Fushimi Inari Taisha, (literally) thousands of torii gates lead the way up the mountain, and back down again. The most brilliant of the many shrines we visited in Japan.
#japan #kyoto #temple #FushimiInari #colourful #colour #red #wheresteddynow #tedblog.ca #photo.tedblog.ca #worldtravel #rtw
Colourful wooden buoys from Prince Edward Island
#colour #sea #PEI #PrinceEdwardIsland #Canada #Maritimes #colourful #wood #wheresteddynow #tedblog.ca
Night Market, Palm Springs, California. July 2016
Night markets are wondrous places, full of strange, offbeat, or merely irregular people. I love shooting from behind the scenes, and the sidewalks provide great access to back of the stalls. Looking towards the business end of the enterprise.
Welcome. It’s probably good that you Read Me First.
I’ve been blogging over at Where’s Teddy Now for over ten years. But it’s time now to break away and separate my passion for writing from my passion for photography.
The first thing to understand is that this blog was founded on January 10, 2016. ANd yet, you’ll find photos that go back ten years, or more. You’ll find that I post my photos on the date they were taken, not posted. Consider it a bit of a historic record of my travels.
The Shard, Southward, London. June 2015
The world is not static, and if the roots of our perceptions, traditions, hold static, then we are doomed, I say, into destructive dogma.
R.A. Salvatore
We’d just arrived in London after ten months of travel. This was our final leg before returning home. We were tired.
We left our homestay at Honor Oak and jumped on the overground towards London Bridge. Stepping out of the Metro station, there she lay: The Shard. The tallest building in Europe, eclipsing One Canada Tower in London. This is one serious building. (Designed by Renzo Piano, an Italian.)
And it was staring us in the face.
Passage Jouffroy, Grandes boulevards, 2nd Arr., Paris. June 2015
This one, built in 1845, was the first to be built entirely of cast iron and glass, and to have radiant heating rising from the floors. They’re one of the treasures of urban Paris, but you have to search around for a bit to find them.
Our staircase, Pigalle, 9th Arr., Paris. June 2015
It’s like climbing a staircase. I’m on the top of the staircase, I look behind me and I see the steps. That’s where I was.
Jeanne Moreau
Pattern and colour always attract me.
We lived for a month in the 9th Arrondissment of Paris, near the famed Moulin Rouge and Montmartre, where Van Gogh, among others, lived. Our apartment was an old one, and had not been fitted with a lift. We climbed these stairs every day, sometimes three or four times, to get to our floor, the sixth.
As far as we can tell, these were the original treads, the original cast iron balusters, and the original oak handrails. Over a hundred years old.
Champs de mars, 7th Arrondissment, Paris. June 2015
There are very few original photos left to take of the Eiffel Tower. So I took one of the crowd, gathered on the Champs de Mars to watch the French Open. The Roland-Garros.
The reader. Rue Lepic, Montmartre, 18th Arrondissment, Paris. May 2015
Rue Lepic
Dans l’marché qui s’éveill’, Dès le premier soleil,
In the shadow of Sacre Coeur, above the bustle of le Moulin Rouge, is a quiet street where residents can still open their windows, sit on their sill, and read a book.
Where is here? Mae Ramphueng Road, Tapong, Thailand. January 9, 2015
Saikaew Road, Ko Samet, Thailand. January 2015
There is only one street on Ko Samet.
On these streets you will find many, many bars that are similar to this. And patronizing these, you’ll find the expatriate; (usually) old, (usually) overweight, (usually) European white men, sometimes accompanied by their (usually) much younger, (always) local girlfriends.
As Jane Siberry might say, a typical day on the beach.
Ferry to Uskudar, The Golden Horn, Istanbul. December 2015
I had melancholy thoughts … a strangeness in my mind, a feeling that I was not for that hour, nor for that place.
Orhun Pamuk
There is a rawness, a base level of emotion along the shores of the Golden Horn, in what was called Beyoglu. In the ten years since I was here last, much has changed (new trams and high end shopping), but much has stayed the same. The smells – of raw sewage and of deep fried fish. The sing song chorus of pomegranate juicers and simik salesmen.
It’s always men, and always old men selling simik. They are of this place, and always have been.
Neviye Sokak, Fatih (Eminonu), Istanbul. December 2014
In Arabic, sokak means market street. The word souk, in most of the Mediterranean world comes form this, and refers to the market streets, usually in the Medina. Of course definitions, especially in Istanbul where Arabic is not spoken widely, are fluid, adaptable. In this case, sokak means, merely, lane.
