Holiday Photos

The wild west coast. I spent a few days in Tofino with my family at the Pacific Sands Resort, hiking along the coast and watching the waves. It is almost always cloudy and rainy on the west coast of Vancouver Island, the temperamental wind and fog creating a permanently untamed, surreal atmosphere. The wind off the sea bends the trees into yearning, twisted shapes, and the waves continuously crash onto the shore, pushing raw-looking driftwood up and down the sand.

Trees and mist. There were a lot of surfers on the beach - clad in head-to-toe wetsuits, bravely splashing out into the waves.

Every photograph presents a choice: beautiful faces or FEARSOME FACES?

Mussels and barnacles, clinging to the rocks. Delicious! Have you ever watched a barnacle in a tide pool? As the tide washes past them, they open at the top and a little fronded feeler, like a tiny feathery hand, strains against the water to capture plankton or other tiny food. When the water recedes they close again.

The drenched and restless expanse of beach. There's a part of me that will always prefer this sort of beach to white sand and palm trees. (Though both have their charms, of course.)

Patterns in the sand.

More patterns in the sand.

The Tsawassen ferry terminal in Vancouver. There's a beauty in industrial constructions as well as in nature.

View of San Francisco, from the airplane.

Heathrow Airport, in the snow. I like this picture because I think it shows the mysterious impersonality of airports - all of those buildings, blockades, fences, vehicles, paths traced on endless fields of tarmac that only the flight-control computer really understands. There may be people flowing through the interior all day long, but out on the runway it's all machines, computers directing the feeble movements of baggage loaders or flare-bearing signallers. The machines and the weather. Nothing to do with man at all. Most modern airports seem that way - each of them equally artificial and perfectly managed, the interior temperature the same exact 20 degrees celsius whether you're in Dubai or London or Tokyo. The same expensive brand-name shops, the same duty-free items, the same characters: tired-looking business-class travellers with their briefcases, college students, out-of-place families in traditional dress with patched luggage and overwhelmed eyes.

Too many flights, too many time zones! All of this, to reach one tiny, extraordinarily specific point on the globe: the village of D'Kar.