Photo hunt light

News of Photo Hunt's demise seem to be a tad premature. while TN will no longer host it, it was a meme  that was too popular to die. A number of regular participants offered to take up the baton. The baton has been passed to Sandi of the Whistlestop cafe

The Theme this week is lights. the above photos show lights - Studio light, moonlight, fire light, sunlight and natural light!

Phot Hunt RIP(ped)

I wasn't going to play today as I hadn't felt well enough to produce a photo for this week or search through my archives for a photo I could make to fit to the theme but I looked at TN Chick's site this week and I saw the sad news that this is going to be the very last hunt.

Jamie has been hosting Photo hunt for well over five years. I started contributing in June 2007 and have been posting almost every week since. Here are a some phots I poted to the hunt in the first two years of participating

Shirey, the not-wife doing her Sadako impression. This was my second entry to the hunt

Graves of four young men from the Pacific Island of Niue who served as soldiers in WWI but who died and were buried in Hornchurch, near where I live on the eastern edge of London.  Half a world away from home

 Dave Brock on stage. Dave has been the driving force behind my favourite band Hawkwind for over 40 years

A picture of my old friend the crab spider

Proof that Stalin played the banjo!

A cairn on one ofthe Paps of Anu, Ireland

Each cross remembers the death of an RAF bomber crew in WWII. Nearly half of all RAF bomber crews were killed. Luckily my dad was not one of them!

A poignant piece for me. The two paintings in the centre are by my dear friend  Elahe Heidari. Elahe lives and works in Tehran. This was the first time her work was ever displayed publicly in England. 

Flowers reflected on a stream in Bayeux

I would like to thank Jamie for her hard work in organising the hunt for so long. Without her efforts I would not have come into contact with so many great bloggers. It is also most definitely one of the reasons I started to take my photography far more seriously. For all of this I thank you.

Photohunt - Yellow

The theme for this week's photo hunt is Yellow. As you can see there is yellow in the background I used for a shoot with Tim and Celena two weeks ago.

Photohunt - Busy

© 2011 Shaun P Downey

The theme for this week's photo hunt is busy. I have ben busy going through photos all week exceot fir Wednesday when I did a long shoot with mmy nephew and Celena a beautiful young woman with grace, poise and style. Since then I have been busy going through the photos from that shoot... and will be for quite a few days to come

Photo Hunt - Informative

The theme for this week's photo hunt is informative. This is a poster I saw in Paris a couple of years ago.At that time over 20 countries watched, controlled and/or censored what their citizens could access through the internet. The Great Firewall of China is well known but China is not alone sadly. I fear that the number of countries imposing internet controls may now be greater.

Photo Hunt Triangle

Running late and I'm finding it hard to type and hold a mouse at present what with an infected thumb. This is my entry for this week's photo hunt. It;s a reworked version of an earlier entry. It's a snowdrop from below... honest!

Star crossed lovers (Photo Hunt Dirty)

© 2011 Shaun P Downey

Their eyes met across a stamen: one an ambush predator, the other a simple collector of nectar. It was a love that should never be, a love that would disgust the other denizens of the  Hope Cottage gardens. Never before had a Hexapodan* embraced a Cheliceratan* but that did not concern Crabeo and Hoverette.

Personally I think it's dirty and this in keeping with this week's photo hunt

* Hexapoda is the subphylum (unit of taxonomy) that includes insects includes all insects; Chelicerata includes spiders

Photohunt - Missed

© 2011 Shaun P Downey
The theme for the week's Photo Hunt is Missed. Here is Mimi again who died in 2009. She may have had no concept of what the litter box was for, she may have had a sever disability which cut her life short, but she was one of the most loving cats I have ever known

Photo Hunt - Digital

It's been awhile since I participated in a photo hunt. High time I got back in the swing. The theme for the week's Photo Hunt is digital.

The photo is digital, being taken with a DSLR but the subject is emphatically from the analogue age. It is the centre of a carnival glass bowl

Photo Hunt - Still Life With Jaundice

The theme for the week's Photo Hunt is self portrait. Personally I hate to be photographed which is why I tend to live on the other side of the lens inflicting photos on other people

.As a result there are relatively few photos of me. This is a version of the one on my Facebook page

Photo Hunt and 4000th post

The theme for the week's Photo Hunt is mainly black so here's Lord Horror (aka Ted) again. He is of course considering how much drivel can this blogger spew on this, the occasion of the Poor Mouth's 4,000th.

