Daily photos: free, freeing and freed

I take daily photos on my iPhone for pleasure alone. This playful process is virtually free and it frees my spirit. A tiny minority are shared on Facebook or this blog or find their way into a photo booklet. My daily photos form a sort of random visual diary. I think of them as a self-indulgent secret of my personal creative life.

That multipurpose smartphone camera

Today, I will free a few photos below not as illustrations but for their own sake. If you don’t like them, no matter: you doubtless see thousands of far superior photos every day. But it pleases me to handle them and look at them one more time before they are flicked into oblivion.

Now, which photo shall I share first? The wind was roaring last night, so how about this demolition job in Courtenay Place?

Now that I see the photo full size, I notice other things. An excellent, ugly public toilet. A yellow bus. A few cafes. Traffic lights. Hardly any people (Covid-19, the wind…) And the Hannah Playhouse in the background. Suddenly that’s exciting, because—

Show Ponies will perform there next year in the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts.

Show Ponies is a glorious punk cabaret of poets with music and dancers—and this time, I’ll be one of the poets! I’m so excited… only 4 months to go! Oh, I didn’t mean to skite but that’s what random photos do: they bring on a rush of thoughts and feelings.

Let’s move to something cosier: Ursula posing in an unusually rotund shape. Most of the day she is standoffish, but cuddles up when I sit down and watch Netflix, especially Sky Castle. My stomach (blue) and leg (black) also feature in the photo.

Done the daily cat, now we need the daily sunrise.

Back inside, I nod to my little windowsill shrine. I usually come home from a walk with twigs or flowers, and today we have corokia cotoneaster looking ever so assertive.

That’s enough, surely. But no. Last week I walked past a house where I lived for two or three years, and was happy to see it is loved by its current owners. You can’t see the ginormous flowering cherry in the back yard though. Is that still there? Who knows.

You can tell I’m pretty keen on the native plants of Aotearoa New Zealand. One last snap of a brave little native iris fighting its way through rubble and weeds to show its tiny white face.

Accessibility poll about daily photos: please answer in Comments

1. Did all these photos appear on your screen?
2. Did they arrive quickly or slowly?
3. Do you take random photos like this?
4. Are you having a good day?

Thank you! I doubt I’ve ever loaded six photos on a single blog post, and I want to be sure this works for you. If not, I’ll adjust my settings. (OK, I overstepped the mark with my questions.)