Tag Archives: Travel

Travel Theme: The Four Elements

By Vladimir Brezina

Ailsa’s travel-themed photo challenge for this week is The Four Elements: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.

Earth

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Air

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Fire

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Water

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And, finally, the Quintessence, the fifth element, “that which God used in the delineation of the universe” (Plato); which, unlike the four terrestrial elements, has no qualities (it is neither hot, cold, wet, or dry) and is incapable of change (Aristotle); and which is “subtler than light” (Fludd). (The last property makes it tricky to photograph.)

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Travel Theme: Beaches

By Vladimir Brezina

Ailsa’s travel-themed photo challenge this week is Beaches.

Walking out onto the beach at dawn

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or relaxing on it at sunset

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the beach is a magical place…

But as kayakers, we look on beaches with a practical eye. And there’s always something to complain about.

The beach might vanish underwater at high tide—

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or be painfully broad at low tide—

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Too steep—

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(full story is here)

Too rocky—

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or, on the contrary, too sandy (sugar-fine sand, no matter how magical it might be otherwise, gets in everything)—

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Too much surf—

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Too many people—

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But sometimes, just sometimes, we land on that perfect beach, not too narrow, not too broad, not too steep, with waves lapping gently on the soft sand, where we are alone, where the dusk and dawn are truly magical…

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Travel Theme: Dance

By Vladimir Brezina

Ailsa’s travel-themed photo challenge this week is Dance.

You see all kinds of things in NYC’s Central Park…

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(Last Fall, just a week or so after this…)

Travel Theme: Light

By Vladimir Brezina

Ailsa’s travel-themed photo challenge this week is Light.

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Belize, March 2010.

Travel Theme: Benches

By Vladimir Brezina

Ailsa’s travel-themed photo challenge this week is Benches.

Will these chairs do? To us, they are the image of deep summer

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(Greenport, NY, during our 2012 kayak circumnavigation of Long Island)

Travel Theme: Pale

By Vladimir Brezina

Ailsa’s travel-themed photo challenge this week is Pale. Once again, her chosen theme is somehow strangely linked to The Daily Post’s photo challenge this week, Color—although for a change it’s the polar opposite.

In response to The Daily Post’s challenge, I’ve posted some highly colored kayaking photos. But of course I have some pale ones as well…

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Weekly Photo Challenge & Travel Theme: Time—Future Tense

By Vladimir Brezina

Once again, the Weekly Photo Challenge and Ailsa’s Travel Theme are in uncanny synergy—this week, the two themes are Future Tense and Time.

And here’s a photo that seems to me to symbolize these two themes. I know many of you have seen it before. But that was back in November. Time has passed, and what was then the Future has now most likely become the Present…

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Travel Theme: Bridges

By Vladimir Brezina

Ailsa’s travel-themed photo challenge this week is Bridges.

Ailsa asks, “Are you ready to cross the bridge when you come to it?” But we follow quite another set of routes through the city, which were there before the first bridge was ever built over them…

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Travel Theme: Gaudy

By Vladimir Brezina

Ailsa’s travel-themed photo challenge this week is Gaudy.

I think it’s safe to say that Ailsa will never issue a challenge on the exact word that this costume inspires, so there’s no point in holding this photo back. Gaudy it is!

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A Word A Week Challenge & Travel Theme: Island Shadows

By Vladimir Brezina

On A Word In Your Ear, Skinnywench’s photo challenge this week is Island. And on Where’s my backpack?, Ailsa’s is Shadows.

And the two just come together in my mind—warm turquoise waters, a strong tropical sun beating down, palm shadows…

Sort of like this—

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Glover’s Reef Atoll, Belize, 2010. More photos are here.