Posted on April 12, 2018
There’s a bit of a story behind this particular image, posted in response to the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge ‘Awakening’.
In October 2004 we came to France with the express purpose of finding a house to buy. We stayed in a gîte – I can’t remember the exact location, but it was somewhere in the Vienne département – and I brought with me my first digital camera, a 3MP Olympus compact (really good lens, by the way).
One morning – upon awakening, you could say – I looked out of the bedroom window and saw the dawn mist in the shallow dip between the hamlet where we were staying and the local village.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Awakening
Category: Weekly Photo Challenge Tagged: Awakening, Dawn, France, Landscape, mist, Rural, Weekly Photo Challenge, weeklyphotochallenge
Posted on April 4, 2018
Should you ever find yourself in the town of Saint-Junien and need to have a new key cut, this is the place you’re looking for.
Category: Weekly Photo Challenge Tagged: Keys, p, Saint-Junien, shop signs, Signs, Smile, Weekly Photo Challenge, weeklyphotochallenge
Posted on March 29, 2018
WordPress wants to see some images of sunrises and/or sunsets for their latest Weekly Photo Challenge.
I don’t have many sunrises, probably because that would involve getting up early. However, in the past I have posted a few sunsets (all the decent ones, it seems) under various threads, so here is a little compendium of a few of the better examples, beginning with the same view that I put up in response to last week’s ‘Favourite Place’ challenge:
More exotically, this was taken on a sunset cruise off Muscat, in Oman:
and this one in the game reserve on Sir Bani Yas Island in Abu Dhabi – the giraffe enclosure, to be exact:
This, though, is probably the most spectacular sunset I’ve ever captured – just outside Beverley, in East Yorkshire:
Weekly Photo Challenge: Rise/Set
Category: Weekly Photo Challenge Tagged: Beverley, Home, Muscat, Rise/Set, Sir Bani Yas, sunset, Weekly Photo Challenge, weeklyphotochallenge
Posted on March 22, 2018
Echoing the theme of ‘Place’ set by Frank at Dutch Goes The Photo! on Tuesday, WordPress’ theme for their latest Weekly Photo Challenge is ‘Favourite Place’.
For the sake of consistency – and because where I am now really is my favourite place – what can I do but post another image of home?
For Frank’s challenge, I showed an image of some trees that form part of the boundary between my two fields. Here, though, is one of those fields, as it was when we first saw it back in 2004.
The wooden fencing has been replaced by the wall seen in the other image, and the sheep – which belonged to our neighbour – have gone. Overall, it looks a little better groomed now than it did back then, although that’s probably only because the growing season hasn’t kicked in properly yet.
Restful (or, as they say round here, ‘tranquille’) isn’t it?
Weekly Photo Challenge: Favourite Place
Category: Weekly Photo Challenge Tagged: Favourite Place, France, Haute Vienne, Place, Rural, Weekly Photo Challenge, weeklyphotochallenge
Posted on March 16, 2018
The latest WordPress weekly Photo Challenge is a particularly interesting – and difficult – one. We are asked to post an image illustrating what we would rather be doing.
It seems to me that one’s starting point is crucial here. It all rather depends on what I’m doing at the time the question is posed. I can think of lots of things I might (have to) be doing where watching paint dry would be a more acceptable alternative. Equally, there are a few things I would rather be doing than just about anything else.
Neither of these categories, however, really lend themselves to being pictured – and certainly not in the public domain.
The truth is, I would probably rather be taking photographs than anything else: this is, after all, my principal interest. And if I was being more specific, it would be taking photographs of interesting doors.
So this:
Weekly Photo Challenge: Rather
Category: Weekly Photo Challenge Tagged: Confolens, Doors, favourites, hobbies, I'd Rather Be..., Photography, Reflections, Weekly Photo Challenge, weeklyphotochallenge
Posted on March 8, 2018
The latest WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge wants a picture to tell a story (doesn’t every picture?).
Here is storytime from Grandma for the twin grandsons. Not sure that they pay quite such rapt attention now that they’re ten going on eleven.
Category: Weekly Photo Challenge Tagged: Family, Story, storytime, Twins, Weekly Photo Challenge, weeklyphotochallenge
Posted on March 1, 2018
In modern times, the power of religion is much diluted. However, it is important to remember that at one time the grandeur of great cathedrals – now often faded – was designed to impress a superstitious and almost certainly illiterate populace.
Both the architecture and the decor were intended to provide an idea of the glories of the life hereafter: literally out of this world.
Even now, the twin domes of the cathedral of Cahors can still impress even the most determinedly secular of observers.
Weekly Photo Challenge 28 February 2018
Category: Weekly Photo Challenge Tagged: Architecture, Cahors, Cathedral, ceiling, Church, Out of this world, Weekly Photo Challenge, weeklyphotochallenge