Cellpic Sunday: Sound of an English summer
Posted on August 18, 2024
A sunny summer’s day in Yorkshire, and the sound of willow on leather…
Monochrome Madness: Things In the garden
Posted on August 16, 2024
This image was captured in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney. As usual, I have no idea what it is, but the petal was a creamy white, so the monochrome conversion was already halfway there.
Lens-Artists Challenge: What’s In A Garden?
Posted on August 13, 2024
What’s in a garden? Many things, large and small. From stately homes to formal beds, from fountains to mazes. Obviously, not every garden has any of these, but I can pretty much guarantee that thy will all have flowers and insects that have a symbiotic relationship with them.
Cellpic Sunday: Power Station Plumage
Posted on August 11, 2024
The long and – mostly – straight RN147 (Route Nationale) is one of France’s principal north-south corridors and unavoidable if you’re heading north from our neck of the woods towards the Channel ports, as we were earlier this week.
Heading north towards Poitiers, the road passes by a major power station, whose huge chimneys are visible from a long way off.
The Bell Tower
Posted on August 4, 2024
The Sickly Sapling
Posted on August 2, 2024
This is a tiny oak sapling that has just sprung up – presumably from an acorn – on what we laughingly call our pelouse (lawn). It doesn’t look very well, does it?
There again, nor does the lawn.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Balconies
Posted on July 28, 2024
The popular image of Abu Dhabi focuses on the prosperity, and even luxury, of its built environment (as I suppose the architects would describe it). Beneath that marbled surface sheen, however, are the far less salubrious spaces occupied by largely unskilled immigrant workers, many of whom have to live packed in to tiny apartments in crumbling concrete blocks. Here, balconies are not for enjoying the sunshine but making the most of the available space.
Cellpic Sunday: Snail mail
Posted on July 28, 2024
In France, letterboxes in doors are very much the exception rather than the rule. Like most people, we have instead a boite postale (postbox). Commonly, these are stuck on top of a pole at the side of the road. However, ours – a metal one, as per the approved design – is actually built in to a stone gate post.
So my question is: given its secure and watertight location, – and the fact that it’s open for an average of no more than five seconds a day, six days a week – how in blue blazes did that snail get inside it? It’s not the first either. Do snails have access to technology that would put Star Trek to shame?
Cellpic Sunday: A venerable vessel
Posted on July 21, 2024
This beautifully simple storage vessel sits unassumingly in a kitchen in Guédelon, the recreation of a medieval fortified chateau.
Monochrome Madness: Tripods
Posted on July 18, 2024
This is the first time I’ve participated in Leanne’s Monochrome Madness challenge, so please be gentle with me.
This week’s theme is ‘tripods’. Now, I do possess a tripod but the truth is that I don’t use it very often. These days, most of my photos are taken with my smartphone rather than my DSLR. I don’t think I’m the only one, either.
Even when I was using a ‘proper’ camera kit, the tripod didn’t get deployed that often. However, I do have a very good macro lens (Nikkor 105mm) and it would have been madness indeed not to have used a tripod in conjunction with that.
Anyway, this is a macro shot of the reproductive parts of a lily, complete with that pollen (orange in real life) that you can never properly get off your clothes if you accidentally brush against it. The white leaves form the background (so those grey dots aren’t dust on my mirror).
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