I love watching people surf. The good ones make it look effortless, so graceful and, well, fun; the not-so-good ones make me laugh. Living just a few minutes’ walk from some of Sydney’s best beaches, I have endless opportunities to watch all grades of surfers. Confession: Before I moved to Sydney for the first time, in 1999, I didn’t know that an ankle tether connected board to rider, and I was quite puzzled by the way riders’ boards popped up beside them when they spilled!
Month: September 2013
Fascinating, but ewww!
I took this photo a couple of weeks ago, with no intention of ever sharing it — who’d want to see it? So thank you, Ed, for the challenge of Creepy Things! I was both fascinated and repelled by the sight of hundreds of ants devouring a dead spider; it was like a nature documentary, right on my windowsill.
A Word a Week Challenge: Arch
This week the dictionary fell on the word Arch. I would like to offer a selection of arches from around the world.
Alone for eternity
I have two photographs for this week’s Black & White Challenge: Abandoned or Alone, both taken at Waverley Cemetery, Sydney. The cemetery, which opened in 1877, sprawls across cliff tops beside the ocean.

Someone has propped this fallen cherub on the grass beside the grave on which it was placed decades ago.

Toppled from the grave she once adorned, this marble girl lies abandoned on the ground, sinking slowly into the earth.
Sunday Stills: Watershots
I have two entries for this week’s Sunday Stills challenge:
Weekly Photo Challenge: Sea
This challenge is a paradox for me in that it is easy, but hard! Easy, because to me, the sea means only thing: tall ship sailing. Hard, because I have so many sailing photos to choose from! A sea that is placid, reflective, azure against a cerulean sky; or a sea that is angry and threatening, invigorating yet terrifying at the same time? I’ve gone for somewhere between the two. We were in a Force 8 (ie, with winds of 40 knots and waves about 6 metres high) when I took this photo (it reached Force 10 a few hours later). Every time we rolled to leeward, water rushed onto the deck through the scuppers and over the rail. (The rail, by the way, is normally about 4 metres above the sea.)