So on Friday, I went along with friends from Masham Photographic Club to be an unashamed paparazza. The atmosphere was upbeat and friendly, and those who’d gone to so much trouble to find their costumes and dress up actively sought out opportunities to have their picture taken. There was even a baby … and the oldest were well into their eighties. I felt distinctly underdessed in my workaday trousers and jacket.
An excellent day was had by all: especially after a large plate of tasty fish and chips.
For this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge, Egidio asks us to consider compositions relying on two rectangles for their success. So I thought I’d offer a featured photo with lots of rectangles: the basic two, with sky at the top and earth at the bottom, and then, confusingly, a town square entirely tricked out in … squares. Emily and her Catalan family are looking out to sea.
I thought I’d include a couple more using this simplest of devices. The first from my beloved l’Albufera, which I’ve written about before – here (among several others).
And here’s another, from Lake Prespa in Greece, where the water reflects the sky above: the lower rectangle a pleasing echo of the upper.
And here’s one closer to home, in Whitby, a cormorant posing at the end of the pier.
A cormorant on railings at the end of the pier, Whitby, North Yorkshire.
Let’s stay beside the water: one a ferry across to Spain, spying on my fellow-passengers. At the Baltic Gateshead, spying on my fellow River Tyne enthusiasts, and in London, over looking the South Bank.
And finally we’ll whizz over to Barcelona, and wander round El Clot, and then Gràcia, where this view has two rectangles and includes any number of smaller ones, and the daily washing line.
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.
Plaza de España, Seville
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.
Shadows in Seville
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.
It’s lockdown again. Best not travel too far for our day out: we’ll whizz round North Yorkshire, and send a few postcards, old style, in black and white.
Annoyingly, I don’t seem able to label these photos, but there are clues in the tags. But – they’re all in North Yorkshire…
You’ll know that we waved ‘Goodbye’ to Emily this week. She’s arrived in South Korea, jet-lagged and exhausted, but not so much that she can’t send snippets of up-beat information about her new life as Emily-in-Busan.
While she was with us, Emily-in-Barcelona briefly became Emily-in-London, Emily-in-Bolton, and Emily-in-Yorkshire. And while she was with us, Boyfriend-from-Barcelona came to visit. What should we show someone from a vibrantly busy city, one of whose attractions is several kilometres of golden, sunny, sandy beaches? Well, on a frosty, gusty February day, with more than a threat of snow in the air, what could be better than a day beside the seaside?
Whitby: the view anyone who’s been there would recognise.
Whitby seemed to fit the bill. Picturesque fishermen’s cottages huddled round the quay. A clutter of narrow cobbled shopping lanes – a tourist mecca to rival Las Ramblas. A sandy beach with donkey-rides, and the chance to find fossil remains etched into the cliffs or a morsel of jet washing about on the sands. A ruined Benedictine Abbey high above the town, the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’, and the focus of a twice-yearly Goth music festival. And fish and chips. Always fish and chips at an English seaside destination. Emily and Miquel explored the lot.
Whitby Abbey.
Whitby seen from St. Mary’s Church, next to the Abbey.
The old town.
The abbey and church seen from a ginnel.
The beach.
The beach.
The beach – again.
A close view of those cliffs.
One of the hundreds of gulls, thousands of gulls, reasy to steal your fish and chips with no warning.
And just before we left … a little bit of rainbow.
And Miquel, windblown and chilled to his fingertips, declared that it had been a fine day out, with the added bonus of being firmly inside the car when we journeyed home across the North York Moors as the snow began to fall.
Best to be back in the car when the weather’s like this.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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