DP photo challenge: door

some doors in Middelburgh, Zeeland, Holland

Do you share my passion for doors? I’m glad I’m not the only one. Here are some more.

dp weekly photo challenge: minimalist

birds on a wire in Sri Lanka (swallows)

Sharing with other minimalists

Daily Post: extra, extra

What makes a photo have that “extra” something? is it because the subject matter is unusual or it just sticks out from everything else around it? Maybe it’s “extra” because it has a special meaning for you.

this is a parrot plant

only the Japanese could come up with the idea of putting stencils over fruit so that an imprint appears on the fruit when it’s fully grown

Polly

Sharing with the Daily Post

Daily Post weekly photo challenge: letters

The Daily Post’s weekly challenge this week is LETTERS
As someone who loves numbers, letters and typography, this is just up my street!

inscription on the fountain of Hasan Kavizade Hüseyin Efendi in Kyrenia, northern Cyprus

the monument at the border crossing in Nicosia, Cyprus. Unfortunately I don’t know what the writing signifies

writing on the wall in Barcelona

Barcelona

Bristol

Sandwich, UK

ancient sanscrit script, Cambodia

sacred scripts written on palm leaves, Cambodia

DP weekly photo challenge: object

The Daily Post’s weekly photograph challenge this week is OBJECT.

“Our photographs tell stories, big and small. Some of our images are landscapes, offering wide and sweeping views of a scene; these pictures might tell the tales of an entire city, or a tapestry of stories of many people. Some photographs, like portraits, focus on individuals, while still-life moments capture the beauty (and often treasured stories) of belongings and found objects.

In this week’s challenge, I’d like you to use one tangible object as both your inspiration and subject. It can be the obvious focal point of your shot — like my husband’s juggling ball above, snapped on a beach on the north shore of Kauai. Or you can get creative and find other ways to feature your object — the only requirement is it must be somewhere in your frame.”

The recent windy weather has washed ashore a mass of flotsam and jetsam – seaweed by the mountain, cuttlefish bones, dead squid, dead fish and dead jelly fish, the largest of which was the size of a dinner plate,

together with the usual assortment of glass and plastic junk to which colonies of barnacles have attached themselves: beer bottles, plastic cigarette lighters, plastic bottles and an assortment of shoes.

Barnacles have attached themselves to natural detritus as well: bits of rope, palm leaves, coconuts, and this fruit.

on my return the fruit had been kicked open to reveal its internal structure

Does anyone know what tree it comes from? It’s about the size of a football.

daily post: juxtaposition

The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge is ‘juxtaposition’.

A juxtaposition is “the act of placing things side by side, especially for the purpose of comparison or contrast”

This chapel is a specially created installation in the Museum of Modern Art (Mudam) in Luxembourg.

If you look very carefully you will see that the images that make up the stained glass windows are x-rays of parts of the human body.

Daily post: texture

The Daily Post set us this challenge: Textures are everywhere: The rough edges of a stone wall. The smooth innocence of a baby’s cheek. The sense of touch brings back memories for us. What texture is particularly evocative to you?

Photographers, artists, poets: show us TEXTURE.

all photos were taken in Thailand last year

Weekly photo challenge: eerie

We left Amritsar early in the morning to drive to New Delhi and for over an hour drove through thick fog. The Indian countryside is uncharted territory at the best of times but in this half light it was distinctly eerie.

What’s eerie for you?

Daily Post: bookworm and books

Response to the Daily Post’s prompt ‘bookworm’ of 14.09.2013

bookworm – Grab the nearest book. Open it and go to the tenth word. Do a Google Image Search of the word. Write about what the image brings to mind.

I chanced upon a book in French and the word was rêve (dream). As I counted out to the tenth word I couldn’t help reading the first sentence; it was about the fulfillment of the author’s dream, that of purchasing a house. As soon as I read it I forgot about ‘Googling’ the word to find an image as that sentence had already evoked memories of a dream.

Twenty years ago we were house hunting for our own dream too, in France, as it happens. Tired of living in the UK, we wanted to move somewhere with a better climate, a better standard of living, and one where food was considered important and worth taking time to prepare and eat according to the precepts of the Slow Food movement.

We’d abandoned the idea of living in Spain – land registry laws were non-existent at the time, there was no logic to the pricing of properties for sale and life there just seemed too chaotic. Besides, I didn’t like the odd (to us) late eating hours.

In France Paris or rather some Parisians made it clear that we weren’t wanted there either so we went south. We spent a couple of holidays driving around different areas, marking each area on a map into a grid so that we covered it systematically. Then we arrived in Provence.

In a provincial town about 50km from Avignon we wandered around, stopped for a cup of coffee and idly looked in the windows of some estate agencies. We thought we would go and have a look at some of the properties. We weren’t entirely sure what we were looking for – a pied à terre (a temporary base) or somewhere more permanent. We visited hamlets where the houses were all joined at the hip (no privacy) but had an attractive fountain. We climbed down into the dusty depths of old village houses with cellars and beautiful vaulted ceilings which were crumbling into disrepair. Other places we could have moved into straightaway but none of them had a garden or off-the-road parking. Finally we came across an advertisement for an old property in need of some work. Of course, in the best traditions, when we saw it we suffered the invariable ‘coup de coeur’ (instant falling in love). We imagined ourselves sitting under the lime tree in the garden enjoying wonderful food with the most beautiful view in front of us, stretching as far as the eye could see.

After some wrangling with the owner we bought the place and over the years carried out various improvements. The first thing we did was construct a swimming pool on the lowest terrace. It’s 70km to the coast and we thought we would need respite in the pool in the heat of the summer while we carried out other building work. Like the main character in Marcel Pagnol’s novel ‘Jean de Florette’ (made into the film of the same name starring Gerard Depardieu) we had problems with the natives over – you guessed it – water. In our absence water was being stolen in vast quantities and we had to pay the bill. We were also reported to the authorities for supposedly using black labour for the construction of our swimming pool. Although advised by our neighbours to the contrary, we did everything by the book knowing full well that as foreigners we would receive no mercy should we fall foul of the law.

Next we knocked down the chicken house and built a pool house in its place. We dreamed of having a sign painted, along the lines of an English pub sign, depicting ‘the chicken shack under the lime tree’ as the place became affectionately known. We dreamed of running a B&B and planned to convert the old, falling-down-place-without-foundations-and-a-rapidly-collapsing roof into something more attractive and habitable, with masses of potted geraniums in the area in front of the house where breakfast could be taken. But, like many dreams, this one foundered when it became clear that my husband’s health would not allow us to run a B&B with all the hard work and maintenance that would entail. So we took a step back. Now we use it for the occasional holiday, as do close friends of ours, and one day in the future we hope it will have a new owner whose own dreams for the place will be fulfilled.

Photographers: show us BOOKS

old book for sale in a flea market in Arles

illustrated manuscript/book in Pisa’s Museo dell’Opera

a page from a book of music in the same museum

a book spine poem

WP weekly photo challenge: sea

What does sea mean to you? images of peaceful beaches or waves crashing on the beach in a winter storm? people messing around in boats or earning their living from the sea?

Here are some sea shots taken in Turkey

flamingoes in a sea-fed estuary

crab catching in the Dalayan delta

and some in Lynmouth, UK

the incoming tide soon fills the harbour

Do you think the sea is different in different countries? click here to see other people’s sea