Even the ghost of the dear departed Mimi is so stunned that I have been able to say absolutely nothing of worth over so many installments that it is back to show its astonishment

Ah well, onwards and downwards (in quality) to post 5,000

Photo Hunt - Education

The theme for the week's Photo Hunt is educational. As I have nothing whatsoever photowise that could be described as educational (apart from the rock that was used as a hedge school - and I've used that before) here's me learning how to do Infra Red photography with a cheap second hand Nikon D50 and an infra red filter (and a fair bit of tweaking too).

The subject is an installation by artist Anish Kapoor in Hyde Park.

Photo Hunt - Hands

TED

ROBYN

BEBE

BORIS

The theme for the week's Photo Hunt ishands. Although there are four human hands in the household cat paws are in greater abundance so here are some front paws instead

The theme for the week's Photo Hunt is funny. The problem is that when it comes to phots I do't do funny - Miserable, melancholy and maudlin, yes but funny? Not really

So here's a repeat from early 2008. A sign that makes this puerile so and so snigger, especially with the "torn" tag in the bottom corner

Photo Hunt - Hard to find

The theme for the week's Photo Hunt is Hard to find/ tretching the theme rather, it occurred to me that Egyptian sarcophagi are hard to find except in museums. Here is a detail from a sarcophagus in the World museum in Liverpool

Even harder to find on a sarcophagus is the symbol "If you think I look bad, you should see the other guy" a symbol found mainly on the tombs of Pharaohs who liked a drink and a punch up....


Well that's my story and I am sticking to it!

The theme for the week's Photo Hunt is itchy. Okay s this nettle is initially sting-y, it soon itches like hell

Photo Hunt - Dark

The theme for the week's Photo Hunt is dark. This photo may have blurred but does it reveal the darkness that lies beneath...

Photo hunt - stripes

he theme for the week's Photo Hunt is stripes. Here is a stretch on the theme. The photo was taken two years ago in Kerry in Ireland. If not quite striped the land is striated.

Photo Hunt - letters

The theme for the week's Photo Hunt is letters. There is just one letter that springs to mind and that is the rough M that appears on the forehead of all tabby cats, something that they share with several of their bigger cousins. Above are Robyn and Boris

The origin of the M is the subject of religious legends

One legend tells about Mary and the tabby cat in the manger. It seems that the baby Jesus was cold and fussing, and Mary asked the manger animals to move in closer to warm him. The manger was simply too small to accomplish that, but a little tabby cat came in and nestled next to the baby, and cosseted Him with purring and warmth. Mary was so grateful, she bestowed her own initial, "M" on the cat's forehead.

An Islamic legend states that Mohammed, a cat lover once cut off a sleeve of a garment when he had to leave to attend prayer, rather than to disturb his cat, Muezza, who was sleeping upon the sleeve. It is said that the reason he loved cats so much is that one once saved his life when a snake crawled into his sleeve. (This may be a variation of the well-known Muezza story.) Legend also claims that Mohammed bestowed on cats the ability to always land on their feet. These stories assumes that the "M" symbolizes the enormous esteem which Mohammed felt for cats and that the sight of the "M" on a cat's forehead invokes memories of Mohammed.

Make of these what you will. As far as I am concerned the M tops off the most beautiful creature on this planet.

UPDATE: Sparkle has a far more plausible theory as to why tabbies have an M on their foreheads:

"Actually the truth behind the "M" is that it stands for Master, so that humans will always know who is boss"

Sparkle is quite right of course!

Photo Hunt - Natural

The theme for the week's Photo Hunt is natural. I could have gone off into the countryside to photograph some hatural landscape but that hardly exists in England - the landscape you see has been carefully (or carelessly) created by human hands over centuries.

The same goes to a lesser extent in Ireland. You try to take a photgraph of a mountain top and some early Irish men put a cairn on top of it! I give up

The photograph is similar to others I have posted here. It is of one of the two Paps of Anu just inside Co Kerry