Lucy 1888 – Weekly Prompts: Sepia

This weekend GC and SueW have chosen the following as the theme for their challenge.

At the start of 2019, GC and I introduced a monthly colour challenge and the colour for August is  SEPIA.

The perfect chance to use a photo from the old family albums I have been scanning and repairing – This time left in all its Sepia glory and mostly unedited.

‘Lucy 1888’

There is definitely something that the photographer has captured here, she looks inquisitive to me, I wish I knew who she grew up to be – more research needed :).

Ken

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Huge and lovely – Weekly Prompts: Bloom

This weekend GC and SueW have chosen the following as the theme for their challenge.

Our weekend photo challenge here on Weekly Prompts is BLOOM.
Flowers bloom, ladies-in-waiting bloom, youngsters bloom when the delicate transition from childhood is achieved. We adults, begin to bloom when our hopes and dreams are accomplished, or when sought-after independence is finally attained.
How will you bloom, how will you choose to address our challenge?

Two pictures from our recent jaunt up to Yorkshire.

The first showing the blooming magnificence and scale of megalithic structures surrounded by this years corn in bloom!

‘Blooming Huge’, Devil’s Arrows, 2019.

And the second a lovely flutterbuy on a buddleia bloom.

‘Blooming lovely’, Beningbrough Hall, 2019.

Ken

Way in? – Weekly Prompts: Deception

This weekend GC and SueW have chosen the following as the theme for their challenge.

The weekend photo challenge here on Weekly Prompts is Deception, or put another way… do your eyes deceive you?

So an ancient Deception for you – this is the front of the Bryn Celli Ddu burial mound, or is it?  This is actually a fake maybe ritualistic entrance, while the real way in is around the back!

‘Way in?’, Bryn Celli Ddu, Anglesey, 2019.

Ken

Devil’s Arrows – Weekly Prompts: Satisfaction

This weekend GC and SueW have chosen the following as the theme for their challenge.

This week’s photo challenge centers itself on the word SATISFACTION.

Last week I felt a great deal of satisfaction as we were on holiday, busy days visiting ancient sites, stately homes, places of interest & castles. And what magnificent ancient sites we got to see this time on Anglesey, and then in Yorkshire.  The corn really was this colour! And a lucky choice of clothing colour for my wife :).

‘Devil’s Arrows’, Devil’s Arrows , Boroughbridge, 2019.

Ken

Bird/Stone – Weekly Prompts: Black

This weekend GC and SueW have chosen the following as the theme for their challenge.

At the start of 2019, GC and I introduced a monthly colour challenge, and for the month of July, we have chosen BLACK.

‘Bird/Stone’, Druids circle, Penmaenmawr, 2019.

Ken

Before and after St. Ninians- Weekly Prompts: Edit

This weekend GC and SueW have chosen the following as the theme for their challenge.

Our weekend photo challenge here on Weekly prompts is EDIT!
Do you edit your photographs before inserting into your blog posts?
How often do you pre-edit and by that I mean do you take notice of everything in the background before you take your photo; do you stage manage your shots or is the stack of dirty dishes in the background still there when you finally showcase the picture to the world?
Feel free to use the word in any way you wish, show us your edited photographs, or tell us all about your edits the choice is yours!

Well I think it is safe to say I always edit my photos, sometimes to the point of destruction, but sometimes minimally.  I edit in Lightroom and Photoshop.  They never reach my blog straight from the camera, even if I have shot in Jpeg rather than Raw, there is always a little touch up.  Generally this is just to bring them in line with what I saw in my minds eye when I took the shot, but sometimes….

I sometimes stage manage shots, and would like to think I take notice of the things that are in frame as I look through the viewfinder.  However I do get home to a fair number of shots that have that, what is that doing in the shot, I didn’t see that, and sometimes this randomness makes or breaks the photo.

Of course sometimes I just snap away, but generally I take a bit of time to compose.

So a shot straight from the a6000 below:

‘Before’, St. Ninians, 2018.

Fairly acceptable, but not how my imagination coloured it, a minimal edit later and it looks a bit more like the inside of my mind.

‘After’, St. Ninians, 2018.

I  would probably go a lot further with this image, try and reclaim a small amount of that purple hue in the sky, maybe in another post.

Ken

How does my garden grow – V.J.’S Weekly challenge #51: Green.

Well this week V.J. has challenged us with ‘Green’

Well it is not actually my garden, it is a friends, but it is certainly green, and this abundance of green life is one of the reasons I love gardens.  There is something calming about all of that life in those thousands of plants, something humbling, but something to connect to.

