This week’s Monochrome Madness is being hosted by the lovely Margaret from From Pyrenees to Pennines and her chosen theme is Music. I wondered whether I had any related photos as it is a genre I don’t usually photograph, but I was surprised by what I could find. The first one taken in Victoria Falls in December 2000 was memorable by its location and also the fact that these guys are actually blind.
Blind Street Performers, Victoria Falls
I seem to be fond of drummers though don’t let my OH hear me say that.
Barcelona drummersDrummers in Chinese New Year Parade, San FranciscoDrumming the beat at the Brolly Parade, Kirkcudbright Jazz Festival
Brass instruments also at the Kirkcudbright Brolly Parade (also the feature image is from that event)
A music ensemble on Millennium Green, Ludlow during the Arts festivalPractising in Norwich Cathedral
Music score
A Welsh organ
My singer-songwriter OH playing at the St Just Lafrowda festival in 2023
And there is nothing better than listening to music than dancing to it!
There hasn’t been an awful lot of travelling for this blog in recent years and whilst stuck at home during the dreadful wet weather I have been sorting through my photos. A very slow task! But I realised how many photos have never made it onto a blog post, so my idea for this year (2024) is to pick out some of my unused images for a journey around the world.
We’ll begin with this very apt photo of a shoe shop in Barcelona. Though I think you’d need rather longer boots to cope with our rainfall!
Sofia’s challenge for us this week is all about colour. Specifically primary colours: red, yellow and blue. BUT like many things in the world, the issue of what are primary colours has become more complex. Most of us would have learned when painting at school that RYB (Red, Yellow and Blue) are THE primary colours, but now we have to take into consideration the way light blends colour for instance the RGB colour model, which has red, green, and blue as your primary colours, and is used with things like television screens and computer images. Then there is the CMYK model which includes cyan, magenta, yellow, as well as black, and is mainly utilised for printing.
“I found I could say things with colour and shapes
that I couldn’t say any other way;
things I had no words for.”
~ Georgia O’Keeffe
Since the main colours for paint pigments are red, yellow and blue and cannot be created by mixing other pigments I’ve stuck to photos in these colours for the challenge.
In a world that seems increasingly rushed and with information overload it is easy to miss things around us. When life is busy you often look, but don’t really see. I am sure that until I retired I wasn’t always fully aware of my surroundings. But now I can take my time and fully absorb the environment around me and maybe see things that are often overlooked.
Did I notice this cat because it reminded me of my old cat Ben? Perfectly poised on steps above my head.
Photo challenges have had an impact on the way I see things, looking for the unusual, the interesting, things I may not have photographed before.
Farm shop delights. I think it was the wicker baskets that made me stop and take this photo
And on my travels I always look out for the details.
The organic shapes of these bowls and the shadows
Different ways of framing the view.
Adobe Window framing the view
Macro delights when you’re not always sure of what you will see.
A drunken bee
Taking time when wandering around a place to notice the unusual.
Quirky brass door handlesAn unusual window display by someone who loves cats
Finding the unexpected when out in nature. I was concentrating on the pied wagtail on the lovely textured fence.
A fairy? Or a wagtail’s dinner?
My love of textures always has me snooping around churchyards, the older the better.
Detail on a headstone
And seeking patterns in unusual places. I’m sure people think I am mad when I stop to photograph something beneath my feet.
Floor of a Victorian palm houseManhole cover in Cesky Krumlov
And who stops to look at a row of wetsuits they are not interested in buying? But it’s fun spotting the odd one out.
My kitchen is not the usual place you’ll find me with a camera, I’m more of an outdoor photographer with nature and flora my topics. But yesterday was a rainy day and I was feeling bored so I grabbed the camera and had a look around my kitchen.
It’s not a very tidy kitchen, surfaces have all sorts of appliances, jars and general ‘stuff’ on them. It’s not a normal kind of house being an extended and converted dairy milking stall so the kitchen is a kind of corridor linking the dining hall to the sitting room. No doors. And the cupboards are blue. Very blue. Nothing really matches – I still have things that belonged to my mother! And if it isn’t broken I never throw anything away.
I have tried to coordinate some of the new things I have bought like my Cornishware storage jars, but I’ll never win any design awards.
I have a lot of mugs even after giving dozens away to my daughter when we moved, and some have been bought by my grandchildren like the Gardeners one above. I use a plain white one for my herbal tea when I drink it. I had a thing for plain white crockery once.
But currently my morning cup of coffee is drunk from this new cup and saucer set. Definitely not blue. But very me…
TRAVEL WORDS 