All-Time Favourites – Farewell to Weekly Photo Challenge

I didn’t expect this to happen. Even though I’ve not been posting in the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge as often lately as before (most of my participation was in 2016), it still came as a shock and I am not liking this. As if we needed more good things to come to an end… Yes, I am being negative.

With that, I have decided for the final entry to share the three photos that received most likes.

Interesting that the most popular one is food.

Thank you.

I think I’ve seen some bloggers coming up with alternative challenges, I will check these out. What I liked about WPC was that you could interpret the title anyhow you wanted. Also, anyone here remembers the Discover Challenge? I really liked that one but they dropped it without a word. Though I only managed to post four times before it was stopped, those posts still remain my favourite ones.

Farewell WPC.

All-Time Favorites

Blog management: As Weekly Photo Challenge is a Category on this blog, I think I will get rid of it and only keep the tag. I will also revisit the individual posts and if needed, do some editing.

Unlikely

It’s unlikely.

It’s unlikely anyone would be, by choice, walking this path, which is no place for a walk and very not-pleasing to the eye. It’s unlikely anyone would want to photograph along this path. It’s unlikely anyone would want to photograph a dandelion. It’s unlikely anyone would photograph the said dandelion at a wide aperture. It’s unlikely anyone would be happy about the resulting photograph. It’s unlikely anyone would then post the photograph on one’s blog. It’s unlikely anyone would post it as an entry to WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge.

dandelion

I am all of the above.

Unlikely

Awakening

So–Awakening. I even love the title of this week’s photo challenge. Here I am taking part in the challenge again after some absence. Unusually for me, the picture I’m contributing is a phone camera shot.

tree buds

Snapped on my way home from work.

I can’t resist throwing in some daffodils as well, because, well, spring.

daffodils

For today’s quote, I turn to my long-time favourite girl, LM Montgomery’s Anne Shirley of Green Gables once again:

That is one good thing about this world… there are always sure to be more springs.

~LM Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

Awakening

Favourite Place

What’s my favourite place?

The one that has unapologetically featured on this blog from the very beginning–Heaton Park in Manchester.

heatonpark1

You feel like you’re in the middle of the woods without having left the city.

heatonpark2

I go there in spring, summer and autumn and I always take a lot of pictures. I have more photographs from Heaton Park on my hard drive than any other place.

heatonpark3

It’s been good doing the Weekly Photo Challenge again!

Favorite Place

Silence

Well it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these! Late to the party but here it is:

The hardest thing about this Weekly Photo Challenge has been choosing the right picture–I have so many that would qualify. In the end this one won. This little piece of woodland is Prestwich Clough in Manchester and I discovered it in April 2017.

It’s amazing how quiet a place in a city, that is not even very far from a main road can be. It must be the trees.

I remember reading a children’s story back in my home country about a guy who collected silence and he had this big house with many rooms and every room had a different type of silence. Forest silence, beach silence, field silence, cave silence and so on and so on. Anne Shirley in Anne of Windy Poplars also talks about different types of silence in her letter to Gilbert.

I’m sure if I were totally blind and insensitive to heat and cold I could easily tell just where I was by the quality of the silence about me.

So it’s never a total silence then. I imagine that would only be in space.

Break the Silence

I’ve been going back and forth with this paragraph, typing and deleting, typing again and deleting again. This is only a photo posting challenge, nothing more but even Cheri asks at the end of her post whether silence can be a negative thing. Because I believe it can (in a different sense than my photograph) and I was thinking about the #MeToo movement and other horrible things that have been happening and are happening, so I just want to add this: if you see a case of injustice happening, please do speak up.

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
~Martin Luther King, Jr

Silence

Corner

I’m back with a Weekly Photo Challenge post. Here are my two contributing images:

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The first one looks like the kind of place where they warn you not to hang around after dark. The second one looks like the kind of place where they tell you you’ll end up if you hang around the kind of places on the first picture, with dodgy people. But no, it’s not a prison, it’s the wall of an industrial estate, not far from where I live.

