A couple of days ago I posted about single colours I came across in Auckland, New Zealand, on this, my first trip there. After leaving Auckland, my husband and I made our way down through the middle of the North Island, stopping for morning tea where the roses on tables were twice the size of those in my Australian garden. The land on either side of the road was green green green. And bumpy: the hills rising from the surface are steep and lush and crowded together.
GREEN
Green: the colour of the fertile volcanic hills, North Island, NZ
Around lunch time we stopped at Rotorua for a few hours, known by some as Sulphur City. That was a different experience. The pools we saw were in a large park where each one was fenced off. A few odd small eruptions had appeared and were not yet fenced, so we could reach down and feel the water. It was HOT.
BROWN
Brown: the colour of boiling sulphur-smelling mud, Rotorua.
GREY
Grey: the colour of vegetation surrounding boiling mud pools, Rotorua NZ
New Zealand is a country just three hours’ flight from my home, yet I had never been there till last week. It’s a gap in my travelling experience I was ashamed of when meeting New Zealanders in Europe! Well, now I can say I know something about NZ, and I can agree with all those who have told me it’s beautiful. I enjoyed finding particular scenes where one colour was dominant, and happily snapped a multitude of photos.
I went with my husband, who’s been to NZ a few times before. Without me. Auckland was our first port of call, where I was struck by an inviting turquoise sea, streets lined with white houses, and a knockout red wrought iron fence.
RED
Red street lamps, Port of Auckland, NZ
WHITE
White weatherboard houses with white fences under white clouds
Ailsa from wheresmybackback challenges us to find photos of things evoking the colour brown. Check out her photos of bog brown water and a ginger brown castle.
Here in Canberra there’s a large written sculpture on a hill in the new Arboretum, a special place planted with masses of trees to replace all those that burnt in destructive fires ten years ago. The words ‘wide brown land’ come from a poem by Dorothea Mackellar published in 1908: Core of my heart.
Sculpture, Arboretum, Canberra
Unfortunately, while the Arboretum is a promise that this land and its people can recover from fire, the threat is always with us. There are massive fires burning right now, closer to the coast. And the burnt trees, the pall of smoke, the tumbled bricks of houses – 192 homes destroyed so far – evoke the colour brown, once the fires are under control. The photo below is from the Daily Telegraph web site:
Firefighters keep watch at Buena Vista Rd, Winmalee, in the Blue Mountains. Source: News Limited
Marianne from East of Málaga challenges us this October to find photos of pairs. She defines it: A pair is a set of two things used together or regarded as a unit.
These lighthouse feet made me stop and look twice – the rust in its reddishness turns deterioration into art. The lighthouse is set on a big concrete block so its feet were at my eye level as I wandered around it.
Lighthouse feet, Port-Vendres, France
And a pair of nights ago I photographed a pair of bottles and two pairs of eyes on a pair of sons. We were in a restaurant provocatively named Me and Mrs Jones (that’s not a pair).
Bottles of Canberra water in ‘Me and Mrs Jones’ restaurant, Canberra
Marianne likes us to spread the blog love, so I’ll tell you I loved a poem I read here. In fact I printed it out and stuck it on my fridge.
And I read a blog about amazing historical embroidery at the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, including a video demonstrating how women kept their arms out of the way of crinoline skirts, here.
I was about to throw out this old shaggy bath mat when I walked past my dog’s bed and had a brain flash, thinking his bed could do with a bit of extra padding. I threw it down and invited him in. The result was saturation shagginess and saturation relaxation.
Shaggy on shaggy: post-haircut.
Check out the floorboard at the bottom left: looks like a conehead relaxing!
This month in Canberra we have the flower festival, Floriade. And this week Floriade carries on into the night, beginning tonight. I’ve just come home from a fun evening watching circus performers and crazy light shows. Problem is, at night the flowers are coloured by swinging beams of red and blue and green and purple light, so I have no idea what colour these tulips really are.
But I thought it was all ideal for a ‘lines and patterns’ theme: the gardens are planted with flowers of different heights to form geometric patterns, and the ferris wheel behind them makes a great show of light lines glowing on and off as it turns. Slowly. Very slowly.
I’m at home sick today. When I lay in my bed this windy afternoon I saw clouds sailing through the sky and camellia bushes swaying to and fro past my window frame. I immediately thought of the photo challenge to find an unusual point of view. I don’t usually photograph on my back, but I thought I’d give it a try.
Negative shapes with camelliaCamellia silhouette – clouds on the moveCamellia silhouette against greying sky
Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, Valley of the Kings, Egypt, c1941
Hidden behind tall cliffs on the west bank of the Nile is the Valley of the Kings, Biban el-Muluk, in Luxor.
And trying to hide in the rock face of the limestone cliff is the temple of Queen Hatshepsut, known as Djeser Djeseru (Holy of Holies or Sacred of Sacreds), which is the main building of the mortuary temple complex at Deir el-Bahri. Hatshepsut ruled from 1473-1458 BC, one of the few women to rule as Pharaoh.
Excavations at the complex began in the 1890s and continued until 1936. There seems to have been some archaeological work in progress when this photo was taken during WWII. New photos available online (for example here), compared with the one above reveal some reconstruction since the 1940s.
The temple complex is a symmetrical structure, 30 metres tall and the length of about two and a half football fields. On the lower terraces there were gardens; fossilised remains of trees have been found lining the walkway to the temple, fragrant incense trees which Queen Hatshepsut had brought back from Punt (south-east of Egypt, possibly present-day Somalia). About 100 colossal statues of her as a sphinx guarded the entrance, and more massive statues of the queen wearing male clothing and a false beard adorned the temple.
The black and white photo above comes from my father’s WWII photo album.
The colour photo below is of statues of Hatshepsut in the Hatshepsut Room in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Large Kneeling Statue of Hatshepsut Egypt, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Ailsa came across a few strange hidden things in her travels and posted photos of them on her blog, then asked us to find some things hiding in other parts of the world. Ailsa comes up with fantastic prompts for photos and blogging, and I really appreciate the ideas. Check out her post!
