Sheer and Nails (This week's Photo Hunt themes)

Call it sheer stubbornness or sheer stupidity -- but even while I could have opted to take both the Photo Hunt themes chosen this week by Sandi and Gattina, I got it into my head to hunt through my photo archive for images featuring actual nails.  Perhaps if I had known how few photos with nails -- as opposed to screws, bolts and other fasteners! -- I wouldn't have done so... but, ultimately, I think the three that I've found are actually pretty neat.

The first photo is of a wooden walkway at the Hong Kong Wetland Park -- in terms of sheer numbers, it's the image with the most nails (or, at the very least, their tops) in them! And seeing that wooden construction got me thinking of a far more rickety one on which I've also been on, with greater misgivings as to its sheer durability.

The bridge at Tai Long Wan is one that a number of people hesitate to go on, even if they're super hungry and thirsty and know that there are a couple of cafes waiting invitingly for them on the other side of the stream!  It doesn't look too bad in the photo I've included of it in this entry that was taken while resting at one of those nice beachside cafes -- but you can go here or here to get a better sense of how its very sight can cause people to hesitate to go on it!

Finally, there's a photo that I think has the others beat for its sheer evocativeness. Taken at one of rural Hong Kong's many abandoned villages, it's of photo collections that remain nailed to the wall in what I'm assuming must have been the home of at least some of the people in the pictures.  

When seeing sights like this, I get to thinking that the residents of these homes must have left in a major hurry -- or were moving to a place where they weren't allowed to take much at all with them. Otherwise, I find it inexplicable that they'd leave such items behind -- ones that would help them call to mind moments and people in their lives whose memories they had considered worth capturing in now faded photos.