Lens-Artists Challenge: Zoo
Posted on February 18, 2025
This week’s challenge is to choose ‘only one picture’. This is something I usually do anyway, thanks to a combination of parsimony and idleness.
Mostly, I just take photographs of things that strike me as interesting or aesthetically pleasing – like most photographers, I suspect.
However, if there is one image in my library that has stayed in my mind in the (many) years since I took it, it’s this image of a caged young chimpanzee in the Al Ain Zoo in the United Arab Emirates. There’s no suggestion that it was being ill-treated, but it looks pretty traumatised to me, and it does raise fundamental questions about the ethics of zoos.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Colour or B&W?
Posted on February 11, 2025
This week’s Lens-Artists Challenge proved, I have to say, a lot less easy that I thought (or hoped) it was going to be. We were challenged to consider the differences in an image that arise when it is converted from colour to monochrome.
This is something that I often play around with in the editing process and I understand that subjects heavy on texture and contrast may be more inherently interesting in black and white. Also, of course, monochrome can give a better feeling for the age of a subject than a normal colour shot, which makes it quite suitable for photographs of old buildings, for example.
Nonetheless, I struggled to come up with something for the challenge, at least until I came across this close-up of a romanesco (a cross between broccoli and cauliflower and tastier than either of them). There’s never a shortage of texture to work with and although there’s plenty going on in the original colour version, I think that it’s easier to appreciate it in monochrome, which somehow gives the picture more depth.
Cellpic Sunday: There’s a coypu at the bottom of our garden…
Posted on February 9, 2025
This is a coypu (‘ragondin‘ in French). It’s a large, semi-aquatic, herbiverous rodent that looks similar to an otter and is about the same size. There are lots of them around here and it’s quite common to see a mother leading her brood across a country road from one ditch to another.
And therein lies the problem. The local farmers hate them because they damage not only the ditches, where they build their burrows, but also their crops. They’ll be shot on sight and even the local chasse, although really after bigger game – deer and wild boar – will take a pop at them.
However, this one seems to have taken up residence in an impenetrable thicket of brambles in our garden, from where it ventures out to stretch its legs and take the sun (when there is any). If it notices us it quickly jumps back into the brambles, but it’s not the most observant of creatures, which provides a photo opportunity.
Monochrome Madness: The Sea
Posted on February 7, 2025
This is a monochrome rendering of a photograph I took in St. Andrews in Scotland, looking out over the North Sea. Who could resist those leading lines – or those clouds?
Lens-Artists Challenge: Cats & Dogs
Posted on February 2, 2025
I’ve never been a big fan of pets as a genre. My parents had a couple of dogs when I was a child, the first of which – a mongrel called Scamp suddenly disappeared one day. I found out much later that he had to leave because he’d attacked me. I have absolutely no recollection of this incident, but it could go some way to explaining my, at best, indifference to the idea of owning cats or dogs.
So when it comes to photographs of cats and dogs, this week’s Lens-Artists. theme, the virtual cupboard of my image library is rather bare. However, there was a quite interesting cat mooching around the quiet village of Rancon a few months ago. It was gracious enough to acknowledge our presence. and look straight into the camera phone.
Last Photo: Whittling
Posted on February 2, 2025
Last week, I was what I think of euphemistically as ‘helping’ Madame to reorganise the little crafts corner of the charity shop where she is a volunteer.
I know nothing of crafts and am not ashamed to admit it. However, on the basis that my first job after I graduated was in the Liverpool City Libraries service (a stint that lasted all of six months and ended well over fifty years ago), I was clearly and eminently qualified to organise several large piles of books into some semblance of logical order.
Most of these volumes related to art, needlework, knitting and so on, but there were a few dealing with more esoteric crafts, including this particular one.
No disrespect to all you merry whittlers out there, but I have to confess that I did post this image on our family Whatsapp group without comment but with the caption ‘Shoot. Me. Now.‘
Cellpic Sunday: All The Angles
Posted on February 2, 2025
This is our local ‘salle polyvalente’ – in effect, the village hall. It’s where it ‘all’ (such as it is) happens: long lunches, aerobic classes, meetings, exhibitions – you name it.
It’s obviously a comparatively modern construct and utilitarian by design. Yet it was only last week that it struck me, while we were making our regular Sunday pilgrimage to the recycling point, how angular and geometric it is.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Complementary Colours
Posted on January 27, 2025
I’d like to think that I have a reasonable grasp of the theory behind complementary colours. The problem is that the world doesn’t necessarily adhere to the principle and often seems quite happy to juxtapose any old clashing shades with nary a thought about the aesthetics of the matter.
Orange and blue are certainly complementary, and when the setting sun hits the underside of clouds, the vibrant orange glow it can produce sits very well against the still-blue sky. Crop out any earthbound distractions and you could get yourself a bit of abstract art.
Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it…
Cellpic Sunday: Rusty Shutter
Posted on January 27, 2025
A day late due to ‘production difficulties’ (sc. idleness and ineptitude on my part, plus my struggles with the new and ‘improved’ (ha!) WordPress UI.
Although the popular, almost romantic, image of French window shutters is pristine. brightly coloured and freshly painted volets, more prosaically they’re at least as likely to be metal and rusting. This one, on an abandoned house in the village of Rancon, is a particularly….er, ‘fine’ example.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Shoot from above
Posted on January 23, 2025
Sometimes (or should that be ‘many times and oft’?) these old bones either can’t or – more likely – can’t be bothered to hunker down and take an eye-level photo of something at or near ground level. That at least is my excuse for just snapping this flower from above. Its bright colours made it really stand out from its surroundings.
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