Cellpic Sunday: Late bloomer
Posted on October 28, 2024
It’s been warmer than usual so far this autumn, which may explain why, even at the end of October, some flowers are blooming and clearly still have more to offer..
Lens-Artists Challenge: Intentional Motion
Posted on October 22, 2024
It’s almost counter-intuitive to move your camera intentionally when taking a photograph, but the effect can be quite arresting.
When I got my first proper DSLR we were living in an apartment in the centre of Abu Dhabi city. I took a couple of photography courses and this is the result of one of the exercises that was set.
With the camera on a tripod sitting on the apartment’s terrace, I aimed it at the night view, which was of a busy road with high rise buildings at the far end.. The effect was achieved with a long(ish) exposure, during which I slowly rotated the zoom lens. Weird.
Cellpic Sunday: My first espresso martini
Posted on October 21, 2024
I don’t often drink cocktails nowadays, but recently I tried an espresso martini for the first time. I don’t think it’ll be the last.
Monochrome Madness: Sidestep
Posted on October 19, 2024
Sometimes it’s necessary to look from a different angle at something mundane in order to find an interesting image. Last week I posted a very mundane image of the side wall of a multi-story car park. Its one redeeming feature was a partially visible spiral fire-escape.
For Monochrome Madness this week, where the topic is ‘Steps or stairs’, I cropped out all the mundanity and flipped the steps through 90 degrees to produce what I think is a far more arresting photo.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Looking Back
Posted on October 15, 2024
A particularly interesting theme for this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge: ‘Looking back’.
If you think about it, every photo you’ve ever taken – even the one you might have captured less than a minute ago – is looking back: a split second of a memory preserved for ever (or at least until you press the ‘Delete’ button). Indeed, why do we take photos in the first place, if not to create a memento?
I’m fortunate to have many happy memories – and perhaps even luckier to be able to remember them, but I’d be lying if I said that having a photographic record hasn’t helped in that.. So, the choice wasn’t easy, but I finally settled on something.
Madame and I have been lucky enough to visit Venice four times, all for wedding anniversaries, of which three were significant milestones. This is the hotel , on the Grand Canal, that we stayed in on two of those occasions. Happy days…
Cellpic Sunday: Rooms with views
Posted on October 13, 2024
We were away last weekend on a (very) special occasion trip. Our destination was the city of La Rochelle, on France’s west coast.
En route, however, we broke our journey in the city of Poitiers, where we stayed overnight in a budget hotel whose chief attraction was its proximity to the railway station. We certainly didn’t choose it for the views:
On the other hand, in La Rochelle we splashed the cash on a suite in a considerably more upmarket establishment, where the views were a signifcant step up from the poor relation in Poitiers.
Monochrome madness: Flowers out in the garden
Posted on October 8, 2024
In ‘real life’, as it were, these tiny flowers have bright pink petals. However, converting the image to monochrome goes some way to transform a ho-hum record shot into something a little more striking in its own right, partly helped by eliminating background distractions.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Setting a mood
Posted on October 8, 2024
The light of Golden hour adds a mood of serenity to this image of boats at anchor in the Vieux Port of the city of La Rochelle in western France.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Unexpected Vista
Posted on October 1, 2024
This week’s Lens-Artists Challenge is about finding beauty in unexpected places. Good one.
As the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder – in other words, a matter of personal taste, whatever the ‘rules’ say about the rule of thirds, the golden ratio or colour wheels..
This is actually the last photo I took in the month of September, so the ‘untouched’ version has been posted for Bushboy’s Last On The Card challenge here. It was taken in the nearby village of Rancon. It’s – obviously – an archway, although interestingly it’s completely free-standing and in fact the ground slopes away steeply about twenty feet beyond it.
What i failed to notice until I looked at it on the big screen of my desktop was the nicely framed vista that lay beyond, illuminated by the light of the ‘golden hour’. I wasn’t expecting that.
Free-standing
Posted on October 1, 2024
The last photo I took in September, with my trusty iPhone 14 Pro, was this image of a stone archway in the village of Rancon.
The rules of Bushboy’s Last Photo Challenge are that you present that last photo ‘warts and all’, as it were. In other words without any editing.
So that’s what I’ve done here. However, on closer inspection I was so struck by the image that I’ve also smartened it up for the latest Lens-Artists Challenge. You can find that version here.
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