Viking Bay

Viking Bay
Originally uploaded by Pablo101

I found this beautiful photo on Flickr, in one of the groups I follow called Broadstairs. I just fell in love with this photo the moment I saw it. It's of one of my very favourite places in all the world - Viking Bay, Broadstairs, Kent.

I've been visiting Broadstairs since I was a little girl, and I now take my children there every year. Broadstairs is a place full of happy memories for me - and ones that can leap right to the front of my mind every time I get back there, because it hasn't changed all that much over the years. Of course, some things change - and each year we notice how a shop or two has been replaced by a different business, or a restaurant may have changed hands - but on the whole, Broadstairs is a wonderful place that remains - to me at least - perfect.

I liked this photo so much, that I looked at all the others taken by the same phtotgrapher. Without wishing to sound too much like a mad fan or would-be stalker, his photos are fantastic. He has several more of Broadstairs, and then pages and pages more of stunning photos - I loved looking at every single one of them. I'm totally ignorant about how to take a good photo, or how to work a fancy camera - my albums and now computer are filled with "snaps", taken literally to just capture a moment I think I will remember in more detail just by looking back at my rushed photographic evidence!

Looking at Paul's work makes me want to take the time to learn more and manage to capture images that I would be proud to hang on my walls, as I would every single one of his pictures (apart from a rather too up close and personal shot of a spider!).

But, I don't think it is something I could learn. I might be able to work out how to use a camera in a slightly more advanced way than my current aim and snap fashion, but I just don't think that I would ever have the talent to capture scenes the way he does. It's a God given talent, I believe.....one that I don't have! I have been to Viking Bay, and to that very spot where Paul must have been standing, hundreds and hundreds of times - and yet I've never seen it like that! He also has photos of somewhere that is just around the corner to my old home - a place that I went past every single morning on my way to work, and yet I had never "seen" it, until I looked at the photograph.

I think that a lot of people are probably guilty of thinking that a work of art has to be drawn or painted - but give me the artwork of "Pablo101" on Flickr any day! Paul's photos make me happy - so I shall look at them often, and enjoy them and the mood they create for me.