I just came upon this picture that I took one Christmas Eve. Even though it’s from mid-winter, it seems to be such a positive image, full of promise for the day ahead, that I thought I’d post it while we’re still largely confined in Lockdown.
Category: Blogging challenges
Playing with Light
Playing with light. That’s what we’re doing this week for Jude’s photo assignment. I took each of my shots three times: as a simple automatic shot, in high key and in low key mode.
It’s probably me and the shots I chose, but in each case, working in high key did these subjects no favours, and simply made them look bleached and lifeless. Low key however did add some drama.
I looked at my neighbour’s roses in the morning, took a walk at noon, and enjoyed the first of the petunias to show its face in the evening.
Automatic
High key
Low key.
Automatic
High key
Low key
Automatic
High key
Low key
Here’s a little quiz. Each of these shots is taken in high key, low key, automatic, or in toy – pinhole – mode. But which one? Have a look at the gallery, before bringing up the shot full size to reveal the answer.
Low key
Automatic
Toy
Automatic
Toy
High key
Six Circles for a Lockdown Saturday
Potting shed at Gurukula, Kerala, India
El Clot metro station, Barcelona.
Street Art, Valencia.
Yayo Kusana’s The Passing Winter (2005) in Tate Liverpool
Look up in Liverpool Central Library and this is what you’ll see …
A trip round the harbour in Alicante.
Click on any image to see it full size.
A Grey Day? Or Perhaps Not.
I chose Tuesday as a day to record the changing conditions outside the kitchen window from sunrise to sunset, for Jude’s 2020 Photo Challenge in which she invites us to observe a single view throughout the day. As the day wore on, I wondered why I’d bothered. It was a dull, somewhat gloomy day. Just grey and rather cold, nearly all day. But when I downloaded the pictures and looked at them, I discovered far more had been going on than I had realised. You take a look too.
6.40 a.m.
8.00 a.m.
10.00 a.m.
Midday
2.00 p.m.
4.00 p,.m.
6.00 p.m.
8.00 p.m.
9.45 p.m.
A favourite? Maybe 8.00 in the evening. The weather’s picked up and the light has softened as the evening draws in. And finally, I’ll show you some of the lilac that features in every shot.
# 2020 Photo Challenge 19: Light.
You asked for 6 photos, Jude. Sorry, you’ve got ten. Plus one.
One More Walk in the Woods
Greensitt Batts
Heslett Wood
Coal Bank Wood
Piccadilly
Five Ponds Wood
Mickley Barrass
I walk in the woods daily.
Join me just one more time.
Light shafting downwards through the trees.
Loamy paths, wild garlic, bluebells, campion.
Silence: except for birdsong, purling streams.
The tang of sap, earth, flowers.
It’s All Wet
I’ve been hunting through the archive for pictures that are All Wet. It’s easy enough to find souvenirs of days out in the rain: this is England after all; and of riverside and seaside shots. But my eye kept being drawn to these photos, ones taken when I was reluctantly imprisoned inside during a rainstorm, or otherwise messing about in the wet. What do you think?
A soggy weekend in Cumbria.
The car had to tackle some seriously deep puddles as we came home from our Cumbrian weekend.
Cherry blossom drifting onto a sunlit pond.
The carwash.
Edinburgh in the rain, as seen from the National Museum of Scotland.
Look for Shadows
‘Look for shadows’, says Jude. So I have. William did too, and he was sure he could catch his shadow if he tried just a little bit harder.
I went out catching shadows too: on roadways, in fields, on the bedroom wall. Sometimes they were crisp silhouettes of the objects themselves, and at other times bafflingly indistinct, or satisfyingly abstract.
Last year, in Northumberland: our intrepid band of hikers pinned against a drystone wall.
A selection of legs – human, probably – at Masham Sheep Fair.
Self-portrait as shadow.
Climbers growing outside the window reflected on the wall and ceiling.
Plant life on the roadside.
A pretty accurate portrait of an oak tree painted by the sun on a recently harrowed field last week.
