Macro Moments Week 26: Chardon Marie
Posted on January 11, 2017
We’ve all seen Milk Thistle extract in health shops – it’s supposed to be good for the liver – but it’s much less common to see the actual plant that it’s extracted from. As the name suggests, it’s a variety of thistle (the French name is Chardon Marie) that grows to quite a height. This one was a good seven feet tall.
I found this example, which had obviously just released its seeds, in a herb garden in the nearby village of Montrol-Sénard.
Nikon D800 with Nikkor 24-70mm ƒ2.8 lens at 58mm. 1/000 at ƒ5.6 ISO 250. Cropped and edited in Lightroom.
Tuesdays of Texture: Moss
Posted on January 10, 2017
I found this moss growing on a tree in the Beecraigs Country Park near Linlithgow in central Scotland. The texture (and colour) of the tree bark is also interesting.
Tuesdays of Texture
Mundane? Arrows
Posted on January 10, 2017
At the annual summer air show at nearby Blond, it’s possible to try your hand at archery.
Mundane Mondays
52 Weeks Photo Challenge: Week 22 – Nature
Posted on January 9, 2017
The 52 Week Photo Challenge is back after its brief year-end hiatus and the topic for Week 22 is ‘Nature’. That’s certainly something that leaves plenty of scope, but I decided to go with something that’s typical for the time of year.
This is a detail from one of the oak trees in my fields. We are in the depths of winter, so obviously last year’s leaves are dead, but at the same time you can see the buds that will produce new leaves when spring arrives.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Names
Posted on January 7, 2017
M Guillaumont, the lawyer of Thiers (a large town in the Auvergne region of France), certainly wanted to make sure that his clients knew exactly where to find his chambers:
“in the small courtyard, on the first floor up the spiral staircase”
Forest Path
Posted on January 6, 2017
That’s my family up ahead, on a walk along one of the forest paths in the Beecraigs Country Park, near Linlithgow in central Scotland.
Thursday Doors: Tranquility Base
Posted on January 5, 2017
Over the past year or so I’ve posted a number of pictures of doors that are to be found in Tranquility Base, my working title for the little hamlet we live in. Thus you’ve seen Emily’s Henhouse and Bernard’s Barn, amongst others.
Now, I certainly don’t want to give the impression that everything in Tranquility Base is falling down, but here are a few more very local doors, beginning with front and side view of what may once have been a shed that belongs to our nearest neighbour:
Fortunately, this barn is in rather better condition:
Although it’s a bit dodgier round the back:
This one doesn’t see much traffic either:
Nor do these doors, which many years ago would have served to keep the pigs shut in:
Thursday Doors 5 January 2017
Tuesdays of Texture: Seaweed
Posted on January 3, 2017
Photographed on Bondi Beach in Sydney:
Tuesdays of Texture
52 Weeks Photo Challenge: Week 21 – Peaceful
Posted on December 31, 2016
For this week’s instalment of the 52 Week Photo Challenge, The Girl That Dreams Awake has chosen the theme of ‘Peaceful’.
Her own interpretation is an image of a pile of books and that inspired me to dig out this photograph, which I took a few years ago somewhere around Sydney. What could be more peaceful than sitting quietly in the sunshine by the waterside and reading a book?
Weekly Photo Challenge: Resilient
Posted on December 31, 2016
The village of Oradour-sur-Glane is a national monument in France. In June 1944 a battalion of the German SS massacred over 600 men, women and children here. It has been left just as it was in the aftermath of that atrocity for over seventy years.
Walls have collapsed, wooden furniture has long rotted away, but metal objects are more resilient and still survive, despite being exposed to the elements for over half a century.
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