On Tuesday, Country Mouse (me) went to the Big City (Newcastle). Big cities are busy, full of life, of people. And that’s why I was there. A friend in my fairly-newly-joined photographic club had offered to take me in hand, get me over my diffidence in photographing people I don’t know, and communicate as well his affection for black-and-white photography. Newcastle was the place to go.
We started in the station. We walked along the banks of the Tyne. We criss-crossed several of the seven – yes seven – bridges spanning the river between Newcastle and Gateshead. The shots we took there are for another day.
We took pictures of bridges, buildings, windows, shadows, gulls, pigeons, statues, rotting wood, city swank and urban decay. And we took shots of people click on any image to see it full-size.
Man meets sheep
The two of us take our last shot of the day -reflected in a shop window.
It’s true. Flies on the chopping board? Swat it now. Fruit flies crawling over the fruit bowl? Sluice them under the tap. Horse flies? Aaagh.
And yet we need them, those flies. Their larvae clean up after us – all that poo, all those dead bodies. The adults pollinate for us. They’re part of the cycle of life that we depend on.
I have not a single photo. Not one. So I’ve gone to Unsplash, a free-to-use stock photo site that I use a lot and recommend to you. Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge is meant to be an opportunity for us to showcase our own images. But this time, I’ll showcase the works of others. They really make the case for a fly being a thing of beauty, as well as of use.
The photographers haven’t named their flies, so I’ve had to try. Corrections welcomed. We’ll start with the house fly:
Tobias Roth. The featured photo, also of a house fly, is by a Spaniard, Josep Plans.
Next, a sarcophaga, a flesh fly. I guess the clue is in the name.
Last weekend, Masham, the town up the road had its wildly popular Steam Engine and Fair Organ Rally. With heavy rain forecast, this year we didn’t go to the out-of-town fields (doubtless muddy) where it’s held. Anyway, we had an exhibition to get to – Masham Photographic Club always has a display in town during the Fair, and invites members of the public to vote for their favourite four images, out of – this year – a field of 57.
By Monday, the votes were counted and the winners announced. Astonishingly, I took first place. And second. Probably because they’re local views. The winning shot is my header photo, and below is the runner-up.
Eavestone Lake
The header photo was just sheer serendipity. Walking down the lane early one morning I saw the scene you see now. I jut happened to have my phone with me, and captured the moment.
To go with the dismal weather we are having here in Britain this July, Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge #20 asks us to focus on black. Inevitably, most of my shots are of birds. Let’s go …
That cormorant spreading its wings at the end of the pier at Whitby is a shot I’ve shown before and will probably do so again. I’m quite fond of it, so I’ve made it my header shot.
These shags are from the Farne Islands, currently closed to the public during the devastating avian ‘flu outbreak.
… And this is also where we saw these guillemots.
Here’s a blackbird, silhouetted against the evening sky.
I can’t resist taking you to Studley Royal, where I spend so much time – as do the jackdaws who think they own the place. Maybe they’re as much clerical grey as black. Never mind. I wonder if this is the one that Sarah (Travel with Me) snapped in her own response to this challenge?
Let’s go into town for the next two shots: starlings gathering on the weather vane of my grandchildren’s school, and a tame raven in Knaresborough.
But I can’t let you go without a sweet treat. Here are some juicy blackberries.
Blackberries
And in fact, I still can’t let you go. Not till I’ve shared this crow presiding over a street in Berlin. Or he was when I was last there.
I have just counted. I have offered you ‘Five-and-twenty black birds’. But not baked in a pie. And not twenty four. (English nursery rhyme, non-UK readers!)
And I’m going to add the cormorant – or any other of my featured birds of your choice – to IJ Khanewala’s Bird of the Week challenge.
It’s summer – well, here in Europe it is anyway – and our thoughts turn to holidays. So when Philo of Philosophy through Photography fame threw down the challenge to celebrate Simplicity for Lens-Artists Challenge #257, I thought I’d leaf through my holiday albums and see what I could find.
Let’s go to the beach first, in Alnmouth Northumberland.
And then back to Yorkshire, to Wharfedale, where water coursing down the limestone slopes has formed this dramatically undulating landscape.
Let’s stay in Yorkshire, for harvest time at Sutton Bank.
Still, we can’t stay in England forever. Let’s catch a ferry across the North Sea.
