Add colour and most people would rather look at the picture below as we are so used to looking at flowers as colourful things, that once our eyes see the colour its hard to go back to being without it.
'Lilac Dancing Flowers'
I'm linking in with The Shades of Autumn Photography Challenge and this weeks colour Purple with this photograph as it one of my favourites in my initial portfolio, I think because of its fairytale like quality. It was taken on a very cold frosty morning and these flowers were the first in a winter allotment to catch the first rays of the morning sun, hence the title, as they almost look like they are dancing with happiness at the arrival of the day and the warmth!
Sadly this allotment that I visited to take photographs for a number of years is no longer there. The old man who loved it had been given the small plot to tend on a farmers field, across the road from his remote house in the countryside and this year, when spring came, the farmers crops grew over the land where the allotment used to be and I realised he had gone. It was a sad day. Imagine the thrill one day in late summer when I stopped my car and saw the old mans flowers had returned and were fighting for their space amongst the corn, I wonder how many years they will come back.
I thought about trying to contact his family to give them some of the photographs to remember him by but I never introduced myself to him, I only saw him a couple of times over the years, bent over tending the ground or hurrying back into his house. He didn't seem to welcome intrusion into his world, so to talk to his family would be a little odd. Perhaps I should have posted some through his door while he was still here, as a thank you, as he must have seen me out of his window, parked by the side of the road, snapping away in all weathers.
I read a quote on photography 'Take nothing but pictures, Leave nothing but footprints' and thats just what I did at the allotment, should I have done more?
I have now visited two National Trust properties in a month, see yesterdays post on Calke Abbey
I came across a site that has a pen pal exchange and it reminded me of how much I want to write letters again. Actual letters on writing paper with envelopes and stamps - remember those?
how does all this relate to photography? well it started with the trip to Scotland. Its only when you drive through our little country that you realise that actually its a blooming long way up to the top and we started from the middle. As I said in a previous post I loved our trip to Scotland, the scenery and the colours were magical and although we literally drove to our work appointment and back again over two days, I went along for the few five minute photo stops on the way and during this 'photoshoot' there was a lot of time to think and discuss. 
It coincided with the anniversary of the Internet (well almost) so, seeing the remote villages in the highlands that are cut off in the winter combined with thoughts of how much the Internet has changed the way we communicate, I began pondering the lost days of letter writing, as those highland villagers would have had to do in the past as their only form of contact with the outside world in those long winter months. 
This weeks photo shoot with my photography group was at Calke Abbey in Derbyshire, a forty minute drive from my house but I had never been to visit.
The rest of the house has been spring cleaned but in essence left exactly as it was when the Family moved out, peeling paintwork, 18th century wallpaper falling off the walls, the families possessions piled in corners as though Julian Fellowes himself had constructed the set. 
This is a photograph of me and my friend on one of our photography shoots, in Stratford-Upon-Avon. She was showing me the shots that she had captured and i suddenly noticed our reflections on the ground, so I snapped the image as our shoots are so valuable to me that I wanted a record of them.
