Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal

Upbeat Brown

Blogging challenges, Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, National Trust, North Yorkshire

This month, Jude has asked us to find photos featuring brown. Well, I know about brown. Here is brown:

That’s right. Mud. We have mud everywhere.

I could cheer things up a bit however. Look at these. My featured photo was taken near Fountains Abbey only a few weeks ago, and here are more uplifting shots of the world in brown. We’ll start off with some that have been squared up – and can anybody help me identify that butterfly please?:

… and move on to a couple more autumnal scenes from Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal; a fish – part of a wall decoration at the Natural History Museum, London; tree bark: and our logs all stacked up for winter. Click on any photo for a close-up.

Life in Colour: Brown

Square Up

Organic Geometry.

Barcelona, England, Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, London, North Yorkshire, Spain

I am very late in joining Jude’s Photo Challenge #51, but here I am. She invites us to make a collage of images, some of which have strong geometric shapes, others of which are organic in form. I had fun looking back though my collection. And what I soon realised was how hard it is to determine what makes a good photo when those images are so bound up with the memories they represent. I suppose that’s what makes me a snapshot-ist rather than a photographer.

I also found myself choosing photos which were primarily geometric – of buildings and so on, but which were enlivened in some way by more organic forms. So Jude, I may not have quite stuck to your brief (again!) but you’ve made me think (again!)

  • I like this recent photo of Fountains Abbey, that the severe geometry of the ruined building, its dull grey stone, is enlivened by the informal way the autumn branches frame the scene.
  • This photo, taken in Granada, is a favourite too. The extravagant decoration of the window frames softens the geometry of the windows: but as a reflected image, the whole thing dissolves completely into something much more organic.
  • This is geometric alright: taken from a viewing platform near the Thames in London. I like that even the frame is emphasised by the vertical lines of the shelter in which this viewing window was situated.
  • This doesn’t qualify as a fine photo. More of a Christmas puzzle. This grocer’s shop in Barcelona displays not only its wares, but the buildings and street furniture in the street it faces into.
  • Liverpool. I’m looking out from the Catholic Cathedral up the road to its Anglican equivalent. I like all those bright verticals guiding your eye up that unremarkable road.
  • I had to have a drystone wall. This Yorkshire feature, solid and strong, contrasts with the distant landscape dissolving into the mist.

The featured photo shows Brimham Rocks in Yorkshire. Nobody could accuse them of being geometric.

Autumn in Glorious Black and White

Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, National Trust

Suddenly, autumn is almost over. Those rich burnished leaf tones of copper, gold, brass, bronze and rust are all but gone, released onto the woodland paths beneath the trees. It’s that final burst of colour that we love to celebrate: so how odd of me to choose trees as my subject for Jude’s Photo Challenge this week, where she invites us to look at shadow and texture in black and white. I thought it might be fun to allow craggy, nubbled trunks and bark centre stage, and to contrast them with the leaves, glossy this autumn from the rain that’s so often beaten them to the ground beneath the trees where they’ve been since spring time. And at the end, just a couple of trees reflected in different ways, at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

The High Ride at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal

Two from the High Ride at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal. The last image was taken a Kiplin Hall

The Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

2020 Photo Challenge #45

Squirrel in a Tizz.

Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, National Trust, Wildlife

Walking in Studley Royal the other day, my interest was kindled by an odd yelping call coming from one of the trees along my path. It wasn’t from any bird I recognised. That’s because it turned out not to be a bird, but a grey squirrel. An alarmed and agitated grey squirrel. This one.

I don’t know what the problem was – nothing that I could see. But he was at it as I arrived. I watched him for more than five minutes, and he was still at it as I went on my way. This is what he sounded like.

YouTube‎ · ‎Jed Deadlock

#Kinda Square