Baltic Centre Gateshead – From Pyrenees to Pennines

A Backlit Virtual Tour for a Snapshot or Two

Let’s have a day out. Lockdown’s still somewhat in force, so let’s make it a Virtual Day Out. We’ve got homework to do: it’s time for Jude’s assignment:

This week's assignment - Use strong backlighting (i.e. shooting towards the light source, but do not look directly at the sun) to create a contre-jour image where the subject becomes a silhouette, OR shoot the light through flowers or leaves creating a transparent effect.

We’ll stay nearby at first: go to the local woods, and quite simply glance upwards.

Then we’ll whip over to Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal. There’s a group of hikers beginning their day out, but we haven’t got time to join them …

… because we’re off to London. William and I enjoy visiting the Bishop’s Palace at Eltham. Last time we went, the sky turned an extraordinary colour for a while, and I took this photo.

Back at his house in time for sunset, you can see his school from a bedroom window.

Off to Gateshead now. We’ll join a crowd of sightseers at the Baltic, looking over at the Tyne Bridge.

And we’re back home just in time to see another sunset.

2020 Photo Challenge #21

Who knows when or if I’ll be posting again? WordPress seems intent on our using block editor to prepare our posts, and currently, I’m flummoxed, and cross.

I’m Behind the Curve

I woke up this morning to realise it’s already May: though without the accompanying balmy weather. And I hadn’t yet done Jude’s April Photo Challenge. I wonder if she’ll notice if I squeeze it in today?

She wants us to explore curved lines. I’ve found this the most difficult of her challenges, so let’s see what I’ve come up with.

I’ve begun on one of my daily walks near the house: An oak tree providing a natural arching frame over a field of rape, horizontal as the horizon.

Let’s go on a virtual journey to the Yorkshire Dales where in normal times, we love to walk: streams, rolling hills, drystone walls, snaking ahead of us on our path.

Angram Reservoir, leading the eye to the viaduct at the back of the picture

A drystone wall near Grassington picks out our route.

More scenery on the moors above Grassington.

And at our nearby nature reserve, Nosterfield, brambles frame the local landscape in the autumn.

Lastly, let’s make a trip to Gateshead, and look at the Millennium Bridge framing the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.

2020 Photo Challenge #17

Snapshot Saturday: Reflecting in Gateshead

Reflections seem generally to be below us – in water.

The Baltic, imperfectly reflected in the waters of the Tyne.

Or to the side of us – in plate glass windows.

Sage Gateshead, reflects multiple images of the Newcastle townscape on the other side of the Tyne.

So I was rather taken by these reflections of visitors to the Baltic Centre in Gateshead. Above us.

Walking into the Baltic Centre, Gateshead.

‘Reflecting’ is this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge.

Snapshot Saturday: a Good Match for Newcastle and the River Tyne

The Millennium Bridge, looking along the Tyne towards the Sage concert hall and the Tyne Bridge.

We were in Newcastle last weekend, and we spent much of our time admiring the fine buildings of the city centre, and mooching about the Quayside. That Millennium Bridge! What a perfect match for its surroundings. It links the proud Victorian architecture of Newcastle with contemporary work housed in the Baltic Centre just on the Gateshead bank of the River Tyne. Its clean soaring parabola provides a perfect complement to the more long established city bridges.

‘The bridges over the Tyne between Newcastle and Gateshead are justifiably famous. They are not merely bridges, but icons for the North East. Over the years the single (Georgian) bridge existing in the early Victorian period has been joined by six others. First the High Level Bridge, giving the river its first railway crossing, then the Swing Bridge (replacing the Georgian bridge), and the first Redheugh Bridge, replaced twice, to be followed by the King Edward Bridge and the most famous of them all, the new Tyne Bridge. After many decades came the Queen Elizabeth Metro Bridge and finally, in 2001, the Gateshead Millennium Bridge opened to provide a stunning pedestrian and cycle link between the redeveloped quaysides on either side of the river. In the space of less than a mile seven bridges link Newcastle with Gateshead.’

From ‘Welcome to Bridges on the Tyne‘