Capture the Colour 2013

This is my entry into the Travelsupermarket Capture the Colour photo contest! The contest is only its second year running, and I’d been tagged by THREE people.. (Lola, Clare, & Anja), so I figured that I must set aside some time to participate.Also.. this challenge was pretty much MADE FOR ME. I ‘capture the colour’ every day! I live it! My life is full of colour.. even in my hair.. If anyone loves colour, it’s ME.

I mean, look what happens when I have a picnic:

^Rainbow vomit

Anyway, here are my five photos – one for each colour category. I tried not to pick photos that would appear on like, a postcard (you know like pictures of.. a building) or National Geographic, but rather photos that are a lot more personal – after all, this is a BLOG! And I like to tell stories..

RED

This captures one of my proudest travel moments – climbing up Mount Stromboli in Italy to watch the it erupt. A more obscure travel destination in itself, I’d heard of this place the previous summer from an Argentinian girl who was backpacking solo for several months around Europe, and I PROMISED her that I would go.

I was also particularly proud of this moment because I nearly died (via MELTING) getting up there. But it was so worth it. At dusk, I got to sit with my best friend and witness the earth spit out its red hot fire.. I called it nature’s fireworks.

RED – a symbol of power, strength, energy, DANGER. I felt that this photo truly reflected the meaning of the colour red!

YELLOW

This was taken atop Mt Ruapehu in New Zealand. I was there with my whole family during the antipodean summer to celebrate my dad turning 60 (we all skydived and bungee-jumped together too).

One afternoon, there was a spontaneous visit to this mountain and we were going to take a chairlift up, and hike the rest of the way. I figured it would be so much fun to wear my bright yellow lion costume.. for the simple fact that I wanted my photos to feature something bright and colourful – you know to add something exciting to the typical alpine landscape of white, blue, and black/dark brown.

Yellow to me symbolises JOY and happiness – and so here I am, jumping happily in pop-out yellow; the star of my own travel photo.

BLUE

I know this isn’t a great photo in terms of quality. BUT let me explain. I chose this one because it’s a bunch of kids in Portugal doing tarp surfing. You can see that they’ve chosen a large, BLUE (a symbol of water of course) tarp to emulate a wave/tube.. and skateboards to replace surfboards. I love that they’ve taken the ocean to land.. and I feel that they’ve captured the colour of the water by using this big blue tarp!

And let me tell you – tarp surfing is not as easy as it looks.. I watched these kids for ages before I could get this shot (in an excited hurry, hence the low quality) 🙂

GREEN

Can you believe this was taken in Florence? If you’ve been before, you’ll know that Florence isn’t particularly a very ‘green’ city. So when I was walking along the Amo River and saw this BRIGHT GREEN THING on the bank, I was completely struck by its vibrance.

Ok it’s not just a THING.. I suppose it’s a man-made park set up by the river for people to relax or get some sun. It’s only a tiny area, but isn’t it amazing how GREEN the space is?

Well done beautiful Florence for capturing so much restful, natural green in an unusual area. I loved it so much!

WHITE

This photo was taken in Iceland during winter when my friends and I drove the entire the Ring Road and came across the frozen waterfall, Godafoss, part way through. We got out of the car to take a quick walk to erm.. inspect the waterfall. But as we traipsed around the thick snow.. a blizzard started to set in.

Soon, we could very barely see where the snow banks were and we were falling and stumbling over everywhere. It was a sea of WHITE. Or it was what I imagined having cataracts would feel like (admittedly I found it really really exciting – though I’m glad no one fell through into the actual waterfall).

I caught my friend Jason standing in the distance and took a quick snap.

You can see how bad the visibility was.. and how much white we were surrounded by! It’s one of my favourite photos from the trip as I feel it also represents how tiny we are in the world.

I’m meant to tag five people to enter this contest, but seeing as I’m the Last-Minute Queen and the closing date is.. today… I guess there’s no real point in tagging anyone. Sorry guys!

To end this post, I’d like to share with you one of my favourite photos of COLOUR:

It’s a fisherman and his little fishing boat in Nice, France! Look at how colourful his boat is.. isn’t it AMAZING? It’s such a happy-looking boat. I imagine that all the guy does sit there smiling and all these fish/jellyfish/dolphins/etc would pop their heads out of the water, dancing and singing about how wonderful life is.