No corner left untouched
Alway look up
Alhambra – looking upward in a corner – an amazement of design
Up early and catch the dew
Watered Velvet – rich, pouting and opulent
Mesh-like,fine suspended droplets
Large cobweb trampoline – strong enough to allow droplets to run and pool.
- Delicately fine jewelled chains of communication
Related articles
- Dancing droplets reveal physics at work (sciencenews.org)
A look of concentration
Always ‘takes a good picture’ – as they used to say down in Lancashire – meaning always looks OK when caught by the camera, whether posing or unawares
Taken on one of the breakfast on the hill mornings. It’s always wise to wrap up as the breeze can knock you over up there.
Stone to wood – strange textures
Citadel, ancient Carian coastal city of Amos, Turkey. Stone weathering – stone now looks like wood
Woodlike texture of stone – ancient coastal city, Turkey
A snap that pleases
Sometimes a bad photo is also a good photo
(click to enlarge)
2003 – I remember sneaking this photo because wanted period look of daughter and hat as a timeless tourist with this background. The pose and Paddington coat just finished it off. More of the detail came out than expected.
What’s to like?
A sort of harmony. Lines of travel, light flooding and melting – daughter’s feet dissolving in light flood,which reappears at top of head and shoots up, guided by the pointing arm, to the window spots above; upwards and out of the frame on opposite side. Water channel and arches framing folk, joining and dividing dark and light – pattern everywhere.
When asked the purpose of his journey, his reply was croaky
Day whatever number it is …
… shifting rocks and there he is. Smartly got up with bits of grit adhering, like he shaved in a hurry. Refused to say where he was going.
A small corner of the garden
A wet plant area where toads hide out
The small area is waterproofed lined with pond margin plants placed around a flowerpot pool with further planting. Shade provided by overhanging plants and close planting of big leaf specimen.
Venturing out in search of more flies for lunch, the toads are drying out and dying. Emergency major soaking required at Toad Corner. A week’s worth of hot weather with no overnight showers is playing havoc with the older toad population that lodges here.
Strong light and water
Due to strength of light, photographs look milky or fuzzy in the small image of the blog page, frustrating, but blow up brings each scene into more immediacy. Quite pleased with the definition of light and shade, water and light which can be missed in the smaller sizing.
Here’s the fern on its own in colour and grey with an extra ‘happenstance’ photo giving added meaning to the phrase ‘electric light’. Again, I like the greyscale, though it loses warmth and summer. S prefers the colour. Different look for different purposes.
Toad Corner
Spot the luminous bells
Related articles
- Word of the day: Anuran (homeschoolbyfrog.wordpress.com)
A distraction of random colours
Random textures and shapes, highlights and shadows
Random ‘sweety shop’ colours
Pretty, but greyscale gets my vote
Lines, visual twists, deep honey colours and, erm, boat building by numbers?
Boat building – Turkey – Gulets and their design
A jumble of an affair. Timeless skeleton design – like viewing an archeological artifact
The joys of terminal moraine in your garden
or how I’ve ended up like Popeye
One of many of the lovely pebbles that have needed to be shifted to make the trench we need. This size is quite amusing and there’s been about 6 or 8 of them. The smaller versions come in their many hundreds and make the ground like natural concrete. Ah, the joys of digging.
Undercover cat
Misty
As the car needed to go for its MOT, I got the day off from the ‘great trench dig’ to drive my trusty vehicle in to the mechanics and, whilst free, I went visiting.
Allow me to introduce Misty who lives with my friend Isla (see The inspiration of friends). Misty is a large lad easily 3 ft long at full stretch and is greyer in colour than the shadowing would suggest. He really enjoys lying in the dappled shade of the miniature Acer and watching the wildlife go by.
Had to take this from 12 ft through a kitchen window. Was quite pleased that the image was mostly rescuable once on the computer.
Shoe fly – a real one
Minolta DiMage S414
Great UK size 3 casual leather lace-up – not so great the fly, but not bad for an early shot
In 2003, on one of those ‘if you can find this cheaper anywhere we’ll meet it’ purchases, I strode out looking for a bargain. I went to a branch of a well-known camera chain (now sadly deceased) and flashed my computer printout ‘cheaper’ info at them and became the proud owner of the bargain priced DiMage. They threw in a bigger memory card (ah, well with hindsight Compact Flash seems like an elephant in the camera now) and gave a good offer on a bag and a couple of other things. Never having owned a camera that actually was meant for me, I was so ‘made up’ with my chunky new friend I just about went everywhere with it for a while, leaning slightly to the left.
This image is from not long after the DiMage joined the family: a morning walk to a nearby hill-top where we used to take our breakfast and watch the world come awake. As macro is close to my heart, the moment this fly was noticed, out came the camera.
Nice bit of leatherwork top left, is probably the kindest comment.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Related articles
- In flight insects (adafruit.com)
- Developing a Digital Hobby (duchessoblunt.wordpress.com)
Aging and wearing out
Move over, Popeye
Heavy labour and muscle build-up – what fun.Too old for all this jollity.
