Seville – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Perfect patterns

It’s been a busy week, and I’ve a feeling I shan’t be blogging again before Christmas, but I just had to have a go at posting a few photos for Ann-Christine’s Lens-Artists Challenge this week : Perfect Patterns. I’m going to let the images speak for themselves this time. We’ll have two galleries: man-made patterns, every one of them from Spain …

And now the natural world, not one of them from Spain, or indeed from outside the UK:

Click on any image to get its label: and only a label this time: no stories, no history, no nothing. Sorry!

The featured image is a ceiling in the Palau de la Musica, Barcelona.

Black Monday? Or Grey Monday? Or Out-and-About Monday?

It is a grey Monday outside. And Jude has invited us to celebrate grey and black in this month’s Life in Colour challenge. Let’s go on one of our mini-breaks and see what we can find. We’ll start in London:

We’re walking down the South Bank here. That’s the Oxo Tower in the distance.

Oh, but maybe London’s too obvious as a starting place. Let’s start from Gateshead instead, and join a group gazing out of the window from the Baltic Centre.

We’re off to Spain now. We’ll stop off in Seville. You may need a comfort break by now, so we’ll stop off at the public toilets in Plaza de España, and enjoy the reflections we can see in its glass walls.

Shadows from street lights as evening falls, but we get away in time to see the Alhambra in Granada illuminated at night – it’s the featured photo.

We’ll pop across the next day to see my daughter in Premià de Mar. It’s silhouettes and sunny shadows there.

This is only a mini-break. We’ll go home via Whitby and just have a stroll to the end of the pier. There are always cormorants there. And seagulls on the rooftops.

Time for home now. Goodnight!

Street art: a tour of Berlin, Spain, and ending up in England.

It was in Berlin that I first really discovered a love of Street Art. Maybe it’s because I got some background understanding by going out for the afternoon with Dave, of Alternative Berlin Tours. I learnt the difference between graffiti, street art, stickers and transfers, and something of the political anger and activism that can inform so much of it: particularly near the former Berlin Wall. This has now been re-invented as The East Side Gallery and I don’t show anything of that here because many of its images are so well known. Here are some examples we saw in Dave’s company, or exploring later on our own.

Having done Street Art Module One in Berlin, I was ready a year or so later to do Module Two in Valencia, It was here that I met an irrepressible type who peoples doorways and random bits of street furniture, painted by David de Limón.

Our tutor introduces us to *David de Limón*

And it was here too, as we once had in Seville, that we encountered street artists doing their day – or occasionally night – job.

Here are a few more:

I like the way that the windows become part of the fantasy here.

And here’s one just for Past Squares …

And we’ll have a whistle-stop tour of Spain and view a few more:

Catalan independence is always the story in Berga …

… whereas relaxing over a drink with a friend is more Seville’s style

Maybe this is my favourite image of all, a bit of fun created from damaged plasterwork in Seville:

Another Past Square for Becky, and worth another outing, I think.

Although – hang on – no. My real favourite has got to be in Manor House Gardens, Hither Green, because the artist appears to have designed this image with my granddaughter in mind.

With thanks to Patti for providing us with a chance to wander city streets this week in quest of images that amuse, provoke and stimulate us. It’s the perfect moment to join the Photographing Public Art Challenge too. As well as Monday Mural. All this and Past Squares and Monday Window too … This is taking multi-tasking to a new level.

The header image comes from the top floor of an apartment block in Málaga.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #170

Monday Mural

Monday Window

Past Squares

Photographing Public Art

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

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

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.

My Kind of View from My Kind of Window

It’s time for another Virtual Vacation, Let’s go to Seville, just for the day. If we pop into this bar, we can look through its window, and see for ourselves the view of la Giralda and the city centre which is currently reflected onto the outside of it. Which is kind of fun.

#Kinda Square

Monday Window

Vertically Challenged

It’s time for Jude’s 2020 Photo Challenge again, and this week, she’s asking us to focus on the vertical. It’s not surprising that I’m heading for cityscapes on the whole: though not entirely. I wanted to have something for #15 Squaretops too – so look out for a topsy-turvy image at the bottom of the post.

Here are two riverside skyscrapers: quite similar. But I like the way that in one – in Seville, on the Guadalquivir – the upward sweeping lines are emphasised by its reflection rippling on the waters beneath: and in the other – in London, on the Thames – it’s the contrast with the blocky cranes that does the job.

