theonlyD800inthehameau
Photography by theonlydeadheadinthehameau
WPC: ‘It’s Not This Time of Year Without…Frost’
Posted on November 26, 2016
We’ve had a couple of frosty days over the past few weeks. So that’ll be November then:
Weekly Photo Challenge: Magic
Posted on November 19, 2016
For those who believe that there is a rational explanation for just about everything, ‘magic’ is – by definition – something that isn’t real: in other words, an illusion. So here’s an, admittedly very impressive, example of an illusion.
In the centre of Limoges this medieval building dominates the Place de la Motte. Except that it’s neither medieval nor even a building – it’s a gigantic and brilliantly rendered trompe l’oeil mural, painted on the side of a much more modern edifice. The cat at top left isn’t real either (although the satellite dish is).
Not that I want to puncture the illusion, but here’s a wider-angle perspective:
Weekly Photo Challenge: Tiny
Posted on November 12, 2016
It’s something of a family tradition that Madame – whose talents are limitless and certainly extend to cake-decorating – makes birthday cakes for our twin grandsons. For their third birthday, they wanted trains and so she came up with these, intricately decorated with sliced up Liquorice Allsorts (those that managed to escape my evil clutches), Smarties and fruit gums. Naughty but nice.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Chaos
Posted on November 5, 2016
When we bought our house in France, it had been unoccupied for some time.
Unoccupied but not unused. Our neighbours – sheep farmers at the time – had taken to use it, probably initially as a storeroom, subsequently as a general repository for what can only be described as ‘all sorts of crap’. So our first view of what became our TV room was this, which I think could fairly be described as chaos (as well as a few other choice epithets).
Chaos
It looks better now:
Weekly Photo Challenge: Shine
Posted on October 23, 2016
Plenty of sunshine reflecting off the lovingly polished chrome of Terry’s Triumph (includes free image of photographer at work).
Weekly Photo Challenge: Local
Posted on October 15, 2016
It really can’t get much more local for me than this, because I took this photograph through my own front window.
That’s my neighbour Albert, keeping a watchful eye on one of his last few ewes as she takes her lamb from the barn over to the pasture, which is on the other side of the road that you can see at the top of the picture.
Sad to say, Albert died earlier this year. You can just see his faithful dog, Arielle, behind him. That’s about as far apart as they ever were: Arielle pined away and died about two weeks after Albert.
Weekly Photo Challenge: H2O
Posted on October 8, 2016
You say ‘water’, I think ‘reflections’, as in this example from the Charente River, near Chaniers.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Nostalgia
Posted on October 1, 2016
Nostalgia? It ain’t what it used to be, is it?
The obvious temptation is to respond to this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge by pulling something quaint or sentimental out of the archives. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but as a counterpoint to the rose-tinted glow of memory I thought I would post this less cosy image.
The ‘living museum’ that is the nearby village of Montrol-Sénard has many features that portray a romanticised version of local life a hundred and more years ago. However, it also has this perhaps rather more realistic illustration of the way things were.
It’s a bedroom for a farm worker: a small, rough-made bed, a lumpy, dirty straw mattress and a pair of clogs (note the straw lining: no expensive luxuries like socks). When you see an example of the verité like this it’s possible to understand why the locals seem remarkably unsentimental about their comparatively recent history.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Quest
Posted on September 24, 2016
Birds of prey are on a perpetual quest for food – even those that have been trained to take part in this ‘spéctacle’ at St-Germain-de-Confolens earlier this summer.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Edge
Posted on September 12, 2016
In the centre of the town of Thiers, in the Auvergne region of France, the perspective of this image of the upper story of a medieval house provides plenty of edges – appropriately enough, as Thiers is famously the centre of French knife (and, more broadly, cutlery) production.
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