Category: photography

Spring in Glorious Technicolor – or Muted Monochrome

Even though over the last few days the weather has reverted to winter chill with a vengeance, I think it’s definitely the week that Spring has Sprung. The daffodils have suddenly burst forth into golden glory. The grass is lusher. Dandelion and daisies crowd the verges. Spring announces itself in an explosion of colour, in contast to the muted browns and greys of winter with its dull skies and overabundance of mud.

So is there even any point in ‘doing’ spring in monochrome? I thought I’d find out, and chose four images where it’s not just spring flowers telling the story, because they’re complementing the buildings they grow near.

Perhaps these aren’t part of the story, because snowdrops show their faces from early January. But they’re white, so may not suffer so much in monochrome.
Primulas on a traffic island near York Minster.
Tulips overlooking Knaresborough Viaduct.

Part of my own difficulty is that I don’t enjoy tinkering with photos. What comes out of the camera either works, or it doesn’t, and then I’ll junk it. At most I’ll level the picture up, maybe lightly crop it, even – slightly – fiddle with brightness. So my translations into monochrome are crude at best. If I want monochrome – and I’m increasingly choosing it over colour – I’ll shoot in black and white. And perhaps follow up with a further version in colour. I admire those photographers who use editing tools with discretion, so what we see is the original shot – just enhanced in subtle ways. I’m less keen on dramatic editing. But in a diary that is already over-full, I guess I don’t feel like giving this particular skill the time it needs to learn to do it well.

I’ll finish with Fountains Abbey as it is now, its grounds carpeted in daffodils. Black and white as my featured photo, and – my much preferred version here – in the above-mentioned Glorious Technicolor.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness

Just One Image

Early Morning in Sleningford

This isn’t – I hope – the best image that I’ll ever produce. Nor is it even one that tugs most at my heartstrings. It’s a bit of pure serendipity. Early one winter’s morning I was nipping out to get the paper, just as the sun was rising. Unusually, I had my phone with me. My bargain-basement-bottom-of-the-range smartphone. Well, here was a scene that demanded to be recorded. So I did. And I like it. It reminds me how lucky we are to live in this quiet spot, where scenes like this are part of our everyday.

A few weeks later, I joined our local photo club. And a few weeks after that, we were all invited to submit two photos to an annual event: the photographic exhibition held as part of Masham’s Sheep Fair. No subject specified – just two photos. The public are invited to cast three votes – first, second and third – for their favourites. And the winner gets the honour and glory: though not a lot else. Reader – I won. Even though we have some pretty good photographers who can be relied upon to deliver wonderful images of the natural world; landscapes; action shots; street images … you name it. But the Great Masham Public decided on this occasion that Early Morning in Sleningford was what they liked. Even more embarrassingly, I took second prize too.

For Ann-Christine’s Lens-Artists Challenge#336 Only One Picture

Colour? Or Black and White?

This week, Patti has invited us to explore colour photography, as against black and white for her Lens-Artists Challenge. She’d like us to present the same image both in colour and in monochrome. Because I do very little post-processing, I’ve used the fairly limited options offered by Google Photos.

What to choose? I decided to pick images that I thought were sure to work best in colour, and see what happened if I imposed a monochrome palette on them. I was quite surprised.

First of all I looked at my images of Vitré, the charming French commune I shared with you a couple of weeks ago. Surely it’s all about the colour of the gaily painted houses there?

The Old Town, Vitré

I surprised myself. I liked both – perhaps because there’s a bit of an expectation that half-timbered houses, in England at least, tend to be in black and white. What gives the coloured image the edge in my eyes though, is the lucky chance of that figure in bright red strolling down the street. It just lends an extra focus to the shot lacking in the monochrome image.

Then I went to familiar stamping grounds. Brimham Rocks.

Brimham Rocks, North Yorkshire

I’m pretty happy with both. Those puffy cumulus clouds help to lighten the sky in the black and white image. It might otherwise have been a little uniformly grey. I’ve just popped another image in as the header photo. The rocks as seen through a conveniently sited picture frame. Trust me. The colour image is barely any different. It was a very overcast day.

The last image is of the simply appalling ferry we took from Rome to Barcelona the other year. Those rusting chimneys have their visual appeal, but the rest of the ship was like that too! Would they work in black and white? Let’s see.

Our Grimaldi lines ship. Avoid.

Hmm. I think it’s OK. The rusty pipes have sufficient contrast to work even without colour. In my opinion.

So there we have it. Are you a fan of colour, monochrome, or both? And do you have any strong feelings about what works, or doesn’t, here?

I decided to include this post in Leanne’s Monochrome Madness challenge. She can close her eyes to the colour versions.

There Were Three on a Bench …

Spotted at Bradford-upon- Avon, where we were saying goodbye to Becky (Queen of Squares) who had been a brilliant host to Anabel (Glasgow Gallivanter) and me when we stayed with her last Autumn. Here is a bench, providing space for three young people to do what they do best. Scrolling.

