This was taken inside the Palais des Papes, on the bright, sunny Monday.  I took it using my 50mm lens, 1/160secs, f/10, ISO100 (I told you that it was sunny!) and converted it into black and white in Lightroom.

When I go through my photos, one of the first things that I do is check that the pictures are sharp enough that I won’t be ashamed of them.  All I do is zoom in to 1:1 and look at the picture closely.  When I did this with the picture here I actually liked the texture on the stairs and so have also included an additional crop on this post.  Although the size is about the same, I think it emphasises the textures more and is more abstract.

The photo was taken with my 50mm lens, at ISO200, f/5.0 and a fast 1/1600 secs shutter speed.  (Yes, I know I should have changed the settings to a smaller aperture and ISO 100, but I was suffering from bunny in the headlights I am on holiday disease.)

I desaturated the colours in lightroom and cropped it into a square presentation to put the emphasis on the shadows from the balconies.  My main reservation is that maybe the old building is a little too dominant.

Damselfly on a leaf

Each year Badby Photography Club has a set subject competion (I guess this is the same for all photography clubs). This year the subject is shadows, the competition is on 20th May. I wanted to approach this with a number of ideas of photogenic shadows, I even toyed with the idea of a sundial, but the shots I took were all a bit underwhelming. The picture shown is one that I will be entering, entitled ‘You can’t see me’. I have spent far too many hours in the last two weeks photographing emerging damselflies with varying degrees of success, but this picture of a damselfly from below is just right, I like the way you can even see her feet hanging on at the sides.