Need for an eye checkup
Hallucinating a universe
|
It was to have been this …
|
|
and this.
|
What happened?
Distraction happened. To complete the fungus foray planned for the blog entry, I’d stolen moments from a humongous domestic project – all hands to the pump, sort of thing – to get images of the tree stump before I forgot or it dried out.
Further sneaking during a scratch lunch to salvage what could from pics, I found myself absorbed into the miniature world of the separate ‘compartments’ of the fungus. (Sound of small person being siphoned into fungus universe.)
Suffering withdrawal
Not having been able to get to work on my own miniature Tudor/Jacobean world (see theinfill) I’m suffering. My mind sees miniature worlds everywhere.
Pining for miniature craftwork, a world like that in The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke painting was suddenly there before my eyes. See what you think.
(All pictures enlarge for a closer look)
- Every layer a separate space
Immediately I thought of the painting by Richard Dadd
I swear in some images there are small figures in residence. Do you see at least one figure in this photo?
And those that appear to be inhabited
I think I need help.
Related articles
- Art of psychiatry: Richard Dadd (frontierpsychiatrist.co.uk)
- Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke Queen lyrics
Clematis and friend
Yesterday was a day of glorious sun
Life as she is lived.
Blemished and beautiful
Been sent off to repent of my bad philosophising. Quite right too.
Related articles
- The first of the season (theinfillclicks.wordpress.com)
- Clematis (ahealthylifeforme.com)
- A Beautiful Clematis from Mongolia (nicolebrait.com)
Confused plant
Aquilegia – not only do they look strange, they move about
This is one heck of a confused plant. Named for petals shaped like an eagle’s claw, its common name, Columbine, apparently means dove or pigeon. A meal all in one for the eagle?
Was it a Dr Who character who had this shaping at the back of its head? Some sort of lizard markings to the pointy chinned face, I think.
There’s a surprising hairy and almost a juicy look to the surface of this plants petals
Am developing a whole theory to be called the transmigration of plants based on how, at the end of the season I move the Aquilegia backwards in the flower bed about 18″ and each spring they come up, in line with where they’ve been moved, but right at the front of the bed. Seedlings would be random, sprouting from stray and remaining roots would be in the place from which I dug ‘em up – this is ‘other’.
Things that stop me in my tracks
Sunday morning rant
There are many things in the world that stop you in your tracks on any given day. We all have our own and they should stop us and make us think and hopefully act, where appropriate. There are others, however, that vary from person to person even more. You know, the trivial ones that sock you in the brain whilst you’re going about the mundane rubbish of modern western life.
This one is, of course in a supermarket. It may be very common, but on Friday night I looked up and there it was for me – my first time of noticing. I know it has its amusing side – but really?
Just what is wrong with the human brain that marketing has become so essential that pseudo classes and phyla have to be established for cereals? Have we become so dependent on others’ advice that we are now incapable of reasoning what a cereal is without this in-depth and deeply thought out guidance?
Someone is getting paid to do this Is there nothing they can think of that might actually be of healthy use? Let’s follow their logic. Hang a sign saying “Dangerous cereals”, perhaps. How’s about getting fascist all over some of the makers’ recipes? That would do for a start. Hmmmph. Going now, before I burst a blood vessel.
Anyone round here seen a carpet?
Looking very like the hotel or place to rest for travellers and traders it was supposed to be, with small rooms at both levels, this caravanserai seemed to be entirely dedicated to active commerce.
Not sure if this is an entirely modern build or one of the two restored C18th caravanserai in Mugla, Turkey
We did buy a very, very small modern rug to go on a bench seat.
I wish we’d had the pennies and carrying capacity to bring this one home. I do like the Quashqai style designs and worn, domestic carpets.
- Not trying to sell Quashqai rugs, but this website link to a furnishings warehouse has a broad description of the area, people and rugs they produce, if you’re interested further.
- Mugla, Turkey re the comment about date of the caravanserai
Related articles
- Gigantic carpet (starnet5.wordpress.com)
- Life is a Caravanserai (shahzebnajam.wordpress.com)
Sheepish is not their only flavour
There are oh, so many.
Here are just a few.
There’s proud family posing sheep – notice how she manages a slightly narrowed, steely eyed look that says, “I’m watching you, and if you show the slightest sign of doing anything anti-sheepist in the next 5 seconds … “
There’s the ever-present curiosity of the young
There’s the highly intelligent pose – but also, more often than not, behaving as though they are all members of some de rigueur social network. Hmm, sounds a little familiar.
Spot the slightly cocked head and questioning face? Looks you straight in the eye – all that’s missing is the audible “hmmm?” of her question.
Here we see the ever questing and questioning ears – like butterflies bathing for noise in place of sunshine.
Left, third in has an individual and amusing look, does she not? Whilst bottom right, second in seems to have seen me before – probably knows all my bad habits.
But let me leave you with “The Noble Sheep”, heavily pregnant and caught in a moment of magnificent and splendidly proud sheepishness.
