Lens Artist Challenge – From Pyrenees to Pennines

‘I’m Singing in the Rain, Just Singing in the Rain …’

Though I love little better than having a good book to read, amassing favourite quotations in my battered and becoming-unfit-for-purpose brain isn’t something that comes naturally. So Anne-Christine’s Lens Artist Photo Challenge this week – Pick a Favourite Quote and Illustrate it – was a challenge indeed.

Then a silly ditty my children and I enjoyed popped into my head – well, it had been raining all day, and how.

The rain it raineth every day
upon the just and unjust fellah.
But more upon the just, because ...
the unjust hath the just's umbrella

And here they are, those (stolen?) umbrellas

‘A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.’ — *Robert Frost*. Is this an umbrella bank, I wonder?

Umbrellas sometimes simply aren’t enough …

‘The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain’. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Somtimes it’s best to have a sheet of glass between you and the rain.

‘Après moi, le déluge’ – Often attributed to Louis XV or Madame de Pompadour. Well, we WERE on our way to France at the time.

We who live in God’s Own Country can only dream of a rain free week …

‘When others try to rain on your dreams, carry an umbrella and carry on’ — Unknown

But then after, there’s a rainbow …

‘The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain’. Dolly Parton

‘The nicest thing about the rain is that it always stops. Eventually’.

Eeyore, in AA Milne’s Winnie the Pooh

PS. I’ve sneaked in a sixth photo, against instructions, as my header photo. With no quotation attached to it, I hope it won’t count.

Those Lucky Shots

You know the sort of day. When things just go right. When, perhaps unexpectedly, you have your camera with you just when one of the flighty, nervy Neighbourhood Squirrels is posing nicely, as ours was one day last week.

When, camera in hand, you manage to point-and-shoot at just the right moment. These images come from a long-past day in the Farne Islands when the Arctic Terns, frantic to protect their young, wheeled and dive-bombed overhead, giving chance after chance for action-packed shots even to a strictly amateur type like me. We had no idea where their nests and babies were and certainly weren’t going to go looking.

There were those red squirrels in Málaga, who managed to forget me for just long enough for me to whip my camera out …

Or that heron in Córdoba. It wasn’t so much the heron I was afraid of losing, as this collage of evening light.

Sofia, of Photographias fame wants us to showcase those moments for this week’s Lens Artists Challenge: Lucky Shot. Thanks Sofia, for helping us remember those joyful lucky seconds.

A Lake, the Sea, a River

Patti invites us, in this weeks Lens-Artists Challenge, to consider the shots we take – those which have a foreground – perhaps introducing the scene; middle ground – perhaps what the shot is ‘about’; and background, setting the shot in its context, and rounding our ‘story’ off.

I’ve chosen three watery shots. The first, the featured photo, is so freighted with memories of a calm, peaceful November evening at l’Albufera, Valencia, full of peace and joy that I can’t really judge it on its merits. I like the swell of the rippling water in the foreground. The middle ground merely has a bird (I can’t any longer remember what kind) pausing on that pole: for me providing a little context. And the background is surely that dramatic evening sky?

My second is also an evening shot: a beachside walk in my daughter’s home town in Spain. There are seashore strollers silhouetted in the foreground. The Mediterranean itself provides middle-ground context, with no action whatsoever. And there’s Barcelona in the background. Or is Barcelona part of the middle ground, with the sunset providing the backdrop?

I come closer to home for my last shot, to Knaresborough. The raven perching on the wall is a surprising visitor to the photo, perhaps acting as compère, describing the scene behind: the quiet River Nidd and riverside houses. Behind is the commanding viaduct. Is this background feature actually the dominant part of the image? Three sides of the shot are framed by trees, giving a slightly bucolic air to this urban scene.

This was an interesting challenge, Patti. I think that in some ways the techniques you describe start to become more instinctive the more time one spends with camera in hand. But it’s good consciously to revisit them and think about them anew. But looking out of the window at the rain, I think I may give photography a miss this weekend!

Reflections on Phone Photography

I told Tina in no uncertain terms that I wouldn’t be joining in her Lens-Artists Challenge: Phone Photography, as my antique bargain-basement phone and I weren’t up to the job. She wasn’t having that, so I went and had a trawl.

And discovered that reflections seemed to come up as a theme that had worked quite well on days when I hadn’t got a camera to hand.

These were the first two I came across, both from Cosmo-Caixa Science Museum in Barcelona.

The magnificent aquarium set in a would-be South American rainforest.

Still in Spain, we’ll pop to Valencia and its ancient Gothic bridge above the Turia Gardens.

And now we’ll return to England, and the Leeds-Liverpool Canal at Gargrave, where one day, this was the scene we saw as we walked under a bridge there.

And finally, a little gallery of other watery local photos- and that includes my header image too.

Thanks Tina. I’m glad you made me dig these out. Perhaps my phone doesn’t do so badly after all …. After all, that last photo got me second place in a public vote at Masham Sheep Fair the other year (I got first place too, but that wasn’t a reflection shot).

Shadowed

A quick look at shadows, the enigmatic feelings of mystery they can sometimes produce.

The featured photo shows the early morning sun, somewhere near here. No mystery perhaps. More a feeling of unknown promise in the day ahead. And below, this quiet photo from Laberint d’Horta in Barcelona reminds me of a morning I spent there discovering , hidden amongst the trees, apparently ancient statuary.

Two urban photos: one from the once gritty underside of Leeds, suggesting its dirty and industrial past, the other from a up-to-the-minute quarter of Barcelona. I like the hard-to-decipher shadows on the textured overhanging roof.

And lastly, another from canal-side Leeds. Someone should write a story about this young woman sitting contemplatively beneath the shadows of the trees.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness …

… and for John, the week’s Lens-Artists Challenge host. He’s chosen ‘Shadowed’.

‘No Bird Soars Too High if He Soars with His Own Wings’

It was William Blake who said that. And as this week’s Lens Artists Challenge, hosted by Beth is all about Wings, I thought I’d focus on birds.

And they’d better be flying, to illustrate William Blake’s thoughts. Here’s an Arctic Tern. There’s another as the featured photo.

Here’s an egret landing. It caught me unawares, so not the whole of its wings made it into the image.

But most of my shots will feature birds at rest – all the better to demonstrate their plumage. Although here is a cormorant with wings extended. Not flying though.

Here are some of the rest. These images were taken at a demonstration at Thorpe Perrow, and while I know the first one is a ferruginous hawk, I didn’t note the owl names. Can anybody help?