above, below and around.
Yellow
I snapped this little fellow with his yellow truck, yellow striped mat and almost-yellow hair at the Lee Street fete in Melbourne, Australia, earlier this year.
It was a poignant day for me. I was six months pregnant with my first baby, and Mr B and I had recently moved to Melbourne, the fourth state we’d lived in in less than a year and the fifth interstate move for me since I’d left New York only two years earlier. Finally we were settled, creating a home. And since the Lee Street school was where our little one would eventually go, we decided to visit to the fete. I think it was on this day that I really started to get clucky, and the reality of our baby-to-be sank in.
White
The white sails of this yacht, and the white sea-foam created by our own yacht, stood out in wonderful contrast to sea, land and sky during a sunset cruise in Newport, Rhode Island (USA).
I had taken two weeks away from steamy August in New York and stayed in a B&B that was a 300 year-old rum runner’s house overlooking Narragansett Bay. In between harbour cruises, I spent a lot of time visiting remote graveyards in the wilderness, researching the bizarre stories of vampires that plagued this corner of America as recently as 100 years ago.
Red
A sea of red terracotta rooftops, curving away into the distance in the Old Town part of Nice, France.
This was taken during our family holidays last year. Everyone else had gone down to the beach, but I wanted some time out so I climbed alone up stone steps cut into a cliff, to a kind of belvedere lookout from what was once, so I read, a Celtic castle ruin. I remember the sensation that you could almost reach out your hand and touch the roof tiles, although they were actually very far away. I didn’t know it at the time but I carried my baby with me on this climb, a tiny speck of a promise only a day or two old.
Part of the Capture the Colour initiative involves tagging five other bloggers who you think might want to take part. Finding five fabulous photographically-talented bloggers with a penchant for travel was easy. LIMITING the list to five was a lot tougher! Here they are:
Melissa of Press Play
Brandi of Not Your Average Ordinary
Deb of Bright and Precious
Katherine of Through My Looking Glass
Kate of Our Little Sins
Ladies, will you join me?
