Skeins of silk in autumnal colours
CFFC,  Photographic techniques,  Themed galleries

Gallery: a tangled web

October 22, 2021 / 20 Comments

Oh what a tangled web we weave

When first we practice to deceive

Sir Walter Scott, Marmion

I am always on the look out for interesting details to capture with my camera. I find it fascinating when the everyday can be made to look beautiful or remarkable when only a small part is picked out by my lens.

Whenever I’m around boats or by the sea I look in particular for bits of chain or twisted rope. If the chains are rusty or the ropes covered in seaweed and lichen, so much the better.

When I started to pull these images together from my archive for Cee’s Twisted or Squiggly challenge other related themes started to emerge, such as weaving. I included some images of weavers from around the world in an earlier post, Using our hands, but I managed to find some additional ones to share here, with an emphasis more on the threads than the hands that work them.

Then I saw the shot that Teresa of My Camera and I had shared for this theme; and I remembered places where I had seen similarly tangled wires, so I decided to include them too!

And finally, how about some trees? I think their twisted branches are shown off best in black and white.

Photos taken between 2007 (Uzbekistan) and 2021 (Bushey Park)

20 Comments

    • Sarah Wilkie

      October 23, 2021 at 08:27 Reply

      The older photos here, e.g. Uzbekistan, were taken with a Fuji Finepix. But these days I favour a Panasonic Lumix. My main camera, used for most of these, is a FZ200 (a bridge camera). Some of the UK shots such as Ruislip Woods were taken on my smaller point and shoot Lumix, a TZ70. That’s pretty good but I don’t find I have so much control over the zoom and some other features, so I prefer the larger one for travelling and for ‘serious’ photography 🙂

  • Manja Maksimovič

    October 22, 2021 at 18:44 Reply

    I figure out that I better start following your current posts again and leave the ones I missed for sooner or later. I love your first gallery here so much! I’m always attracted to such views as well. Could just smell the scenes. The monkeys among the wires are quite powerful to see. I have never observed them in the “wild” (here they are in the city, it seems), and would be fascinated. I know, soon they would steal something from me or bite me, and that would end the magic spell.

    • Sarah Wilkie

      October 22, 2021 at 18:54 Reply

      Don’t worry about catching up Manja – or at least, save them until I go through a quiet patch (hopefully if we manage to go away next February!) Good to hear you share my love of such details by the sea 🙂 And yes, the monkeys live in the city and in all the cities and towns of India from what I saw. They scavenge from bins etc. We were woken early one morning in Bundi by such a clatter as the monkeys came through scattering metal cooking pots and so on!

  • Gradmama2011

    October 22, 2021 at 17:49 Reply

    Such wonderful photos! The first one, when maximized, reminds me a lot of a close up of loaves of bread…the twisted chain made me think of an elaborate braided loaf I made one time.

    I share your love of close-ups that reveal marvelous details that might otherwise remain invisible. I have many such pics of old trees that were destroyed when new owners took over my vacant parcel of land… fortunately I captured some of the insides of knot holes in trees and remarkable look-likes.

    For me its all in the details! I absolutely love your photos of far-off lands that I never got to visit. It makes me remember the thousands of photos of my own over the years, and now I’m itching to get out those slides and magnify some of them to see what “else” is there. In fact, I actually did convert several hudreds of old slides to digital last year myself….and I have tons of them to go.

    Please visit my work on my blog SOMETIMES if you are so inclined. https://mumbletymuse.com

    • Sarah Wilkie

      October 22, 2021 at 18:43 Reply

      Oh yes, I see what you mean about the braided loaf and the chain 🙂 And it’s nice to hear you’re another keen details photographer! I know what you mean about scanning those old slides. I’ve done quite a few myself but there are still mountains to be tackled. I’ve used some in a few blog posts if you’re interested, e.g. from our trip to Syria back when such things were possible.

      I’ve indeed already checked out your blog and started following. I enjoyed meeting your cat Sister, and I’m looking forward to seeing further posts 🙂

      • Gradmama2011

        October 23, 2021 at 15:44 Reply

        I was able to convert quite a lot of my slides to digital, and I need to get back on the task. The converter I have is a stack loader, but that doesn’t really work that well, but the good thing is that it was quality time spent looking at the individual slides…some I haven’t looked at in years.

        Back in the day I worked as a newspaper reporter and features writer, and my husband was my unofficial photographer on feature trips and such. I have some good stuff (my opinion, of course) that needs to see the light of day.

        I have good intentions, but mundane stuff like clearing the garage so I can get my car in for the winter…and replacing my refrigerator…not to even mention cleaning house. I’m too old to want to waste time on that kind of thing, and who cares anyway? 🙂

        Thanks for looking at my site…I’ve been on since 2011, pretty active except during our recent hideous political aberration when I sulked a lot.

        • Sarah Wilkie

          October 23, 2021 at 19:28 Reply

          I’m quite new to blogging (a pandemic project!) but not to online communities, as I was very active on Virtual Tourist, a travellers’ community, until the website was closed down in 2017. I still have loads of friends from that time and am enjoying ‘meeting’ new people now via my blog 🙂

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