Lens-Artists Challenge: Quiet Moment
Posted on September 8, 2025
I took this photo in Dubai, many years ago now. An immigrant worker seizes a – no doubt rare – opportunity to rest and relax, sitting on a bench and removing his sandals, enjoying a quiet moment.
Cellpic Sunday: Looking Astern
Posted on September 7, 2025
Earlier this summer, we took the ferry from Caen to Portsmouth (and very good it was too). Looking back at the boat’s wash as the French coast was about to disappear over the horizon, it struck me that it made an excellent leading line.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Scavenger Hunt
Posted on September 2, 2025
For this week’s challenge Anne has given us what’s almost carte blanche effectively, with her theme of ‘scavenger hunt’, for which we’re invited to scour our archives (or take a new photo) for something that illustrates any of a long list of potential topics.
As it happens, I only needed to go back to last month for my contribution. This is a close-up of a pile of battered old wooden pallets – which I guess is where the ‘scavenger’ element comes in – that I spotted on the quayside at Scarborough, in Yorkshire.
There’s ‘rectangular’ and ‘bumpy texture’ from her list for starters, although at the time what really attracted me was the pleasing contrast between blue and orange (I haven’t tweaked the colour palette in any way at all).
Last On The Card: The Fallen Leaf
Posted on September 2, 2025
After a period of strong wind and heavy rain, this oak leaf ended up on top of the wall of one of our raised beds.
Cellpic Sunday: Just Chillin’
Posted on August 31, 2025
Lens-Artists Challenge: Doors
Posted on August 18, 2025
I used to be a regular contributor to the ever-popular ‘Thursday Doors’ challenge: to the extent, indeed, that I eventually ran out of subjects, having snapped pretty much every interesting door within a radius of about fifty miles.
So when I saw that this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge was (drum roll) ‘doors’ I was initially at something of a loss. Did I have anything previously unpublished? As it turns out, I did, and here it is.
Unfortunately, all I can tell you about this particular door is that it’s French and the image was captured on my iPhone in September 2020. No doubt my eye was caught by the unusual pattern of the door itself and perhaps even more so by the carved stone frame.
Cellpic Sunday: The old pump
Posted on August 17, 2025
When this petrol pump was new – perhaps a century or more ago – it could well have serviced the fuel requirements of the Yorkshire town of Beverley on its own. Nowadays of course, it’s simply an historical curio.
Cellpic Sunday: Topsy-turvy
Posted on August 10, 2025
Could we find it? Honestly, we had the whole house turned upside down…
Monochrome Madness: Backlighting
Posted on August 6, 2025
This is ‘Fred’, a sculpture who sits gloomily on a bench, looking out to sea, in the town of Scarborough. In the county of Yorkshire, where he finds himself, he would probably be described as ‘a reet miserable bugger’.
Even with the warm afternoon sun on his back, as here, he doesn’t look happy, and no doubt if the sun was in front of him, he’d complain that it was getting in his eyes. Yorkshire, eh?
Lens-Artists Challenge: Tools Of Composition
Posted on August 4, 2025
This week’s challenge is to demonstrate through an image or images the tools of photo composition. John, who’s overseeing proceedings this week, specifies lines, colour and patterns.
Certainly no arguments there, although I would argue that a photographer’s most important tools of composition are their very own eyes: to be able to see the image before it is captured, even if it’s not immediately apparent.
This image is, I think, a decent example of what I’m droning on about. It was taken outside my sister-in-law’s house. the dark triangle on the right is part of her garage roof, while the white triangle and dormer window form part of the neighbouring house.
There are lines and shapes a-plenty, of course, but what draws them together is the composition, and in particular the two triangles meeting at top right. The point is that at first sight this was not immediately obvious, although I could see it had potential. All it needed was for me to use my eyes and take two steps to the left in order to align the various elements as seen here.
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