theonlyD800inthehameau
Photography by theonlydeadheadinthehameau
Lens-Artists Challenge – This Made Me Smile
Posted on November 29, 2024
Lens-Artists Challenge: Gratitude
Posted on November 19, 2024
This week’s challenge is a bit of a toughie – as are most that whose title consists of an abstract noun.
Of course there is plenty for me to be grateful for – and I hope I am – but I was looking for a slightly different angle that doesn’t parade too much of my personal life.
Back in August, while on holiday in the UK, we went to a village cricket match in Yorkshire. There was nothing at stake apart from local pride, but I’m sure that the captain of the winning side expressed his gratitude to the person who handed him the trophy..
Lens-Artists Challenge: In the details
Posted on November 11, 2024
This week’s Lens-Artists Challenge is a slightly unusual but very interesting one. We are asked to provide three images of a subject, showing progressively more detail.
To begin with, here is a conventional shot of the huge neo-gothic cathedral of Albi. It is massive: the walls are about twenty feet thick at the base. Begun in the 15th century, is is still the largest brick-built edifice in the world.
The main door is on the left, through the portico which is just visible in the bottom corner of the above image. Closer to, it looks like this:
That’s impressive enough in itself, with the human figures conveying an idea of the scale, but when you get to the actual doorway itself, you find it surmounted by this amazingly complex stonework.
(It occurs to me that it would be perfectly possible to continue the process of increasing detail by zooming in to some of that elaborate carving, like an almost endless set of Russian dolls.)
Lens-Artists Challenge – Silence
Posted on November 4, 2024
This week’s theme of ‘silnce’ is an interesting one: how to convey the idea of silence through an image.
It seemed to me that silence could be conflated with tranquility and restfulness, and somehow that led me to this image of part of the foreshore in the fishing village of Pittenweem on the east coast of Scotland. With all potential distractions cropped away, it feels quite meditative – almost like a Zen garden.
Lens-Artists: There is a crack in everything
Posted on October 29, 2024
Look at this abandoned house on the main street of the nearby village of Rancon: the paintwork is cracked, the glass is cracked, the plaster is cracked, the wall itself is cracked…
Lens-Artists Challenge: Intentional Motion
Posted on October 22, 2024
It’s almost counter-intuitive to move your camera intentionally when taking a photograph, but the effect can be quite arresting.
When I got my first proper DSLR we were living in an apartment in the centre of Abu Dhabi city. I took a couple of photography courses and this is the result of one of the exercises that was set.
With the camera on a tripod sitting on the apartment’s terrace, I aimed it at the night view, which was of a busy road with high rise buildings at the far end.. The effect was achieved with a long(ish) exposure, during which I slowly rotated the zoom lens. Weird.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Looking Back
Posted on October 15, 2024
A particularly interesting theme for this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge: ‘Looking back’.
If you think about it, every photo you’ve ever taken – even the one you might have captured less than a minute ago – is looking back: a split second of a memory preserved for ever (or at least until you press the ‘Delete’ button). Indeed, why do we take photos in the first place, if not to create a memento?
I’m fortunate to have many happy memories – and perhaps even luckier to be able to remember them, but I’d be lying if I said that having a photographic record hasn’t helped in that.. So, the choice wasn’t easy, but I finally settled on something.
Madame and I have been lucky enough to visit Venice four times, all for wedding anniversaries, of which three were significant milestones. This is the hotel , on the Grand Canal, that we stayed in on two of those occasions. Happy days…
Lens-Artists Challenge: Setting a mood
Posted on October 8, 2024
The light of Golden hour adds a mood of serenity to this image of boats at anchor in the Vieux Port of the city of La Rochelle in western France.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Unexpected Vista
Posted on October 1, 2024
This week’s Lens-Artists Challenge is about finding beauty in unexpected places. Good one.
As the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder – in other words, a matter of personal taste, whatever the ‘rules’ say about the rule of thirds, the golden ratio or colour wheels..
This is actually the last photo I took in the month of September, so the ‘untouched’ version has been posted for Bushboy’s Last On The Card challenge here. It was taken in the nearby village of Rancon. It’s – obviously – an archway, although interestingly it’s completely free-standing and in fact the ground slopes away steeply about twenty feet beyond it.
What i failed to notice until I looked at it on the big screen of my desktop was the nicely framed vista that lay beyond, illuminated by the light of the ‘golden hour’. I wasn’t expecting that.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Cabbages
Posted on September 8, 2024
What could be more mundane than a cabbage? Even a red one?
These red cabbages, cut into halves or quarters, were on sale at the Saturday market in the city of Perigueux. Opened up like this, it’s possible to appreciate the complex layering of the leaves.
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