In the last few years, with the batterings the world has taken – Covid, war in Ukraine, prices spiralling – flowers have been among the constants that have kept many people’s spirits up. The pandemic in particular reminded many of us to value the little pleasures of life, and what gives more pleasure for its size than a flower?
-
-
Often I observe some with a phone or camera taking a single photo of a sight and moving on, in a hurry to reach the next. In the pre-digital days when every picture taken meant a hit to your wallet, that made some sense. Today it strikes me as strange, but then I am rarely happy with my first shot of anything!
-
According to Horace, 'A picture is a poem without words'. That would seem to be a good motto for a photography blog. But I like to write (and talk!) almost as much as I like to take photos. So my posts are usually a mix of the two, and I leave my readers to decide whether the pictures or the text say the most.
-
There is a theme emerging in these monthly round-ups, a theme of bookends! I’ve already pointed out that while July was bookended by happy gatherings of family and friends, August was similarly bookended with funerals. And now we come to September and we are back to happier bookends: city breaks.
-
Isn’t every outing with a camera a kind of treasure hunt? Looking all around you as you walk/drive/ride for any opportunity to take a photo, just as a treasure hunter is alert to any sign that what they seek lies just underfoot.
-
We talk about someone we consider to be too old as being ‘over the hill’, but who decides how old is too old? Do we too easily dismiss the elderly among us as being past it? Do we fail to recognise that their journeys up that hill may mean that they have a lot to teach us about the paths that we too must follow?
-
How do you photograph opposites? You can combine them in a single photo, as in the black and white zebras above. Or you can pair photos to show two extremes.
-
It is a long while since I did a colour challenge, but I love the excuse they give me to rummage through my archives. So I’ve pulled together a selection for Terri’s Sunday Stills challenge this week. Her chosen colour is apricot, which I found a little hard to pin down. Is it orange? Is it pink? Is it maybe peach?
-
How many different kinds of transportation can you think of? The obvious include bikes, cars, planes, trains, boats. Of course our own two feet are a means of transport. Then there are the animals pressed into service such as horses, camels and donkeys. All over the world people make different transport choices depending on local customs and resources.
-
One thing I learned during the pandemic was that it is possible to have a good time holidaying in my own country. With travel abroad impossible we turned to UK options and managed to have several lovely short trips in the spaces between lockdowns. And of course like everyone, we explored our immediate area more thoroughly than in the past, seeking out places we’d never previously visited or finding new surprises in old haunts.
