Capture The Colour

The lovely folks at Discovering Ice nominated us for the Travelsupermarket’s Capture the Colour contest about a week ago and since then we’ve been biting our nails with indecision. The contest asks for pictures that capture the following 5 colours – Blue, Green, Yellow, White, and Red.

We love photos and have taken tens of thousands over our journeys.  Choosing favourites is not easy.  Each photo has a fond memory attached, all of which remain special within our minds.

The following are our entries and we hope you like them!

 

Blue

This photo was taken in one of our favourite romantic cities, Venice.  We took this picture as we paused on one of our long evening walks, exploring the narrow lanes and picturesque bridges of this most magical place. We especially like it because the colours and the way the light reflects on the ripples in the canal remind us of Van Gogh’s Starry Night Over the Rhone.

As we said in our post Venice: The City That Rewards Late Risers we think Venice is at it’s most alluring and seductive at night.  We hope this picture captures some of that essence that made us fall in love with it.

 

Green

Green is one of our favourite colours and this picture was taken early in our round-the-world trip at a place where we were surrounded by green.  We found these two sculptures of Komodo dragons at the Monkey Sanctuary in Ubud, Bali.

As we wrote in Monkey Sanctuary is a Gem But For Unexpected Reason, even though the place is known for the monkeys, we found ourselves being more enthralled by the sculptures, of which these two were our favourites.  If you’ve ever been to Bali, you know that Ubud is a hot and humid place, and all that humidity means that plants thrive on every surface, including on stone statues, giving them beautiful green highlights. We spent an afternoon exploring every path in that sanctuary and we’re so glad we did as we almost missed these two. They were tucked away down a little path that few others were taking and we were delighted when we found them in their magical corner.

Yellow

Sometimes a place just speaks to you.  For us, this was Laos.  If you’ve ever read the headlines about Vang Vieng, you would think that the place was nothing but a low priced Asian spring break for Aussies, and while that reputation is not undeserved (see our post The Bartending ‘Lifeguards’ of Vang Vieng) there is more to the place than cheap booze and tubing.

Looking back at our writing, we realize that we never did a post that conveyed the beauty of Laos and we’ll have to remedy that because it is an amazingly beautiful place.  This picture was taken just outside of Vang Vieng as we rode home from a day of exploring caves and the blue lagoon.  The sun was setting as we slowly peddled home and everything in sight was bathed in this wonderful yellow light. This picture will always remind us of that slow ride home and of our favourite country in South East Asia.

 

White

We love taking pictures of animals but they are some of the most frustrating subjects that you can take on because they rarely cooperate with you.  This picture was taken at the Monkey Sanctuary in Ubud, Bali, and was one of those rare brilliant moments when everything falls into place.  Susana had been chasing these little critters all over the place and had just sneaked up to this fellow when suddenly, he looked up right into the camera.  We love the way his eyes convey such inquisitiveness and how the white in his fur makes him look almost wise.

 

Red

While exploring the streets of a very wet Hoi An in Vietnam, we wandered into a lantern workshop which was putting on an afternoon show of traditional dances for tourists.  Seeing the bright costumes and the musicians with traditional instruments, we saw a photographic goldmine and Susana quietly stole her way to the front of the room where she was able to snap this picture of a dancer who was depicting the monkey god.  She has fond memories of watching cartoons and puppet shows about the monkey god as a child in Taiwan, and she loves the look he has in this picture which in her opinion conveys both the monkey god’s fierceness and mischievousness.

How do you like our entries? Do you think they capture the colours?

 

Nominations

As part of the contest we have to nominate 5 other bloggers for the contest.  Here are 5 of our favourite travel bloggers we hope will join in the fun.

• Turtles Travel (aka Faraway Footprints) - check out our interview with Heather and Donny
• The Northenist (formerly known as OmniMail)
• Four Jandles – find out more about Cole and Adela and what’s a jandal
• Passport and Toothbrush
• Living if