Weekly Photo Challenge: Evanescent
Posted on May 25, 2017
What could be more ‘soon passing…quickly fading or disappearing’ – evanescent – than a firework?

Tuesdays of Texture: Wool on the Well
Posted on May 23, 2017
Next weekend, the nearby village of Saint-Martial-sur-Isop is holding a two-day ‘Fête de la Laine’ – a wool festival. Already, the village is decorated with wool – around telegraph poles, on benches and also, as here, wrapped around the wooden winding piece and rust chains of an old well. Plenty of textures here:

Tuesday Photo Challenge: Street
Posted on May 23, 2017
All the most interesting streets have a bend in them so you can’t see where they’re leading to – like this one in the old part (Cité) of Carcassonne, in southern France:

52 Weeks Photo Challenge: Week 35 – From Above
Posted on May 22, 2017
This week’s theme set by The Girl That Dreams Awake is ‘From Above’. This can often provide an interesting and unusual perspective when compared with the more conventional ‘straight ahead’ view.
This particular example is looking down from a fifth-floor balcony onto a water feature in the foyer of a nautically-themed hotel in Dubai.

52 Weeks Photo Challenge: Week 35 – From Above
W is for Wrought Iron
Posted on May 19, 2017
This wrought iron balcony dates from about 1740 and is now on display in the Chateau des Ducs museum in Nantes. The pattern is complex enough on its own but the shadows add a further dimension.

Thursday Doors: More From Nantes
Posted on May 18, 2017
This is the third instalment of doors from the French city of Nantes (and there will be more…), but this time without a specific theme.
According to TripAdvisor, the top attraction in Nantes is the Botanical Gardens. This is the rather grand greenhouse:

Less exotically, a couple of doors from the immediate environs of the Chateu des Ducs, which was featured last week.

I like the contrast of black door and red shutters in this example:

Speaking of black(ish) doors…

I was drawn by the unusual ‘font’ of the number on this door:

And finally a well-worn old wooden door:

Next week, some rather grander doors (again) – this time from the cathedral.
Thursday Doors 18 May 2017
Weekly Photo Challenge: Heritage
Posted on May 18, 2017
We live in a very rural part of France, where agriculture remains a crucial element of the local economy.
As most farms remain family businesses, they are typically much smaller than the vast agri-industrial enterprises to be found elsewhere. Modern methods are used, of course (nobody uses a pair of horses for tilling any more, apart from at the annual ploughing competition), but there is still plenty of heritage, in the sense of evidence of the way things used to be done.
In particular, there is the open-air museum of rural life at nearby Montrol-Sénard, which includes this barn, still containing old cattle byres. There were some just like these in our own barn when we bought it, but they were too far gone and disappeared during the restoration process.

Tuesday Photo Challenge: Travel
Posted on May 17, 2017
This week, Frank of Dutch Goes The Photo! has gone off on his holidays so, appropriately, has selected the theme of ‘travel’ for his latest Tuesday Challenge.
It’s a very broad theme, of course; as Frank says, travel could be anything as mundane as a daily commute. However, I’ve selected a rather more exotic image that tries to convey ‘travel’ as the state of being somewhere very different from what you’re used to.
I’ve been very fortunate to have been able to travel quite extensively, for both business and pleasure. The first doesn’t count so much perhaps, but for somewhere very different – in terms of both place and time – one of my all-time favourite places has to be Petra. It’s one of the most photographed locations on the planet, but at least this isn’t a photograph of the iconic Nabatean Treasury (although there are a few photographs of that particular edifice elsewhere on this blog if you care to look).

Tuesdays of Texture: Sea Chest
Posted on May 16, 2017
Lots of textures in this detail of the ornate iron lock of a wooden sea chest, found in the Chateau des Ducs Museum in the French city of Nantes.

52 Weeks Photo Challenge: Week 34 – Movement
Posted on May 15, 2017
As they leave smoke trails in the national colours, these six jets of the United Arab Emirates Air Force display team convey a strong sense of movement (trust me, those things can really move) during National Day celebrations in the skies over Abu Dhabi.





