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

We don’t say faucet

Bathrooms aren’t the most obvious source of photographic inspiration, so I’m indebted to Cee for forcing me to use a bit of imagination for a change. This is a close-up of the rather complicated arrangement of taps (or ‘robinets’ in French) on the side of my bath.

BathB&W

Posted in response to Cee’s latest Black & White Photography Challenge.

Name that tune

Detail from a piano in the Music Room of Chateau d’Amboise (where you can also find the empty chair).

MusicB&W

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

Venice, Schmenice, it’s all about me!

It takes a lot to move me to incandescent rage, but my encounters with the phenomenon of ‘selfie sticks’ when in Venice last year prompted me to this rant. And I have to say that time has proved to be no emollient.

As far as I can see, there is only one possible valid use for a selfie stick, and since science has already invented colonoscopes for that kind of thing, even that’s debatable.

But, if you want something in response to Cee’s latest Black & White challenge, here’s a photograph I took on Burano last October.

CameraB&W

Recycling point

Every village in France has its ‘dechette’, or recycling point, where you can get rid of your old newspapers,  an alarming number of empty wine bottles and, of course, plastic packaging. Good citizens that we are, we sort out our own recycling and take it to the dechette on a regular basis. This is the sack for empty plastic bottles.

PlasticB&W-2

Posted in response to Cee’s latest Black & White Photo Challenge.

Wheels within wheels

Montrol-Sénard is a village in the Limousin countryside, not far from here, that is preserved as a living museum of rural life at around the turn of the last century. This image shows part of a piece of  machinery in the village smithy. Don’t ask me what it’s for.

WheelB&W

Posted in response to Cee’s latest Black & White Photo Challenge.