One of the joys of wandering around with a camera is that you never quite know what you're going to find. Most photographers head out looking for dramatic landscapes, spectacular sunsets or majestic wildlife.
My brain, on the other hand, spots something completely ridiculous and immediately thinks, "That needs photographing."
When my slightly overactive imagination teams up with my photographic eye, the result is an ever growing collection of images that I proudly keep in an album called Strange Things. I think they're fascinating. Other people probably look at them and wonder what on earth I was doing.
Some of them are fairly ordinary... until you stop and think about them.
Take the lonely shoe.
I've found more abandoned shoes than seems statistically possible. Just one shoe. Never a pair. Where does the other one go? Does someone hop all the way home? Is there a secret society of single shoes hiding somewhere in Britain's countryside? These are the important questions that occupy my mind while everyone else is busy photographing waterfalls.
Then there's clothing.
A pair of boxer shorts hanging from a fence immediately starts an internal debate.
One part of my brain says, "They've probably blown off someone's washing line."
The other part replies, "Or someone has had the most interesting evening of their life."
Neither explanation can be confirmed, so naturally I take a photograph and move on.
Sometimes the discoveries become even stranger.
On one walk I came across what appeared to be an outdoor toilet standing in the middle of a forest.
No house.
No campsite.
No obvious reason for it to exist.
Just an isolated loo quietly minding its own business amongst the trees.
You don't simply walk past something like that without taking a photograph.
Then there are the things that probably aren't strange at all... except to me.
I once found a neat row of shopping trolleys carefully parked in a designated fire assembly point. Perfectly organised. Perfectly sensible, perhaps.
To everyone else.
To me it looked as though the trolleys had just completed a successful fire drill and were waiting patiently for further instructions.
Moments like these remind me that photography isn't always about capturing breathtaking landscapes or dramatic light. Sometimes it's simply about noticing the wonderfully odd little details that everyone else walks straight past. My overactive imagination may be hard work from time to time, but it has one undeniable benefit – it turns the everyday into something far more entertaining.
So if you ever happen to spot a photographer pointing their camera at a single shoe, an abandoned pair of boxer shorts or a suspiciously well-behaved shopping trolley, don't worry.
There's every chance it's me...
...adding another masterpiece to the Strange Things collection.
