Lockdown travel: the Photo Game

 This is a game I play with myself sometimes when I'm travelling, if I'm tired, if I'm stuck waiting for a bus or a train or a plane, if I'm eating out, particularly in street cafes. It's a great game for lockdown. Or just to give yourself a challenge.

Rule One : Your backside is glued to your chair. 

Rule Two: You must keep taking interesting photos. (Choose a camera with a good zoom lens or function.)

Rule Three: There is no rule three.

I can do it today as I sit at my computer. If I were going to take photos now:

• the sun falling across a little statue of Shiva I have on the windowsill
• the fish on my Vietnamese blue and white mug
• a bookshelf where all the books are leaning at twenty degrees
• the thin fanning of pages of a book I left half-open on my desk
• the texture of the plaster on the wall
• some very odd patterns made by reflections and the shadow of the blinds
• the furry texture of the top of my paintbrushes in their mug
• a whole landscape of dust on top of a writing box (really must get round to dusting)
• two horses going up the street outside
• the cat looking in at the window
• his tail disappearing
• a scatter of pencil shavings where I knocked my pencil sharpener over

Sometimes these photos are brilliant. Sometimes you look at them later and think "Why on earth did I take that?"

But the point is not the photos. It's the looking.

Oh actually, that's rule three. You have to see the photograph before you pick the camera up. You look with your eyes, not with the lens.

In fact, if you don't have a camera, you can still play the game.

Happy looking!