Aaaww, meerkats

Who doesn’t love a meerkat? This photograph was taken at Al Ain Zoo a few years ago. I particularly like the quizzical expression of the one on the left.

MeerkatB&W

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Animals

Relics

Our house is well over 200 years old and on the land that comes with it there have, over the years, been many other buildings – barns, outhouses, even another cottage – that have long ago disappeared.

However, occasionally relics of bygone ages turn up in the ground, including these two ancient forks and part of a doorlatch. The heavy rusting gives an interesting texture, especially in black & white. So here you have a new photo of something very old.

Relics2B&W

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge.

Horse’s Head (Detail)

Detail of a carved wooden horse that sits on a table in our salon. The monochrome conversion (the real thing is actually bronze-coloured) highlights the interesting textures of the piece.

HeadB&W

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge.

Bottle Bank

A bit of a stretch maybe, but there is definitely liquid in these bottles: wine from the St. Emilion area of Bordeaux.

LiquidB&W

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge

Abandoned

Here in the depths of the French countryside there is no shortage of abandoned buildings – the ones that even the hardiest expats won’t buy.

A colour version of this image was included in a post entitled ‘Rural Reflections‘ that I put up last year, but I think that the greyscale conversion works well.

AbandonedB&W

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge.

Running on empty

On one of the weekend photography courses I attended in Abu Dhabi, we were let loose to look for something ‘quirky’. I saw the word “Empty’ written next to a manhole cover.

So I put my wallet underneath the sign and took this picture.

SignB&W

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge

Fractal Romanesco

Quite some time ago, before I even set up this separate photography site, I produced a post containing some close-up images of a romanesco.

For the uninitiated, romanesco is a – rather tasty – cross between broccoli and cauliflower, with a very distinctive appearance that reminds me of a fractal. And since there is such a thing as fractal geometry, here is another image that qualifies for this week’s challenge.

GeometricB&W-3

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge.

Numbers

This is what passes for a licence plate around here, stencilled onto the back of the seat of an ancient and well-used tractor that belongs to the local commune.

NumbersB&W

In response to the latest of Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenges.

Silverback

A silverback gorilla at Vallée des Singes, Vienne (not a selfie).

CloseupB&W

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge.

 

Screenshot

Anything to do with phones is this week’s Black & White Photo Challenge. I can’t imagine how to make a phone – of whatever vintage – interesting, although there’s a certain wry amusement to be gleaned from seeing a picture of what at first glance looks like a housebrick but on closer inspection proves to be an eighties ‘mobile’ (think Gordon Gekko).

Anyway, with modern day phones being largely generic in their external appearance, it seemed to me that what differentiates them is their personalised home page; so here is a screenshot of mine.

I would just like to point out that the background image is most definitely not a selfie.

PhoneB&W