Then I chose a couple from Cádiz. Palm trees. In one the tall palms lead your eyes to the – rather small – moon, and in the other, two wayward palms making an impromptu arch contrast with the properly upright trees they’re next to.

Back in London, Greenwich actually, the standing figures echo the massed skyscrapers of modern 21st century London.

And I liked this shot from Warsaw. The vertical lines aren’t all that pronounced, but still lead you up to those precariously perched window cleaners.

Finally, an image (square of course) taken on the Leeds-Liverpool Canal near Gargrave. Have you noticed it’s upside down? Topsy turvy? That’s the water up above, and the trees and sky down below.

Reflections from Happier Times

Because almost the entire world is in the grip of one single event that is beginning to dominate every day life, I am using Reflections, this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge for a spot of escapism.

These photos encapsulate memories of moments in Spain: in Alicante; on the river Guadalquivir in Córdoba and Seville, and l’Albufera near Valencia.

Even if you can’t share these particular memories, I hope they may help you reflect on similar joyous moments in your own life.

Alicante.

l’Albufera.

Heron on the Guadalquivir, Córdoba.

Seville.

Lens Artists Photo Challenge #87: Reflections

Patterns Through the Window, on the Wall

Look out of that window. Who wants to go out unless they have to? Instead, I’m inside and cosy, seeing if I can find photos that fit Jude’s 2020 Photo Challenge for February, Patterns.

I decided to go with the built environment. I looked not for deliberately created architectural motifs, or applied ornamentation, but for reflections, distortion, or for other elements that weren’t intended as the main event. Except in one case, where reflection and baffling the eye was definitely the main story. Which one was that do you think?

Sightseeing in Granada by looking at, rather than through a window.

The new entrance to the V&A, London.

Glimpses of El Escorial, Seville, from the balustrades by its water features.

Garden at the Gasholder development, Kings Cross, London.

Reflections at Canary Wharf, London.

Office windows in Brussels, Belgium.

This challenge was provided by Jude, of Travel Words.

Spanish Views from Spanish Windows

This is my last post about Spain for a while, and it includes images from previous visits too. Browsing through my collection, I see that windows feature – a lot.

Views through, of, and reflected from windows; views through spaces that serve as windows; and finally, views of things outside windows (washing lines!) that have me imagining the lives lived behind them . You’ll see all of these here – mainly, but not exclusively from Barcelona.

But let’s start in Granada, at the Alhambra. This young woman was impossible to get out of shot, as she had to take a selfie from every angle. In the end, I decided to put her centre stage.

A real view from a real window: our go-to tourist attraction in Barcelona: the Modernista Hospital de Sant Pau.

I’m a sucker for reflecting windows. This high-end grocery store in Barcelona offered those reflections in bright light, as well as showing the goods on offer inside (this one’s for you, Becky)

More windows where it’s the reflections providing the views.

Barcelona.

Maritime Barcelona

Patient horses and their carriages wait by a public toilet window in Plaza de España, Seville.

And now it’s time for those washing lines.

Barcelona.

View from Casa Vicens, Barcelona.

A window, a balcony, washing: Vic.

Two contrasting views through not-a-window: in a garden in the Jewish quarter, Córdoba: and at El Clot-Aragó station, Barcelona.

Finally – this isn’t a view through a window at all. But who could resist viewing this window in Barcelona?

An entry for Lens Artist Challenge #79: ‘A window with a view’,

and #January Light.

Snapshot Saturday: Bridges towards the sights of Seville

We were in Seville two years ago. Just like every other tourist, we wanted history, the sights, tapas.

Torre del Oro

The gardens of Alcazar Palace.

On our walk from the station to our hotel, down narrow back streets, we discovered Seville has other less publicised art works. Almost every garage door that we passed had been decorated: graffiti style, country scenes, market scenes and cars, especially cars…..

A few however, bridged the gap between the narrow back streets of our first walk just beyond the city centre, and the discoveries we’d make in the next few days, by depicting views of a city we came to love in our short visit.

View of the Cathedral, la Giralda, and the bridge.

A more romantic view of Seville by night, looking across the river Guadalquivir towards the Puente de San Telmo and the Torre del Oro.

In response to this week’s WordPress challenge: ‘Bridge’