‘How does my garden grow’, Crowdecote, 2014.

Ken

 

Found at last – V.J.’S Weekly challenge #40: Things my father says.

Well this week V.J. has challenged us with ‘Things my father said’

This week I have taken the liberty of slightly altering V.J’s wording, as my father is still saying many lovely and annoying things.

There are a number of things my father says that I find quite challenging, little stock phrases that can turn me from an adult to a teenager in a matter of moments.  The weather is always ‘Bitter, its bitter’, and ‘are you sure’.  One phrase I know some of you will be aware of from you own lives, and may or may not use is:

‘Have you looked in the last place you had it’, or its alternative, ‘it will be in the last place you look’.  At this point I could turn rant mode on and ask what do these really mean, but instead I will leave you to think about them yourselves.

Just under three years ago we moved into a new house, as always there are little knick-knacks that you cannot find for a while.  However there was one, a small wooden huggle that had eluded us until last week.  Here it is below, we missed it and wondered where it had gone.

‘Found at last’, 2019.

Anyway last week we found it!  At the bottom of a vase.

‘I was in here’, 2019.

It was certainly in the last place we looked (is that not always the case, can it be any other?), and in fact I am not sure there was anywhere else we had not looked! But was it in the place we had it last, had it accidentally fell in here?  or had we put it in here for safe keeping during the move.

Ken

 

Unplugged and broken – V.J.’S Weekly challenge #39: Unanswerable

Well this week V.J. has challenged us with ‘Unanswerable’

So how to answer the unanswerable?  I have been thinking about this since V.J. posed this problem on Monday, and I am usually pretty quick in knowing what I want to use.  However this week I have to admit I was stumped.

However as I was just about to turn my laptop of and do some sewing on this chilly Wednesday morning in Wales,  I was struck by a sudden bolt of inspiration.  Leaping into action, the camera came out of the bag, and the shot was posed, and taken.

‘Unanswerable, unplugged and broken’, 2019.

“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.”  – William S. Burroughs

Ken

 

Pictures without film – V.J.’S Weekly Challenge #38: What’s in a name?

Well this week V.J. has challenged us with:

As I type up each week’s summary, creating links to various blogs, I am struck by how different blog names are, and compelled to ask: what’s in a name? Specifically, your blog name.

So what is in the name: ‘Pictures without film – Using photos to capture life – Ken Humphreys Photography’

Well I started this blog about four and a half years ago.  I had just bought a new camera, a sony a6000.  At in its very basic sense, this blog speaks for the fact that I was using a digital camera and not a film camera.  I had owned digital cameras before, however this was to be my first interchangeable lens digital, and a mirrorless to boot! While I had owned SLRs I have sort of skipped DSLRs in favor of the CSC.  And so this blog was to chart some of my progress.

The blog became a place to post pictures, the occasional quote, and my photographic observations, I generally save other rantings for different social media platforms.  Over the years it has also become a place to make friends and find community, digital community that unseen bond that the modern person now shares with people thousands of miles away, who they are never physically likely to meet, but we feel we are in someway sharing part of the path our lives with.  To not so ancient humans this would have seemed strange, a magical undefinable realm, a place to which we journey without ever actually visiting.  Of course our communities of shared interests have always existed, but never have they been so visible, so tangible, and so perhaps it is magical in its own way.

Of course I mainly blog here by posting my answers to the various challenges that some of you host.  I use these to hone my photographic skills, when I am out taking pictures and at home in the digital darkroom.

The subtitle is an important part of my blog title – ‘Using photos to capture life’,  Or more specifically my life.  My photos are, as so many peoples are a visual diary of what I have done, where I have been.  Taking, editing and blogging with just a few of these, allows me to share a little of my ‘captured life’ with you.  Of course this is the way I see the world, and not the way you see it, it is not about changing your perspective merely allowing you an insight into the ‘other’, which in this case happens to be me, though the interface of my photos, provided to you not on paper with chemical fixing agents, but though a stream of ones and zeros!

So what is in a name?  It is about using my camera to capture the world around me in all of its beautiful and marvelous shapes, recording a small part of my life through a subjective lens, and it is about me sharing this perspective of the world with you.

And given that this blog is generally about photos, I better finish with a subjective view of the author of this post, a photo taken specifically for this blog, which I used as an avatar when the blog was created.

‘Photographer’, 2014.

Ken