Lens-Artists Challenge: Mellow
Posted on June 9, 2025
I think this image fits the bill for the theme of this week’s challenge: another photograph taken last October in La Rochelle, in the ‘golden hour’ just before sunset.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Books
Posted on June 2, 2025
I was a voracious reader from a very young age (although nowadays not so much) and my first post-university job was in the Liverpool City Libraries so yes, I can do books.
A couple of years ago I was ‘commissioned’ to take some photographs of books for a charity shop’s online sale. By far the most impressive set of tomes was this beautifuly bound and presumably encyclopedic 16-volume set of an illustrated history of France between 1843 and 1944.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it didn’t attract any bids. Realistically, who these days would go to the trouble of pulling one of these big beasts off the shelf and settling down in an armchair?
Last on the card May 2025
Posted on June 1, 2025
Cellpic Sunday: Pink Peony
Posted on June 1, 2025
Madame loves peonies – especially pink ones. Over the years we haven’t had consistent success with growing them, but this year there was a bumper crop.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Zooming
Posted on May 30, 2025
I’ve been interested in photography since I don’t remember when, but it was only when we were living in Abu Dhabi that I graduated to a proper grown-up DSLR camera. This would have been about 22 years ago.
Fired with enthusiasm, I did a couple of weekend photography courses and one of the assignments was exactly the theme for this week’s lens-Artists Challenge: Zooming.
From the balcony of our apartment we had quite an impressive panorama of the Arabian Gulf, the Corniche and.what you might call ‘downtown’ Abu Dhabi. The Sheraton Hotel was just at the end of the street, so I practiced some zooming using that as a subject.
The significance of the number 37 is that this photograph was taken around the time of the 37th anniversry of the founding of the United Arab Emirates.
Monochrome Madness: Into The woods
Posted on May 28, 2025
This photo was taken at the Beecraigs Country Park, near Linlithgow in central Scotland, which is replete with woodlands.
I must have been originally attracted by the strong leading line of what just about passes for a path that leads to a clearing. However, to make it more interesting for the purposes of this theme, I applied an infrared filter and pushed the three ‘Presence’ sliders in Lightroom to the left by varying degrees, which gives the image a much more mystical – eerie, indeed – feel.
The stash
Posted on May 26, 2025
A bit late with this one, but I noticed that Dan’s CFFC challenge last week called for images of things made with fabric.
Now, Madame is a very keen quilter and as any quilter will tell you, you can never have enough fabric in what’s known as your ‘stash’.
So here’s a photo of one of many cupboards (thank you IKEA) that hold her stash. What you see here is, at a rough guess, about 25% of the total. A friend once remarked that this wasn’t so much a stash as a ‘facility’.
Cellpic Sunday – Arc-en-ciel
Posted on May 25, 2025
When half of the sky is bright sunshine and the other half has black clouds tipping it down, this is what you get (arc-en-ciel is the French word for a rainbow).
Lens-Artists Challenge: The First Thing I Thought Of..
Posted on May 19, 2025
Our challenge this week is to inject a little humour into proceedings by adding a caption to the selected image under the broad theme of ‘the first thing I thought of’.
This was indeed the first thing I thought of and – even better – it comes complete with its own ready-made caption. This little figurine has sat on my desk, whether at work or, as now, at home for more than thirty years.
Not that I ever feel put upon, you understand…
Cellpic Sunday: The Acceptable Face Of Weeds
Posted on May 18, 2025
Every spring, as growth restarts in the garden, we wait to see what will be what we call the ‘Weed of the year’ – the most prolific of the pestilential flora that deserves no place in a civilised garden, but takes over, vastly outnumbering any of its competitors.
Usually it comes down to an unpalatable choice between dandelions or – more likely – nettles. For 2025 however, the winner is – buttercups. They are everywhere this month. They’re so much nicer than any of the usual suspects that it was almost a shame to take the strimmer to them.
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