No, Im’ not a vegetarian
Why do lots of our town houses have plastic doors
when there are so many other possibilities?
New in an older tradition
Older and in working condition
Lovely in its flimsiness with a nod to the contemporary with sat dish
A rant in the name of the aesthetics of ‘doordom’
I don’t know about around your neck-of-the-woods, but in towns and cities here (and even rural villages, where they are allowed to make the change) more and more doorways and windows are magically turning to plastic. Now I understand the window thing, and some of the designs are pretty good and mimic the wood they replace fairly well plus many of us have white window ‘woodwork’. I only wish we could use them round here where the constant yearly painting of 8 x 12 pane glazing astragals is a real drag.
But the doors. Give me strength! What’s with those designs? Narrower so no one can ram/break in, with wider outer frames so that there’s a secondary bigger opening possibility (?!?) and pretend classic decoration but totally out of proportion. They all seem over ‘gussed up’ designs with nowhere to go. And the thresholds are lethal, particularly to bifocal wearers, may I say, plus they leave no foot space on the outer step edge. This means that shorties like me have to either balance precariously or try to make the stride out in one. Not good for the short of leg, bifocal specs species.
Now the door/gate designs above are to Turkish inner forecourt gate type doors and have their own hazards and I’m not actually advocating we turn to these, but don’t they look as though they are doorways as opposed to kiddy house mouse holes? There are plenty of wooden door designs around, so why pick ones that don’t narrow and elongate too well. Why not even, may I dare to say, invent something that looks OK in that weird set of dimensions, if it must be that shape? I mean, I’m just putting it out there; silly, I know and no offence meant.
I’m also aware that, in this world, we should be thankful that we have a door, on a dwelling, that we can enter and shut and be relatively safe. I’m in the luxurious position of living with an impression of having a home and therefore have the leisure to generally lash out. Basically having a kniption fit over aesthetics and bad design in the general market place.
A matter of personal preference, I know. There are a number of sales images around, some of the designs look really interesting, until you see them in the ‘flesh’. The proportions of these inoffensive design doors appear so crushed into the narrow, heavy frame that it even makes you want to stand with narrowed shoulders and squigged-up face as you think about passing through one.
They also don’t do so well in very old, warped and wiggly buildings that have suffered subsidence. If you put in a wooden window or door you make it fit so that the visuals are not quite so disturbing. A bit of carving here, a bit of rectangle warping there. Plastic windows and doors are not so obliging and do look odd with all the infill needed around them to make them fit what is no longer a ‘squared’ corner aperture. Do you make the filling white to match the new item or grey/red/brown etc to match the building? Usually the former which then adds to the oddity of appearance of the plastic item.
So, if you’re listening out there and for those of us, in a position to have a doorway but not a lot of money, who fancy the idea of a no-paint, no-rot door, can you please design something that isn’t quite so headache making to look at, so depressingly narrow in proportions and ankle breaking in use? Oh, and develop a plastic material that is UV OK and in a variety of colours, please. It’s not as though the white ones are colour-fast, truly colour-fast. Despite the advance in plastics, they seem to yellow and discolour still. So go for it, perhaps a fading green might actually look interesting, you never can tell.
All this forthwith preferably, and get it on the market at a reasonable price for folk to use?
I thank you.
ps: We’re not allowed them around here but I think I would like a simple vertical plank look in light brown on the greenhouse/porch, if we were to be a granted permission. Thanks.
pps: I’ve no idea why I just went off like that when there’s so much that really matters in our world and that is worth the indignant energy outburst, but I think I’ve had just one narrow plastic doorway too many and must learn to cut down or give them up entirely.
Glass through glass through a lens
Pearlised glass under a spotlight and through glass is a so-and-so to photograph, I found. Thank goodness I can’t now remember what the alarming item on the left was meant for.
About glass
- History for Kids – a history of glassware - I enjoy this site for its brief and simple descriptions
- Ancient cast glass – interesting info and images
- Modern Greek blown glass – noisy and interesting YouTube item. Glass blowing always looks like a dangerous balancing act.
Church of San Jerónimo, Granada
You step from restrained cloister with orange trees,
from sunshine to shadow …
… turn, and see this
Any use of the arch as part of all this wonder and glory seems a little irrelevant, doesn’t it?
The photo is not as sharp as I would like but I have a preference for the darker golden colours to the highly illuminated images that are available that turn the gold to a yellower shade. A darker image has a more painterly quality about it, don’t you think?
Monastery of Saint Jerome, Granada
The Arch and the Eye
Three different uses of the Arch form
Complexities for the eye to travel – museum, Chania, Crete
Peace for the eye in an elongated arch within a garden – (taken late December)
The theatre and drama of a framing arch
But when you turn to face the altar, ah yes, there are arches.
Following post is of the eastern end of Church of San Jerónimo monastery,
and that is something else.
apologies – all fairly low light with differing areas of flare
Bet ya can’t see me
Ain’t Nature’s camouflage a wonderful thing
Can you see me? Come a little closer, do.
There ya go
