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monochrome
Strand shadows
A murky winter’s night in central London. Standing inside the entrance to the palatial Somerset House, it’s still and calm. Shadows from the railings sweep across the well-worn flagstones. The light comes from the clamour of The Strand, a busy city thoroughfare. It appears frenetic and muddled where the pedestrians and buses are going at a different pace. It’s hazy in both smoky black and white and all the colour such a night can offer up. These are London moments captured from the calm edges.
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Blooming surprise
I have a houseplant which has been part of the furniture for years now. My Dracaena has been doing little aside from growing quietly taller – until now. It’s produced a magnificent, unexpected flower stem packed with sweet-smelling blossom and oozing with nectar. Click here to see the plant in its full glory.
It can’t expect any pollination action at the beginning of January, so looks likely to be very short-lived. But now it has been captured for posterity…
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Grit and glimmer
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A dilapidated urban scene. This pedestrian bridge is quite neglected and grotty, made more so in monochrome. Its saving grace is the symmetry, balance and perspective it has in this shot.
Just around the corner from here, and the way down offers an entirely different view. The light streams up the stairs, enticing you to make the descent.
These two photographs show that it’s entirely possible to find a pair of very different shots in the same small space.
Dark sunshine
The Australian state of Queensland is best known for bright colours, balmy weather, natural beauty – and the sunshine of its sub-title.
But I came home with some shots that defy this notion. We arrived in Brisbane during a relentlessly wet spell, while some of the city’s architectural features looked moody and overpowering, like the edifice of the University of Queensland’s main building in the photograph above.
The Eleanor Schonell Bridge, which provides a link to the St Lucia campus across the Brisbane River, looked imposing against a stormy sky. The Botanic Gardens’ hothouse was admittedly bathed in light, but has a space age quality in black and white.
The morning after a night in one of the city centre’s clusters of tower blocks was sodden, and the view to a neighbouring skyscraper proved bleak and daunting.
There are two sides to every story, even in the sub-tropics…
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