Corner

Bridge – Bonus

I’ve already posted my contribution to this Weekly Photo Challenge, however my fingers keep itching to add one more. I really need to talk about the most (in)famous bridge in my home town of Bratislava–the Bridge of the Slovak National Uprising. Most SNP in Slovak (most means bridge). It is also commonly referred to as UFO Bridge. You can see why.

This is a controversial bridge. Why is it controversial?

The construction of the bridge started in 1967. For the bridge to be built, a portion of beautiful Old Town, including a Jewish quarter and a synagogue, had to be demolished.

For one reason or another, they built it in such a way that a roadway had to lead onto the bridge and it was for this reason they deemed the destruction of historical streets and buildings, even a part of castle hill, necessary.

Well, that’s Communists for you.

Bratislava UFO bridge1 — Photographed from Old Town side, the other side is Petrzalka

Obviously it’s deeply tragic. As far as I know, no such sacrilege took place in any other Communist country (please, feel free to correct me in the comments if I’m wrong). But the way I see it now is, you can’t escape your history and so, the SNP Bridge is as much a part of Bratislava as all the nice parts.

That round spaceship thing at the top has a restaurant in it–I haven’t been there as an adult though, so can’t tell you what’s on their menu. Apparently there is also an observation deck–imagine the views! I really must go there on my next visit.

You can find more information on the UFO Bridge here, if you want.

Also, Girl Astray has a cool post about it.

That’s it for my Bonus Bridge post.

Bridge

Bridges are one my favourite things to photograph. In fact, they are one of my favourite things ever. Bridges are great, really. I even like the word bridge. It looks nice written down (or typed) and is easy to pronounce for a non-native English speaker.

I decided to go for this one for this week’s photo challenge.

The bridge is a Metrolink bridge in inner city Manchester. Not quite aesthetically pleasing, perhaps, but that’s the point. If it wasn’t for all that glorious sunshine, it would be a proper grim shot!

Inspiration for this photo came from a scene in The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. I’ve taken a few similar shots after reading the book.

I’ve also been listening to my mega 90s playlist, which of course features the Red Hot Chili Peppers song Under the Bridge; probably one of the most iconic tunes of the decade. The song deals with feelings of loneliness and past drug abuse.

Under the bridge downtown
Is where I drew some blood
Under the bridge downtown
I could not get enough
Under the bridge downtown
Forgot about my love
Under the bridge downtown
I gave my life away
lyrics by Anthony Kiedis

Speaking of music, a bridge is also a section of a song, but I have no idea what exactly it means. If you know, please do enlighten me in the comments.

Another bridge that comes to mind is captain’s bridge on a ship. Or better–a spaceship.

So that would be it regarding the bridge. Have a great week/month/year.

Bridge

Friend

IMG_1637copy — A cat, a mouse and an Amazon Fire TV Stick

I try to post pictures of my Pepper only when it’s appropriate–this is not a cat blog. At least I pretend I’m in charge. Of course, Pepper only looks at me like, are you kittin’ me? Any cat owner knows we don’t boss them, they boss us.

So, you know how cats do this thing when they suddenly, without warning, go berserk and run round like crazy for no reason. Apparently it’s to do with them conserving too much energy, which they need to burn. (Tough I personally prefer the more interesting theory of cats chasing ghosts or aliens.) Pepper likes to do this on weekend or Bank Holiday mornings when I sleep late and chill in bed. She shoots from one end to the other (I live in a tiny flat) then stops at my bed and frantically attacks the bedstead with her claws. It could be described as something like this: wobb wobb wobb whoosh d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-r chachadada bang hooo and I realised, hey, it sounds like a dubstep song!

I love this tune. It also features one of my favourite artists–Dizzee Rascal. Enjoy!

Bonus – did you know there is a Wikipedia entry titled Cats and The Internet? Well, now you do.

Friend

Evanescent

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ev·a·nes·cent [evəˈnes(ə)nt]
adjective

Soon passing out of sight, memory, or existence; quickly fading or disappearing.

Evanescent