We’ll nip across to Valencia, to l’Albufera: send a postcard as the header photo, before going south to Cádiz …
I was in London last week. And the highlight – apart from being with family of course – was a day mooching round Spitalfields with fellow blogger Sarah of Travel with Me fame. We’d planned to meet, and I’d appointed Sarah as Tour Guide. Good plan. She knows Brick Lane and the area well.
We started in Spitalfields Market, and immediately spotted Morph, well known to all British children and their parents of a certain age (1970s) through the TV series Take Hart. He and his acolytes are making guest appearances throughout central London this summer for the charity Whizz-Kidz.
Coffee next. You’ll never be short of a refreshment stop round here, though the one shown here wasn’t ours. We chose somewhere cosier.
Spitalfields was once the heart of the Huguenot community in London – Protestant refugees from persecution in 17th and 18th century Catholic France. They brought their skills as weavers with them, and formed a community here, which still has the houses from that era at its heart. For many, these houses have now become a desirable address.
We chanced upon the Town House Gallery here, and rather wished we’d stopped here for our coffee and cake. Another time.
Spitalfields has gone on being an area welcoming those seeking a fresh life away from persecution and poverty, more recently Bangaldeshi citizens who’ve now made their own mark on the area.
All the same, it was street art we’d come for, and that meant Brick Lane, and the streets round and about. Sarah’s already posted about our walk, and as so many of you already read her (and if you don’t already, you should – link above) I’ve tried to choose different images from those she shows: click on any one to enlarge.
You don’t even need a spare bit of wall:
We didn’t just have street art to keep us amused. There was filming going on. A documentary? A drama? We don’t know. Maybe we’ll find out one day.
Then under a railway bridge …
… a promising back street – a couple of street artists preparing the ground for a new work. I’m just going to show you the preparations in action. We popped back a couple of hours later to inspect progress, but were underwhelmed.
A lunch stop, then we retraced our steps. Don’t forget to look up! We were intrigued by the lines of broccoli we kept on coming across, above eye level, but they remained a mystery.
Should we instead have stopped here for lunch? We’d both have settled for Italian food. Or Korean. But that particular fusion?
Just a couple more images, of passers by oblivious to their surroundings. Which we certainly weren’t. A day full of interest. A day well spent. Thanks Sarah!
Oh, hang on. This bit’s for Jo. We found the all-important cake shop, but it wasn’t a coffee-stop too. We contented ourselves with gazing through the window, and I got an oddly surreal image of us both, with Sarah having another woman’s head superimposed on her own.
The quotation that forms my title is by William Blake. I have no idea whether it’s true that bees have no time for sorrow, but it’s certainly the case that bees are busy. Yesterday, and unforgivably without even my phone as a camera, we saw – or rather heard at first – a brightly yellow hypericum thronged with bees, buzzing energetically, and hurrying round each flower, their pollen sacs already bulging bright and yellow. This YouTube video tells a similar tale:
My own photos come from a friend’s sunflowers …
… and from elsewhere in her garden, as a bee apparently all but drowns in pollen.
Blogging is a funny old thing. Those of us who post regularly discover a world of Virtual Friends: bloggers who share our interests, who care about the same kinds of thing, or who inspire and teach us. Sometimes, when we’re lucky, we manage to meet in real life. These people are our blogging friends.
I only discovered Bren about a year ago, at Brashley Photography. I relished her commitment to photography and to her love of sharing her skills and knowledge. She loved flowers, and visiting historic places. We had made tentative plans to meet one day, probably at Fountains Abbey, a place which inspires us both.
Then she was diagnosed with cancer. Instead of having years ahead of her, suddenly she had few. She began to tell her story in Bacardi Girl: My Cancer Journey. And then swiftly, things got even worse than that, and this week, she died.
Leanne Cole has suggested those of us who ‘knew’ Bren should post images of flowers in her memory. I’m posting white ones – apart from my header photo, showing Fountains Abbey at very yellow daffodil time. This is the place where I’d once had high hopes of meeting Bren and her camera.
I hope her family will see these floral tributes: there are many of them. I hope too it helps them realise how much Bren and her work was appreciated in so many countries round the world.
It turns out that snails are not my specialist subject. Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge #16 this week is all about these gastropod molluscs. And I have precisely two in my archive. The first one is my header photo. Here below is the second.
I’ve been walkabout with my camera, looking for more. But in these dry conditions – not a hope. Even the slugs have given up chewing every plant in sight.
And I can’t even name the snails I am showing you. Can anybody help?
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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