DP weekly photo challenge: landscape

Early in 2013 we spent a month touring India, most of the time in Rajasthan. The section of the journey between Udaipur and the Kumbalgarh fortress and thence to Ranakpur was the most special for me, for here we passed through a land that time seemed to have forgotten. Water was drawn up from wells by oxen and women collected  and carried water in pots that they carried on their heads. We passed arid hills covered with thorn bushes, lowland areas in the river valleys bright green with early crops and here and there splashes of colour from the saris of the women working in the fields.

 

 

 

 

Landscape

dp weekly photo challenge: minimalist

birds on a wire in Sri Lanka (swallows)

Sharing with other minimalists

weekly photo challenge: descent

Even if we didn’t manage to descend to the bottom of St Patrick’s well in Orvieto, Italy my glasses did. I leaned out to take a photo looking down the well and my camera jogged against my glasses knocking them off. I watched, horrified, as they bounced off the window ledge and then down into the void over 100 metres below…. We were at the beginning of our day’s outing and still had places to go. To make matters worse on our return to the hotel, when I put my spare pair of glasses on one of the lenses fell out of its frame. It was a public holiday just before a weekend and it was 3 days before I could get them repaired. Of such joys is life made!

the cascate delle marmore at nearby Terni

the chairlift down to Gubbio

Cappadocia

descent from Schafberg, Austria

When I was looking for suitable images for this challenge, although I found lots looking up various staircases, I had none looking down. I wonder why that is. Note to self – must take the occasional shot looking down a staircase

How did you interpret this week’s challenge?

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: split second stories

Photographs can speak to us in a way that words can’t and can convey a message in a split second.

What would you try to capture in a split second story? action or stillness? See other split second stories here.

Daily Post weekly photo challenge: work of art

This week’s challenge by the Daily Post was to share a photo of something that is a work of art to us. “It could be some actual “art,” like a painting by your grandmother or the misshapen but perfect clay sculpture your child brought home from kindergarden, or something most people wouldn’t consider beautiful at all, but that has meaning to you. The important thing is that it’s art in your eyes”.

sculpture using flattened bottle tops

costumes worn by one of the acts participating in the Streetart Animation festival in Luxembourg in 2013

part of a visual/sound installation called Harmonic Fields, which took place on Portland Bill, UK, in 2012

one of the panels inside Watts chapel, designed and decorated by Mary Fraser-Tyler (Arts and Crafts Movement), with the assistance of nearly every village living in Compton

In 2013 Luxembourg hosted an Elephant Parade. This elephant was painted by a friend of ours, Jeanette Bremin, to commemorate her daughter

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

weekly photo challenge: on top

Sharing with the Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge

weekly photo challenge: street life and travel photo Monday

Weekly photo challenge: street life

Many people living in the big cities in Vietnam, like Hanoi, don’t have much living space and what little they do have may quite often be shared with other families so much of their life is, of necessity, spent on the street. Large numbers of the population work in various ways to feed the rest (kitchens as we know them in the Western world don’t exist as such there). It’s the same in Thailand too. Meals are eaten on the hoof or sitting on one of the ubiquitous minuscule red or blue plastic stools (a Vietnamese speciality).

Inspired by Jon Sanwell’s photos of people in Vietnam I thought I would try my hand at taking some shots in black and white. Please bear in mind these are my first attempts at shooting in black and white.

On the whole I prefer colour photos, especially as Hanoi was a colourful place even in the cold, misty, drizzly conditions we encountered there. So here are a few in colour. I will be posting more photos of our trip over the next few weeks.

one of the very few cats we saw in Vietnam

Did I mention that there are bikes everywhere?

Our last night in Hanoi – even St Patrick got in on the act!

Which do you prefer – black and white or colour?

Also linking up with Travel Photo Mondays no. 38

weekly photo challenge: reflections

Guest blogger Ben chose the theme of reflections this week: It could be a person who helps you see things clearly, a place you go to collect your thoughts, or an object that reminds you of your achievements. You could also go for something more literal, like a reflection in water.”

A literal interpretation of the theme: reflections in a pool in the gardens of the Chateau de Pizay in southern France

part of the interior of Wells cathedral, UK

and Glastonbury abbey, UK, both beautiful places for reflection

Reflections