Posted on August 4, 2025
This week’s challenge is to demonstrate through an image or images the tools of photo composition. John, who’s overseeing proceedings this week, specifies lines, colour and patterns.
Certainly no arguments there, although I would argue that a photographer’s most important tools of composition are their very own eyes: to be able to see the image before it is captured, even if it’s not immediately apparent.
This image is, I think, a decent example of what I’m droning on about. It was taken outside my sister-in-law’s house. the dark triangle on the right is part of her garage roof, while the white triangle and dormer window form part of the neighbouring house.
There are lines and shapes a-plenty, of course, but what draws them together is the composition, and in particular the two triangles meeting at top right. The point is that at first sight this was not immediately obvious, although I could see it had potential. All it needed was for me to use my eyes and take two steps to the left in order to align the various elements as seen here.

Lens-Artists Challenge: Tools of Composition
Category: Composition Tagged: Composition, Lens-Artists, Roofs, Slate, Squares, Squares and Rectangles, Triangles
Posted on August 22, 2020
This was the interior of our barn when we bought Brokedown Palace. Yes, that is a big hole in the roof in the middle of the image.
What were we thinking?

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Made from wood
Category: Black & White Tagged: Barn, Black & White, Cee's Black & White Photo Challenge, Derelict, Roofs, Wood
Posted on August 20, 2020
Look out from the glass-walled lift that’s installed in the church tower of the medieval town of Sarlat, in the Dordogne, and old buildings is just about all you get.

Posted on June 27, 2020
We reach the halfway point of the 52 Week Smartphone Challenge with, thankfully, a reasonably straightforward theme: geometry.
The roof of our neighbours’ barn is, if you look at it carefully, a riot of curves and straight lines – and certainly geometrical. It just goes to show that geometry is all around us.

52WeekSmartphoneChallenge 26 Geometry
Category: Uncategorized Tagged: 52 Week Smartphone Challenge, 52WeekSmartphoneChallenge, Geometry, Roofs
Posted on February 26, 2020
A few years ago, the medieval ‘halle’ (marketplace) in the nearby village of Mortemart was carefully restored, allowing visitors to appreciate the technical complexity of its beamed roof.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Roofs of any kind
Category: Uncategorized Tagged: Cee's Fun Foto Challenge, Medieval, Mortemart, Restoration, Roofs
Posted on August 28, 2019
The very photogenic nearby village of St-Germain-de-Confolens is dominated by the old chateau that towers over it. If you can manage the hike up to the top, the views are very worthwhile.

Posted in response to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Roofs
Category: Landscape Tagged: Cee's Fun Foto Challenge, River Vienne, Roofs, St-Germain-de-Confolens