It’s on this very plain, in this very – let’s label it gently – “working class” neighbourhood that we found our apartment rental.
When you book with AirBnB, you sometimes take your chances. We were budget travellers, still only in our fourth month out of ten on the road, so we took a chance. On the whole, it worked out well for us. The location was fabulous, in the middle of the neighbourhood that I knew as Eminonu when I was last here in 2004. The Grand Bazaar, Sultanahmet, Topkapi… the new tram system were all just minutes walk from here. We could have sought out a more glamorous location, but then I couldn’t have gotten a shave for 5 bucks, fresher seafood than from the Kumkapi market, or been able to walk home in five minutes from the Kadirga Hamami.
Sketchy from far, perfectly safe from within; we stayed two weeks with no trouble at all.
Villareal, Guanacaste, Costa Rica. March 2008
White faces are a novelty in places where brown skin dominates. Walking around the small towns of Costa Rica, local school kids were attracted to Elliotte, and were none too shy to show their interest. Neither was Elliotte. The piercing stare of the boy; intensely interested. Or else bemused by the attention paid them by an anxious parent.
Smiles build bridges; a universal language.
Taste. The Danforth, Toronto. August 2006
Sometimes you don’t have to travel far to taste the flavours of far away places.
I spent my teenage years growing up along the Danforth, that part of eastern Toronto where the street signs are bilingual; English and Greek. My after school snacks were tiropita, or cheese pie which you could buy for $1.50.
It took me thirty years to travel the the real Greece.
Cefalu, Sicily, Italy. March 2006
I’ve been first and last
Look at how the time goes past.
But I’m all alone at last.
Rolling home to you.
Neil Young
I originally called this gentleman my Uncle Ahmad.
I found him in the old town (Stari Grad) of Beograd (Belgrade), Serbia. The country had just opened itself up to tourism, and the old square was bustling with locals. I’d been often asked “what are you doing here? Why would you visit this place?” Memories (and the sights) of NATO bombing were fresh, but I felt no animosity. I camped myself at a table in the square with a cold drink, watching the Olympics on a huge projection screen the city had set up.
Ahmad wandered up, and found a nice window sill to sit himself at. I’ve always wondered what he was thinking about.
Berbers. Mellah, Tetouan, Morocco. August 2003
If Fate throws a knife at you there are two ways of catching it: by the blade and by the handle.
Berber Saying
Of course I’d known all about Berber… that close cropped, pile free carpet that was all the rage during the 80s renovation boom. These guys, though, sipping their mint tea in the hot August sunshine, watching the goings on in the ancient Medina of Tetouan – these guys were the real thing.
They offered me tea, I politely declined. This is one knife that I did not catch by the handle. Instead, I took their picture.
Generation Ship. Mekong River, Lao PDR. August 2002
Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Long skinny boats ply the Mekong River between Chiang Kong and Luang Prabang, their cargo now tourists instead of bags of rice. Families live their lives on these boats, in the the back, separated from the tourists by the engine compartment.
As mine saddled up to this boat, a boy stuck his head our the window and perched, watching his world, a world filled with loud, obnoxious tourists, float by.
This kid’s definitely not rowing; he’s along for the ride.
Mother and Son. Si Satchanalai, Thailand. August 2002
A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest.
Irish Proverb
I wanted to title this photograph ‘Motorcycle’.
Without a motorcycle, I would not have found myself in the rural interior of Thailand, near the oddly named town of Si Satchanalai. And without that motorcycle, I would not have been stranded directly in front of the home of this family, on a rural road, in the middle of nowhere, with a burst engine gasket. Nor would I have met this beautiful family, whose wife and child entertained me while the husband drove down the road to retrieve the parts needed to reassemble the engine of my motorcycle that lay before me.
And without my bike, I wouldn’t have had the great fortune to stall out in front of the only motorcycle mechanic in the neighbourhood. True story.
The Wave. Chao Phraya River, Auyuthaya, Thailand. July 2002
I had been in-country for perhaps six hours, arriving early in the morning, napping at the airport, and catching a six am train north from Bangkok, to the ancient imperial city of Auyuthaya. Walking east from the train station (yes, I had a compass) I came to a wide, slowly flowing, muddy river, islands of lotus floating down towards Bangkok. I was the only passenger on this ferry; it spends its day plying back and forth for 5 baht a trip.
I was most likely the first farang the boatman had met that day.