competition

Explore the Elements – Photography Contest

February 5, 2015

With a wedding on the way, and a honeymoon to save for – there is no way I could pass up the opportunity to enter this new Explore the Elements competition from Thomas Cook. The idea is, to choose a photo that sums up each of the 4 elements (So fire, earth, air and water).

Photography is something I adore, and hopefully they’ll love these photos, just as much as I loved taking them.

Fire

This was taken in Australia at sunset, and it’s one of my favourite sunset photos I’ve ever taken. Every night the sun would go down and our entire balcony would just be soaked in this fiery orange light and heat for an hour. When I think of fire, I immediately think of sunsets, and for me, this is one of the most beautiful sunsets I ever witnessed.

Air

For me, when I think about air, I think about flying. And altho0ugh a photo from a plane window might have been the obvious choice and interpretation of that, for me – the image below shows flight on a much more personal level. This was taken in Queenstown, New Zealand, and after spending months daring ourselves to jump in the lake, this is the moment we finally did it.

This is the moment my friend Harriet jumped into the lake and I clicked the shutter just in time – because this pretty perfect photo was captured. What I love about this (and remembering when I jumped in shortly after) was that the few moments we were flying through in the air, before we hit the water, were just full of so much excitement and freedom. It’s like that moment in time, and those few seconds of flight are suspended forever – and there’s something kind of magical about that.

Earth

Do you ever have one of those moments when you have to double-take? That was my reaction when I saw this mountain range in The Oman for the first time. Nothing quite makes you realise the vastness and massiveness of the Earth quite like a mountain range, especially one that sneaks up on you in the distance and then suddenly takes up the entire horizon, within minutes. For me this shows the solidness of Earth but also the beauty of it, those mountains almost hold a secret from this distance.

Water

I love everything about water, the feel of it, the colour of it, the sound of it – I’m never happier than when I’m near the ocean. This beach was one of the most magical I’d ever seen, the sea and the sky were almost identical in colour and the waves in the ocean were creating this beautiful mist that blurred the boundary been water and sky even more. For me, this sums up everything amazing about water…. The power of it (in the waves), the beauty of it (in the colour), the diversity of it (in the low clouds and mist) and the way we love to use it (the surfers and children playing).