Thursday Doors: Mezieres-sur-Issoire – the gates
Posted on November 24, 2016
As promised, this week we feature some of the more interesting gates to be found in our local village of Mézières-sur-Issoire.
You’d expect the grander houses to have gates and indeed they mostly do, like this rather commanding set:
although personally, I found this next set more interesting. I particularly liked the way that the autumn leaves wrapped themselves around the gatepost.
Whereas those two examples are a bit off the beaten track, the gates below are on the main road, and at least you can see the house that sits behind them (the architecture is quite typical of the maisons de mâitre around here):
Notice also that those gates and railings could do with a lick of paint. As indeed could the long-unused gate at the corner of the garden of the same property:
…or this one in front of a much smaller terraced house a little further along the street:
And, of course, gates don’t always have to belong to houses – or even lead anywhere:
Thursday Doors 24 November 2016
Macro Moments: Week 20 – Butterfly on Buddleia
Posted on November 23, 2016
Back in the summer, our buddleia bushes were, as usual, hosts to many butterflies. This was one of them that I managed to isolate and get back-lit.
Nikon D800 with Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8 lens at 200mm. 1/250 at f6.7, ISO 500. Cropped and edited in Lightroom.
Macro Moments Week 20
Tuesdays of Texture: Quilt
Posted on November 22, 2016
Last year, as a wedding present for our son and (now) daughter-in-law, Madame made a king-sized bed quilt, with most of the stitching done by her own fair hands. It took close to a full year to complete, and the last Swarovski crystal being stitched on just two days before the wedding. This is a work-in-progress image.
52 Weeks Photo Challenge: Week 16 – Christmas
Posted on November 22, 2016
Yes it does seem a bit too early to be posting Christmas images, but it’s The Girl That Dreams Awake’s challenge, so who am I to argue? (Except with the numbering: this is Week 16, not 15.)
Anyway, here are some photogenic pine cones from the roadside about a mile down the road from here.
Ropes and Rigging
Posted on November 21, 2016
I’m participating for the first time in the ‘Mundane Monday’ challenge hosted by PhoTrablogger. There are two aspects to the challenge: to find beauty in mundane objects and/or to place the mundane in a beautiful or interesting frame.
This image takes the second option. It was captured while on a late afternoon boat trip on Sydney Harbour a few years ago. The canoe at the centre of the photograph is a fairly mundane object in itself (although it was nice of it to be orange against the blue water). However, the rigging in which it is framed provides the real interest and – literally – focus.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Magic
Posted on November 19, 2016
For those who believe that there is a rational explanation for just about everything, ‘magic’ is – by definition – something that isn’t real: in other words, an illusion. So here’s an, admittedly very impressive, example of an illusion.
In the centre of Limoges this medieval building dominates the Place de la Motte. Except that it’s neither medieval nor even a building – it’s a gigantic and brilliantly rendered trompe l’oeil mural, painted on the side of a much more modern edifice. The cat at top left isn’t real either (although the satellite dish is).
Not that I want to puncture the illusion, but here’s a wider-angle perspective:
Thursday Doors: Mezieres-sur-Issoire
Posted on November 17, 2016
Everywhere in France is part of one commune or another (and every commune belongs to a canton, and every canton belongs to a département, which in turn is part of a region and so on). Our little hamlet is about four miles from the eponymous village in the commune of Mézières-sur-Issoire.
Although we’ve now lived here for over four years, there are still parts of the village that I’ve never explored or looked at in any detail, but a recent Sunday afternoon provided an opportunity to redress that shortcoming and discover that there is no shortage of previously unseen – or at least unnoticed – interesting doors (not to mention gates, although that’s for next week).
For example, this charming wooden outbuilding, set back from the main road:
as is this barn:
Along a little lane which I’d never previously ventured down was this door in the corner of the garden wall of one of the village’s larger houses:
Much more familiar is the very grand house right in the centre of the village that’s lain empty for years. Somebody’d just bought it for a knock-down price, but now faces the mother of all renovation projects. Good luck with that (he said from personal experience).
This imposing edifice, also on the main road used to be a commercial premises of some sort, but the sign has faded to illegibility:
On a smaller scale and down a side road is another former commercial outlet, to judge by the door on the left, but again I’ve no idea what sort of business used to operate out of there:
Next week’s post will be devoted to gates rather than doors. On my wanderings around the village, I came across some highly photogenic ones.
Thursday Doors 17 November 2016
Macro Moments: Week 19 – Elephants
Posted on November 16, 2016
This week, Susan at Musin’ With Susan has come up with what I think is an inspired idea for her weekly Macro Moments challenge. Under the heading ‘Broaden Your Scope’ she invites us to use our Macro lens for anything other than macro.
It’s a great idea because I suspect that I’m not the only one who feels that they don’t get enough use out of their macro lens, or at the very least ought to resort to it more often. I read somewhere that a macro lens can be very effective for portraits. However, the resolution means that it can also be quite – shall we say unforgiving – for this purpose.
Perhaps it’s not too surprising to discover that even non-macro images can indeed be noticeably sharper when taken through a macro lens (specialised and innately more expensive than a standard kit lens, decent enough though they can be). When I tried it out this afternoon, the quality difference and superior sharpness was quite obvious: analogous to the difference between just brushing your teeth and brushing, then rinsing with Listerine.
Anyway, here is a very small selection of Madame’s collection of model elephants:
Nikon D800 with Nikkor 105mm f2.8 Macro lens. 1/125 (flash) at f19, ISO 4000 (!)
And just to prove that this really wasn’t a close-up, here’s the uncropped, unedited original image:
Tuesdays of Texture: Papermaking
Posted on November 15, 2016
My first contribution to Tuesdays of Texture featured paper lanterns made by traditional methods at the Moulin du Got. This week I’ve gone back a few steps in the paper-making process to the stage where rags and other stuff are broken down and stirred, with this wooden paddle, into what can only be described as gunge. Like this:
52 Weeks Photo Challenge: Week 15 – Soft
Posted on November 14, 2016
The wool of the alpaca is well known for its exceptional softness – and sells at a premium that reflects this. Although this individual had just been sheared earlier this year, its topknot gives a good idea of the texture of its coat.
Top Posts & Pages
theonlyD800inthehameau 