We visited a dozen or more Buddhist temples when we were in South Korea a few years ago. And every one had long lines of lanterns, stretching the length of a room or a verandah, hung with lanterns that were in their turn hung with prayer intentions. A new perspective on mindfulness.
Back in the Good Old Days, did you have a Box Brownie? Do you remember hiding yourself in a darkened room to fiddle with the film, threading the spool into your camera and winding it on, only to do the whole thing in reverse twelve shots later when you had to get the thing out to be developed at the chemist’s shop? Do you remember spending your pocket money to have two whole films – that’s twenty four shots – to last you the whole holiday, and the frustrating wait of a week or so before your photos were developed?
Jude has asked us to remind ourselves of those days in this week’s Photo Challenge, by asking us to limit ourselves to twelve shots. Jude however is profligate. She’s allowing us to use all twelve shots in a single outing. How improvident! Even so, even with this quite generous allowance, I remembered the old anxieties. Should I take this? Would I regret it because there was something better round the corner? What if I ran out of shots?
Here’s my offering. A friend and I walked on Tuesday (socially distanced, of course) from Ripon to Bishop Monkton by the Ripon Canal, along some country lanes, then back to Ripon alongside the Rivers Ure and Skell. We enjoyed many quiet moments appreciating the waterscapes, the landscapes reached on foot from our starting point in the city centre. Nine miles under our belts, renewed and refreshed.
As a homage to my Box Brownie Days, I’ll show you the photos first in monochrome, then in Glorious Technicolor. It didn’t feel right to edit them in any way (apart from translating them into monochrome).
Most look neither better nor worse in my eyes in the two different formats – just different. A couple don’t seem to work, and back in black-and-white days I probably wouldn’t have taken them. Just one works better I think. This journey into the past, thinking more carefully before pointing-and-clicking has been an illuminating and surprising pleasure which I’m sharing with Leya’s Lens Artists Challenge. Click on any image to view full size.
This new perspective on photography would have been perfect for Becky’s Square Perspectives: but my pictures aren’t square. I’ll choose one and square it up. Maybe …. this one.
2020 Photo Challenge #26
Square Perspectives
Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #103
I like this dramatic pedestrian underpass Somewhere in London. But where? I’ve clean forgotten. Canary Wharf area I think, on the DLR? London friends, can you help ?*
Country Mouse would quite like to be in London again, just for a few days, for a different perspective on life.
It’s time for July Squares, for a month of Square posts on our perspective on … perspective, and hosted by the indefatigable Becky.
Four different perspectives on this barley growing in a field near me. But there are others too: those of –
Click on ‘Square Perspectives’, and you’ll find perspectives a-plenty this month. Browse and enjoy!
These days, weeks and weeks into Life-with-Covid 19, I crave a nice quiet dinner with people I know, tea parties with friends, or a chinwag in town over a good cup of coffee and a fresh-from-the-oven buttered scone. And I can’t have any of them.
Instead, I’ll settle for memories of a tea party from a few years ago, when we met with good friends to celebrate a couple of birthdays. No tea shop for us, but instead a jaunt on the Wensleydale Railway, a Heritage Railway which runs in normal times through the heart of the Yorkshire Dales .
As we rattled along, enjoying countryside views, smart serving staff plied up with elegant little sandwiches, properly fattening cakes, and the all-important scones served with jam and cream. And tea, of course. And prosecco.
It’s not often that afternoon tea with all the trimmings includes an ever-changing bucolic view through the window.
Read the whole story here.
When all this is over, I’ll remember the quiet moments …
… the early evenings in the garden, as the birds chattered tunefully among themselves …
… the woodland walks, where I was soothed by the changing patterns as, day by day, green leaves unfolded above me, and the flowers of spring, then summer, came and went alongside my path.
And I’ll remember this walk too, from Monday this week, when I exchanged my bosky local landscape for the wider vistas near the North York Moors National Park, where a long slog up a long hill rewards with far-ranging views. And maybe the chance to take a photo requiring depth of field, for Jude’s current photo challenge.
Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #102: A Quiet Moment
A June walk near Richmond in Yorkshire. Not this June as it happens, but it’s a walk I remember well.
This was the countryside we strolled through.
And this was the abbey we found near the end: Easby Abbey, ruined since shortly after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536, and as atmospheric as ruins generally are.
The site includes the not-at-all-ruined parish church which is still very much in use. When we popped in, we didn’t expect to find a poor swallow, struggling to get out. Church members were trying to help him, but he was still vying with stained glass angels as we left. Poor swallow.
Birder friends: can you help please? I realise this may not be a swallow, but it doesn’t seem to be a swift or house martin either. Thoughts?
Just look at that. Twelve words. I have to weave those twelve random words into a single poem.
Our U3A writing group is one of the few things that’s continued throughout lockdown. It’s a positive activity at a somewhat negative time. But what CAN you do with a list like that? This, it turns out. I’m not too displeased. And here too are a few photos to illustrate the day.
Wanting to de-clutter
my brain, I drive to
Colsterdale.
Walking boots? – Check.
Map? – Check.
Sandwich? – Check.
Banana? – Check.
Umbrella? Don’t be silly.
No starlings here, but
curlews, skylarks
crest the sky –
that cobalt sky, patched
with buttermilk clouds.
A chattering brook
drains into the reservoir
where fish silently dawdle
and spongy bibulous mosses
make soft mats beneath my feet.
Contented now,
I drive back to town.
I pass that new carbuncle and see
a socially distanced queue
snake round the recently-opened
supermarket.
