Monochrome Madness: Clocks
Posted on November 14, 2025
The clock on this tower – on the island of Burano, in the Venetian Lagoon – is unusual insofar as, if you look closely, it only has an hour hand and no minute hand. Perhaps time wasn’t so over-ridingly important, and the need for precision less pressing, back in the Middle Ages.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Landscape revisited
Posted on November 10, 2025
This aspect is about a two-minute walk from our house (our hamlet is pretty well surrounded by fields for a least a mile in every direction).
On a bright winter’s day, what made this particular view stand out for me were the strong leading lines provided by the tractor tyre tracks in the mud. With the sun relatively low in the cloudless sky, the reflections in the puddles in the furrows also increased the definition in the scene.
Cellpic Sunday: Hot stuff
Posted on November 9, 2025
We’ve had a decent, if not bumper, crop of homegrown chili peppers in 2025, but I reckon these two will be last we get until next year.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Ephemeral
Posted on November 4, 2025
“The only constant in life is change” – Heraclitus
This week, the challenge is to capture an image of something ephemeral: something here now, but gone probably well before tomorrow. My first thought was clouds: ever-changing, always moving.
My second thought was fireworks. I really enjoy capturing firework displays (feux d’artifice they’re called here) and with a bit of luck it’s possible to get yourself some really arresting images.
However, I decided to stick with my original inspiration. This is a view from the Caen-Portsmouth ferry just before it set sail one early morning in August this year. The clouds will soon roll by and the sea will flow with the changing tides. The view might look the same five minutes later, but in reality it will be different, unique – and transient.
Cellpic Sunday: Behold the flowering tomatillo
Posted on November 2, 2025
You may be wondering what a tomatillo is. Well, it’s a staple of Mexican cuisine and our son-in-law is Mexican – and a very fine cook to boot.
They are not exactly easy to find in the middle of rural France, but we planted some seeds that we were given to us by said beau-fils. He lives in the UK and hasn’t had much success in growing his own: the climate is simply not conducive. Put bluntly, Yorkshire is too cold.
However, it’s warmer down here and although only a couple of our planted seeds have survived, this one seems to be thriving in our serre (greenhouse).
Last on the card: Golden leaves
Posted on November 1, 2025
Autumn colours are everywhere at the moment, but this tree in a shop’s car park was a particularly fine specimen, especially in the sunshine.
Monochrome madness: Farm Animals
Posted on October 30, 2025
And where am I supposed to find any farm animals to photograph here in the depths of rural France? Oh, wait…
Shetland ponies may not be everyone’s first idea of a farm animal, but one of our neighbours breeds horses (and a few cattle, but that’s almost compulsory in these parts) for a living. For a while, he also owned this small group of Shetland ponies, which were kept in a field less than a quarter of a mile from our house (aka Brokedown Palace).
One day they just disappeared and he’s never replaced them, but at least I was able to capture them tucking into a large bale of winter feed in that – at the time, very muddy field.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Street details
Posted on October 27, 2025
Benches are a common enough street detail of course, but I’d never encountered one like this before: seen in the Welsh town of Pembroke and appearing to have been a repurposing of some old church pews (restored in 2020, according to the small sign on the left hand side).
Lens-Artists Challenge: Ancient
Posted on October 21, 2025
This towering bastion – all the more imposing for surmounting a rocky outcrop – is to be found in the mightily impressive medieval city of Chauvigny, near Poitiers in the Vienne département of France.
Monochrome madness: Ceramics
Posted on October 16, 2025
Until recently (Covid did for it, as so many other things), a local Association put on an annual Expo of local peoples’ collections, interests and hobbies. One year there was an exhibition of ceramics by a keen local collector.
This featured a number of hand-painted ceramic tiles and this is one which, I believe, benefits from being rendered in monochrome (the real thing has a very wishy-washy green background)
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