theonlyD800inthehameau
Photography by theonlydeadheadinthehameau
Monochrome Madness: Leaves (And Berries)
Posted on November 28, 2025
My guess is that the greater part of flower photography is principally concerned with colours. However, a monochrome conversion of an image of a colourful flower can reveal otherwise hidden textural complexities.
Monochrome Madness: Clocks
Posted on November 14, 2025
The clock on this tower – on the island of Burano, in the Venetian Lagoon – is unusual insofar as, if you look closely, it only has an hour hand and no minute hand. Perhaps time wasn’t so over-ridingly important, and the need for precision less pressing, back in the Middle Ages.
Monochrome madness: Ceramics
Posted on October 16, 2025
Until recently (Covid did for it, as so many other things), a local Association put on an annual Expo of local peoples’ collections, interests and hobbies. One year there was an exhibition of ceramics by a keen local collector.
This featured a number of hand-painted ceramic tiles and this is one which, I believe, benefits from being rendered in monochrome (the real thing has a very wishy-washy green background)
Monochrome Madness: Ruins
Posted on October 2, 2025
As the topic for Monochrome Madness this time out is ‘Ruins’, eschewing the easy option of just posting an early morning selfie, I decided to stay with the subject of my Lens-Artists contribution earlier this week: the fabled ruins of the city of Petra.
For an idea of scale in this vast edifice, just take note of the human figures at bottom left.
Monochrome Madness: Backlighting
Posted on August 6, 2025
This is ‘Fred’, a sculpture who sits gloomily on a bench, looking out to sea, in the town of Scarborough. In the county of Yorkshire, where he finds himself, he would probably be described as ‘a reet miserable bugger’.
Even with the warm afternoon sun on his back, as here, he doesn’t look happy, and no doubt if the sun was in front of him, he’d complain that it was getting in his eyes. Yorkshire, eh?
Monochrome Madness – Any Colour
Posted on July 24, 2025
There’s a very interesting twist on the idea of monochrome in this latest Monochrome Madness Challenge. The automatic assumption is that monochrome must mean black and white or, at most, sepia. However if something – or image thereof – has only one colour, whatever that may be, then it can fairly be described as monochrome.
This is, of course, a rose – and Madame’s favourite to boot, as it reminds her of her grandmother, who grew these in her own garden. I don’t recall us ever having so many blooms at the same time as this summer, and the scent is blissful: just what you imagine a rose should smell like: heady and almost sensual.
Monochrome Madness: Begins with ‘H’
Posted on July 9, 2025
An interesting challenge for the latest iteration of Monochrome Madness: can I spy something beginning with ‘H’?
Well yes, albeit after a little thought. This is the harbour of the city of La Rochelle, as the sun begins to set.
Monochrome Madness: Transport
Posted on June 25, 2025
I have no end of pictures of various forms of transport suitable for this week’s Monochrome Madness theme of ‘Transport’. I think I’m especially well-equipped for tractors – unsurprisingly, given our location in the depths of rural France.
However, I thought I’d go with this. No, it’s not a child’s drawing of a bicycle – this is Leonardo da Vinci’s design for a bicycle, on display in a museum in the city of Venice. Note the characteristic mirror writing.
It looks a bit of a bone-shaker, to be honest, but it can’t be denied that he was well ahead of his time.
Monochrome Madness: Into The woods
Posted on May 28, 2025
This photo was taken at the Beecraigs Country Park, near Linlithgow in central Scotland, which is replete with woodlands.
I must have been originally attracted by the strong leading line of what just about passes for a path that leads to a clearing. However, to make it more interesting for the purposes of this theme, I applied an infrared filter and pushed the three ‘Presence’ sliders in Lightroom to the left by varying degrees, which gives the image a much more mystical – eerie, indeed – feel.
Monochrome Madness: Street Lighting
Posted on May 18, 2025
I confess that I had to do quite a bit of digging to come up with an interesting image of some street lighting. Typically, these are rather mundane artefacts that you wouldn’t often be bothered to get your camera out for.*
[Note to self: a conjunction is the wrong type of word to end a sentence with.]
However, I came across this image, which I had entirely forgotten about. High up on a wall in an old narrow street in the nearby town of Saint-Junien is this rather ornate but ancient lantern. Obviously designed for illumination, it certainly predates electric lights, and maybe even gas ones too.
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