Life in Colour

A Whiter Shade of White?

Blogging challenges

Casting around for suitable ideas for Jude’s Life in Colour – White – challenge, I remembered a post I’d written two years ago. Not only does it work for Jude (up to a point) but it fits the bill for Fandango’s Flashback Friday. Here it is:

IDENTICAL?

I’ve never been much good at twiddling with the controls on my camera.  I even joined a photography course recently, in an effort to get to grips with apertures, shutter speeds and ISO controls.  But it just made my head hurt, and I reverted to ‘Automatic’ as my default modus operandi.  I decided I’m a snaphot-ist, not a photographer.

Yesterday however, just for a bit of fun, and having an hour to spare, I turned to the ‘palette’ settings and took an identical shot using every single one. Though I forgot to take one on ‘Automatic’, so the tale isn’t quite complete. Can’t do it now. This little twig of blossom (cherry?), a chance discovery found in the road, wilted in the night.

Which do you like best?  As ever, click on any image to see it full size.  They’re in strict alphabetical order – no favouritism here.

Bleach by-pass
  • Cross process
  • Dynamic monochrome
  • Expressive
  • Fantasy
  • High-dynamic
  • High key
  • Impressive -art
  • Low-key
  • Miniature effect
  • Monochrome
  • Old-days
  • One point colour

  • Retro
  • Rough monochrome
  • Sepia
  • Silky-monochrome
  • Soft-focus
  • Star-filter
  • Sunshine
  • Toy-effect
  • Toy-pop

Three posts in three days. That’s a bit much. But I’ve pushed out all my last thoughts before taking a blogging break. I just might post the odd thing – such as Six Degrees of Separation at the start of next month – but so total will be my break that – sorry – I may not even read your offerings, fellow bloggers.

Lilac and clematis, all at once

Blogging challenges, Gardens

Last week, I showed you wisteria on the front of the house. Today, we’ll sneak into the walled garden and look at the clematis framing one of the windows in our neighbour’s house – there it is in the featured photo. And here’s the lilac, just coming out:

And here’s the view from the kitchen window – the lilac’s still budded, but soon it will be fully out – for one week only – before becoming once more a rather unremarkable shrub.

I may produce more lilac for Jude’s Life in Colour: two shades of purple to go at in just a few days. But I promised another window view for Ludwig’s Monday Window. So here we are.

Wisteria Windows

Blogging challenges, Gardens

This is the time of year when the outside of our house, and the one to which we’re attached deck themselves in scented clouds of wisteria.

There’s lilac below the kitchen window: that’ll bloom very soon: already the tightly furled buds are loosening and hinting at the soft mauves and purples that will emerge. That’ll be for next week then.

Life in Colour #18

Monday Window

Spring Yellows, from Aconites to Buttercups

Ariège, Blogging challenges, North Yorkshire

So many of our favourite springtime flowers have cheerful sunny faces., beginning in January with aconites, then going via celandines, daffodils, marsh marigolds, primroses, dandelions and cowslips to glorious meadows of buttercups in June. Here are just a few of them.

I can’t end the post though, without reminding myself of the crowds, the hosts of daffodils in the woodland slopes of the Pyrenees, nearby to where we lived in France. The French don’t have the same love affair with the daffodil that we have here in England, but this was a spectacle I’ve never seen bettered anywhere.

Life in Colour

Six Word Saturday

‘How Wonderful Yellow is. It Stands for the Sun’. part Two

Blogging challenges, France, Yorkshire

This is the post that illustrates Van Gogh’s words, rather than my last one. We’ll showcase all the wonderfully optimistic flowers of spring next time. Let’s just pass directly to summer, and enjoy the over-pungent fields of rape; the gorse rollicking over the coastal parts of the Cleveland Way in Yorkshire; a painted lady enjoying summer yellow; fields of sunflowers in France, forever turning their faces to the sun; and finally, yellow’s final fling – harvest season. Just before the bad weather sets in – look at that last foreboding image. Luckily, Jude provides the opportunity for us to hunt down all our yellow-rich images, in her challenge Life in Colour.

Click on any image to view it full size.

‘How wonderful yellow is. It stands for the sun’

Blogging challenges, England, India, Spain

At the moment, we all need the glow, the zing that a good splash of yellow can provide. Luckily, Jude has provided the perfect opportunity for us to hunt down all our yellow-rich images, in her challenge Life in Colour. Let’s have an injection of gutsy, vibrant lemon, amber and gold alongside our long awaited Covid vaccines.

I’d thought of showing those springtime flowers we all love – aconites, daffodils, primrose, tulips and kingcups. But maybe I’ll save those for another day. Here’s a complete hotch-potch of yellows to cheer up a day which, here at least is thoroughly and dismally grey.

  • The sign that greets me whenever I leave the house
  • A shop and its reflections in Granada
  • My first friend in Bangalore: the rickshaw driver who took me on a tour of the city
  • William, obligingly wearing yellow, at Newby Hall.
  • Advance guard at Le Tour de Yorkshire
  • A puppet at the Museo del Titere, Cádiz
  • A pinted door in Valencia.
  • A back street in Seville.
  • Garage door in Seville.
  • Another Seville door
  • Valencia
  • A Seville building in need of a make-over gets one …

To view any image full size. just click on it. The quotation of the post title is by Vincent Van Gogh. No wonder he liked sunflowers. And the header photo shows one word from another quotation. Wander round the St. Paul’s area of London and you’ll eventually uncover the whole sentence, from Virginia Woolf’s novel, Jacob’s Room: ‘What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?‘ What indeed? In this area of London, enough to fill an entire guide book.

A superabundance of brown birds

Blogging challenges, Wildlife

I seem to have quite a supply of brown birds in my archive, which up until now, I haven’t shared. Here goes:

An obliging robin, seen just too late to turn up on a Christmas card. He’s not entirely brown, but he’s such a superb little chap, that I hope you’ll let him off.

The rest aren’t square. But they are brown, so Jude can have them for her Life in Colour Challenge.

  • A greylag goose on our village pond.
  • This week’s mystery guest. Please help.
  • A parakeet in Málaga
  • House sparrows in Berlin
  • A godwit at Slimbridge.
  • A song thrush in our garden in spring.
  • A mallard, RSPB Saltholme
  • A sad little nestling, probably pheasant.
  • A chaffinch at Scar House Reservoir, Yorkshire

Click on any image to see it in it entirety, full size, and without its being obliterated by captions.

P.S. My mystery bird has now been identified by the wonderful Vogelsnipser, whose blog should be on the list of anyone who enjoys birds. His pictures are fantastic. Here’s what he says: ‘The bird on your photo is a stonechat (saxicola torquatus). males in early-year splendor dress.’

Square Up