For Jude of Travel Words’ Challenge: Bench

Air, Water, Fire, Earth … Metal, Wood

Ask someone in the Western world about the Four Elements, and they might talk to you about Air, Water, Fire and Earth. Ask someone familiar with a Chinese cosmology and Wu Xing, and they would protest that there are five: adding Wood and Metal, and discounting Air. Sofia asks us to look at the five Chinese elements for her Lens-Artists Challenge. This is a big ask. I’ve seen wonderful posts from those who’ve contributed already, as well as Sofia’s own post illustrating elements as seen in the natural world. I’ve decided to focus on those elements as pressed into the service of man.

Let’s start with Air: through which fly aeroplanes (Metal) over the Earth beneath.

Aeroplane trails spotted over Welsh pastureland

And where would our washing lines be without air coursing through our clothes hanging out to dry?

A French washing line. It could be anywhere though.

Or flags, flapping in the breeze?

Outside the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

Water next. Essential in every branch of life, here’s a (Metal) ship ploughing through it.

The North Sea. Plenty of Air there too.
Fish at Cosmo Caixa Science Museum, Barcelona.

Fire. Trickier, this one. Here’s a blacksmith doing his Metalwork at Tees Valley Pumping Station. This Pumping Station is now consigned to history and the odd Open Day. But in the Victorian era, it existed to provide clean drinking Water to the people of Darlington.

Traditional blacksmith.

And here is a collection of Metal artefacts and objects we saw when we visited.

Earth next. Without which … no forests, no crops, no bricks no … normal life at all.

Seed planting time. Free lunch for black-headed gulls.
Winter fields

Then there’s wood. One of our oldest building materials. Still the material of choice for window frames, for furniture. Even sometimes for cutlery!

And there we have it. A whistle top tour of the Elements, Western or Chinese style. I think my header photo, by the way, shows a bit of everything. Except perhaps fire. Do visit Sofia’s post, which will lead you in turn to other terrific responses to this challenge.

Monday Window, Monday Sunrise

A sunrise captured in one of our downstairs windows one December morning. This image always makes me happy, so I’ll make it a bonus post for Ann-Christine’s This Made Me Smile challenge too.

For Brian’s Monday Window,

And Ann-Christine (Leya)’s Lens-Artists Challenge #326 – This Made Me Smile

These Made Me Smile

Ann-Christine of Leya fame has offered us a challenge. She wants us to forget, if only for a moment, that we’re in difficult times: politically, economically, weather and climate-wise. What a good idea. Let’s smile.

We’ll start out with the intentionally humorous.

Here’s a battered house in down-town Seville. I hope the owners don’t hurry to slap on fresh plaster and paint, and cover up this jovial crocodile.

And here’s a puppet from the Puppet Museum in Cádiz, together with a jolly fellow who was part of a scupture trail in east London supporting chidren’s wheelchair charity Whizz-Kidz 

Here’s a sign outside a bar in Liverpool:

All those intended to make you smile. These didn’t. I hope you’ll smile anyway, when you see our neighbour’s dog Poppy meeting her first snowman, and then spot this tree at Jervaulx Abbey.

We’ll finish with two different kinds of smile. The very first snowdrops of the year, I hope round about two months from now, always bring me joy. As did these wild flowers in the car park at Harrogate Hospital last summer.

My header photo is a shot that always delights me. Going down the drive early one winter morning, I just happened to have my phone on me. I recorded this scene for posterity: that serendipitous moment always brings a smile to my face.

Lens-Artists Challenge #326 – This Made Me Smile

Where Words Fail, Music Speaks

Where words fail, music speaks: so said Hans Christian Anderson. And when Leanne invited me to host Monochrome Madness for One Week Only, I thought Music might be a good theme. We bloggers come from all over the world. Though many of us, in many nations, have English as our first language, there are dozens of different ones in the WordPress melting pot. But we can all enjoy music together, whether singing, playing instruments, or dancing, Or all of the above at once. Let’s do it.

My header image was taken at the neighbourhood Festa Major in Gràcia, Barcelona. It’s out of focus, and I don’t care. It captures I think the verve and enjoyment of those performing drummers.

Here are some dancers in neighbourhood festivals: in Catalonia; and in England – Morris Men.

Instrument players now. The drummer accompanying the Morris dancers; drummers celebrating Chusak in South Korea, and brass players marching in London in those heady optimistic days when some of us still thought Brexit might not happen.

Of course some instrumentalists out in the street are trying to earn a living. Here are buskers in Ripon and Bath.

And a harpist playing at a friend’s wedding in the grounds of the ruined Abbey at Jervaulx ….

Here are singers in Seville, relying simply on the beauty of their voices; and a singer-instrumentalist, heavily dependent on a supply of electricity to produce a sound.

Of course, first you have to have your instrument. Here’s a music shop in Málaga.

This thrush is a musician from the natural world. He commandeers a high branch here, spring after spring, and simply sings his heart out from early morning to early evening, almost without stopping. I wish you could hear him.

And while we’re in the Great Outdoors, is there anything more musical than a tinkling and plashing stream, tumbling tunefully over rocks?

Please do join in with your own musical offerings. And link back both to this post, and to Leanne’s site too, here.