Texture – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Textured Monochrome

This week for the Lens-Artist Challenge, John invites us to focus on the tools we consider when taking photographs: Shape, Form, Texture, and Light.

Sarah of Travel with Me fame (You don’t follow her? Why not?) decided to focus on texture alone in her role as Guest Presenter for Leanne’s Monochrome Madness . I’ve decided to follow her excellent example.

I often like to use monochrome to ‘describe’ texture. It seems to highlight shape, form and – er- yes, texture to advantage, with no colour to distract the eye.

In fact my featured photo of nearby Brimham Rocks is changed very little by the use of monochrome. The sky was a bright azure blue that day, with whiteish clouds. Realistically, grey is so much more authentic this year.

Let’s stay with the natural world, and go to Mossyard Bay in Dumfries and Galloway, to inspect the rocks there, and a sheltered pool as the tide goes out.

… and a pool receding as the tide recedes

We’ll stay by the sea, but in Arenys de Mar in Spain this time. A rusting chain, a decaying lump of concrete in the fishing port.

A tired chain in an even more exhausted lump of concrete, Arenys de Mar

More man-made creations, battered by wind and weather. A has-been saint awaits repair in the stone mason’s yard at Rheims Cathedral.

And here’s a characterful shuttered window that’s lived a long life in a village in the Hérault, France.

An English country garden, complete with bee.

… an icy puddle …

And let’s leave you with that most Yorkshire of animals, a sheep: happy to show off a magnificent fleece, magnificent horns.

A Tarmacadamed Road? Or a Canvas for a Picture?

This week, Jude’s Photo Challenge invites us to look at texture again – but as the subject for our photographs, the focus of our interest.

I took my camera out for a walk (while I still can …). Several ideas presented themselves, but nothing quite worked. Back to the archive.

I’ve chosen some shots taken on common-or-garden asphalt roads. Those roads are not themselves the subject, but they provide a grainy, characterful canvas. Imagine those same shadows projected onto a large sheet of smooth white paper. I think they’d be less interesting.

Three are taken on a small road near here, edged with a dry stone wall. One was frosty road in January. One was taken at Masham Sheep Fair, with not a sheep in sight. One is not a road, but a wall. It’s the walkers who are on the path.

2020 Photo Challenge#11

Roughly the Same Walk as Last Week …

… except the same walk is never the same walk. Last week, Chris and I walked from Lofthouse to Ramsgill to Middlesmoor and back to Lofthouse. On Sunday, we did the route again, joined by eight friends from our walking group.

It was less sunny. It was more muddy. The intervening week had been largely dry and breezy: but before the walk, it had rained all night. It was a day to pick our way carefully through mud, artfully stamped with the outlines of sheep hooves, tractor tyres and farmers’ boots.