theonlyD800inthehameau
Photography by theonlydeadheadinthehameau
Lens-Artists Challenge: Habitat
Posted on July 2, 2024
My regular reader (sic) may recall that where we live in the depths of rural France is very much sheep country. I’d estimate that most of the local farmers have at least some sheep as part of their agricultural ‘portfolio’, so to speak, although none of them do so on what you might call an industrial scale.
Our nearest neighbour and her late husband were full-time sheep farmers, albeit only on a modest scale. Their flock used to graze in our fields, which certainly kept the undergrowth under control. Now retired, she still has a small flock of maybe ten ewes, more as a hobby than anything else.
Their new habitat is a field just across the road from our house, from where they view me, should I happen to pass by, with a mixture of curiosity and contempt, as I wrote about here.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Two rectangles
Posted on June 24, 2024
The Lens-Artists Challenge this week has been set by Egidio, with the theme of ‘two rectangles’. To me, that seemed like an open invitation to show a bit of minimalist symmetry.
Dusk on Sir Bani Yas Island in Abu Dhabi:
Lens-Artists Challenge: Connections
Posted on June 11, 2024
No doubt I will, over time, be posting quite a few photographs I took last weekend at Guédelon, and here’s a couple that are quite appropriate for this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge of ‘Connections’.
Firstly, there’s this ancient-looking set of stone steps. In reality, it’s probably no more than twenty years old, as work didn’t commence on the site until until 1997.
Secondly, a very elaborate rope knot holding together the component parts of what looks like a ploughshare, or harrow.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Floral
Posted on May 27, 2024
I don’t know about you, but I probably take more photos of flowers than any other subject. That’s not surprising really, given there are a lot of them about and, for the most part, they are…..well, photogenic.
For this challenge I wanted to post something a little out of the ordinary, so I chose this image of a bee taking nectar from a small orchid. It helps to remind us that flowers are not standalone things of beauty, but an essential part of a broader ecosystem.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Delicate
Posted on May 21, 2024
As usual, I have no idea what these flowers are called, but they’re certainly delicate.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Music To My Eyes
Posted on May 1, 2024
I know I wasn’t the only one whose first reaction, on seeing what this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge was, thought something along the lines of ‘Nah, what’s that even about?’ In my case there may also have been an element of ‘WTF?’
And yet – also like others – when I thought about it a little, I understood what Egidio was getting at more fully and realised I could give it a go.
Okay, so it’s just a decent enough image of a rainbow, albeit an unusually close one, but it did trigger a musical memory.
Picture this: October 1970 and it’s the first day at university (in the south of England – more specifically, Canterbury) of a callow youth from northern England. After the welcome speech from the Master of the College, the new recruits mingled and formed small groups. I found myself, with about half a dozen others, none of whom had met before, in the college room of a fellow freshman..
Being English, they put the kettle on and made tea. It was my first experience of Earl Grey (callow and northern, remember). This album – ‘A Rainbow In Curved Air’, by Terry Riley – was playing gently in the background.
Heaven help us, that was over half a century ago, but I still listen to it often and the sight of a rainbow – any rainbow – takes me back to that quiet afternoon.
Try it for yourself, if you like…
Lens-Artists Challenge: Abstract
Posted on April 22, 2024
This week’s theme for the Lens-Artists Challenge, set by Ritva, is ‘Abstract’. It seems that there’s some division of opinion about the merits of abstract photography: some don’t like it, others love it.
As it happens, I find myself in the latter camp. Keeping an eye (and a mind) open for unusual and/or unconventional images keeps you on your metaphorical photographer’s toes.
But what, you may well ask, is this (expletive deleted)? It looks (to me at any rate) rather like some kind of surreal enchanted forest. However, the truth – as so often – is rather more prosaic. It is, in fact, a detail of the inside of the door of my dishwasher. Before I turned it on, I hasten to add.
Lens-Artist Challenge: Rock Your World
Posted on April 16, 2024
“Rose-red city, half as old as time”
There is nowhere on earth quite like Petra. The sheer scale of the monuments themselves is mind-boggling, but the natural context of weathered sandstone in which they are set may be even more so (spot the human figure).
Lens-Artists Challenge: Water In Motion
Posted on April 2, 2024
This is the weir on the River Isle, which flows through the picturesque city of Périgueux, in the Dordogne département of south-western France.
Lens-Artists Challenge: People
Posted on March 25, 2024
This week’s Lens-Artists Challenge has the theme of ‘People: Here, There And Everywhere’.
That’s certainly a challenge for me, because as a general rule I tend to avoid photographing people, apart from snaps for the family album. I just don’t feel comfortable about the implicit invasion of privacy, quite apart from the risk of being pursued by an irate ‘subject wielding a baseball bat.
Sometimes, though, my interest will be piqued by somebody rather than something. I captured this image in one of Dubai’s smaller shopping malls while passing a barber’s shop. It was one of those times where I could imagine something a little less mundane than simply a random bloke getting his hair cut. What was the hairdresser thinking at that precise moment?
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