Stormclouds

Weather has come around again for Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge. Last time I put up a picture of freezing fog close to home, but on this occasion here is an image taken on the other side of the world, in the Hunter Valley in Australia.

weather

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Weather

Ponies in the snow

These Shetland ponies used to be found in a field about a quarter of a mile from our place. The snow (it was a couple of years ago) lends itself well to the monochrome version.

Ponies

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Pets

Feeding Time

Never having been one for sharing pictures of my dinner with the world (what exactly is Instagram anyway?), Cee’s chosen subject for this week of ‘Food’ had me stumped initially, notwithstanding that over on my other blog I had recently posted a picture of my take on a deconstructed curry.

But then it occurred to me that it didn’t have to be food for humans, so here’s a close-up of a giraffe grazing on whatever it is that giraffes eat.

Food

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Food

Bridgework

This photograph is a crop from a photograph I took from a bateau-mouche cruising down the River Seine in Paris and is of the underside of a bridge. It seems to fulfil the ‘lines and angles’ requirement of  Cee’s challenge for this week.

It’s an interesting optical illusion that, although the image is a perfect rectangle the right vertical looks longer than the left.

Lines&Angles

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Lines and Angles

Spiral steeple

Cee’s Black & White challenge this week is anything that begins with the letter ‘S’. So how about the spiral steeple of St Saviour’s church in the town of Rochechouart? Shown against the sky.

Steeple

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: the letter ‘S’

The Lantern

For this week’s subject of ‘Lights’, here is a traditional lantern that hangs over the terrace of the Royal Villa (boy, was that ever a free upgrade) at the Sir Baniyas Hotel in Abu Dhabi. The shadow is a bonus.

Lights

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Lights

The two towers

The headquarters of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority are in a building comprising two towers, about 35 storeys high, linked by a spectacular atrium. Here is a detail (sorry Cee, not the whole thing):

Buildings

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Buildings

Saint-Emilion

This week’s Black & White Photo Challenge from Cee is for ‘Any kind of bricks or stone walls, roads or walkways’.

All present and correct in this image, taken in the village of Saint-Emilion, one of the centres of wine-making in France’s Bordeaux region.

Bricks

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Bricks etc.

One Photo Focus: January 2016

For the January One Photo Focus we were given this image by Laura Macky of Laura Macky Photography

January One Photo Focus copy

It’s an excellent photograph as it stands: a well-composed image of an interesting subject. There seemed little to be gained from tweaking details like saturation; that would be more likely to detract than to enhance. So I decided to take just a part of the whole and turn it into something different.

The angle at which the boat is beached provided some interesting diagonals in the superstructure, so I cropped tightly into the subject itself. Although I like the colours in the original, I felt that it would also work well in black and white. A bit of work on the sliders brought out more detail in the peeling paintwork, giving it a more ‘weatherbeaten’ look.

Edited

January One Photo Focus

 

Faraway

Where we live is quite close to the geographical centre of mainland France (l’hexagone), so not surprisingly the skies above us are quite busy with planes flying to or from faraway places – sometimes to quite dramatic effect:

Faraway

Fortunately, they are at high altitude when they pass over, so we can’t hear them

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Faraway