Lens-Artists Challenge: Abstract

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-Artists Challenge: Abstract

Lens-Artist Challenge: Rock Your World

“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 #295 – Rock Your World

Lens-Artists Challenge: Water In Motion

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: Water In Motion

Lens-Artists Challenge: People

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?

Lens-Artists Challenge: People

Lens-Artists Challenge: Cityscapes

Way back when, we found ourselves in Sydney on New Year’s Eve and so were able to experience the world-famous fireworks display for ourselves.

Lens-Artists Challenge: Cityscapes

Lens-Artists Challenge: Circular Wonders

Confession time. This is, in fact, a photograph of a painting. However, it’s a very striking piece of art with an image of three dandelion heads.

It was actually hanging on a bedroom wall of a holiday cottage where we were staying a couple of weeks ago, but it certainly fits the brief of ‘Circular Wonders’ for this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge.

Lens-Artists Challenge: Circular Wonders

Lens-Artists Challenge: Tools of Composition

The house opposite my daughter’s has just got a new roof…

Cropping in to exclude everything but the tiles themselves not only removes distractions but also brings out the texture of the tiles as well as the patterns they form – obviously all helped by a bright, sunny day.

Lens-Artists Challenge #289

Lens-Artists Challenge: Sound

This is the organ of the massive cathedral in the city of Albi, in southern France. The human figures give an idea of the scale. I can only imagine the sound of it filling that enormous space.

Lens-Artists Challenge: Sound

Lens-Artists Challenge: Warm Colours

Photographing fireworks is always a bit of a lucky dip (basically, press the shutter and hope), but sometimes the results can look spectacular. I wouldn’t pretend that this image – captured at a National Day celebration in our local village a few years ago – was especially outstanding, but it certainly meets the brief of warm colours for this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge.

Lens-Artists Challenge: Warm Colours

Lens-Artists Challenge – Day and night

I took this photo in Australia’s Hunter Valley as storm clouds gathered. It wasn’t shot in black & white and nor have I converted it to monochrome.

It was actually mid-afternoon, but as those menacing clouds rolled in, they had the effect of turning day into night.

Lens-Artists Challenge: Day and night