graham’s blog

Four out of five for the Photo Quest this month

Almost got the pic for the Petrol Station for this months’s Photo Quest but in the end I ended up taking the photo with my new mobile phone but haven’t mastered the Bluetooth to transfer it from the phone to anywhere. It was too large for an MMS, no service is setup for the email feature and all attempts to use Bluetooth met with abysmal failure. It will be May in a few hours and no time left so I’ve posted the four others.

If it’s really important to anyone I’ll do it tomorrow. Incidentally Petrol was 1 franc 52 centimes the litre today.

Oh and here are the pics.

It must be Spring

Not quite, according to the calendar but tell the garden that!

It was warm enough –and certainly sunny enough– to study out on the terrace this morning and I set up a nice relaxing garden chair and read a chapter or two. I noticed that there were many butterflies and on further examination they were many on the flowers of a Viburnum bush next to the house.

So I took my camera out and tried to take a few photos. Butterflies however are real hard to photgraph but I managed to succeed with one or two and have added them to the gallery here. Enjoy.

Photo Challenge 6 - Shops

I took the first 4 of these pics today in the Station Shopping Centre. The other three were taken in the Geneva Old Town the other day. Next stop Billboards!

Photo Challenge 5 - Ugly Buildings

Well here are my entries for the Ugly Building Photo Challenge set by Flip.

This challenge caused me a lot of pain because architecture is so personal. Several buildings I chose would, I am sure, have been very acceptable to you.

What is ugly architecture? Show me what you think is ugly. I challenge you to show me some really ugly buildings and I’ll let you know what I think!

Above you can see my own office building which while not downright ugly is completely uninspiring. It was incidentally a bank before belonging to the Geneva State. It even housed Geneva’s only Drive-In banking facility.

The second submission is one of those futuristic seventies architectural buildings that doesn’t work for me probably because it is nested in an industrial estate and not in the middle of a field somewhere. It might have worked that way incidentally.

The third is the real entry for top ugly building. Funnily enough it houses the Geneva States Computing Communication department (which is a mouthfull in itself). Even if you take into account the poor state of the building it is hard to imagine that it was ever a nice building.

Ok, now I’m off to record those billboards and shopfronts. I hope to be able to do that tomorrow while reserving our summer holidays. Woohoo!

Looking for a new challenge

Ok guys and gals it’s time for a new challenge. The last round sure was fun and I’m ready for the next.

I’ve changed the rules a little.

Each challenger can ask for one subject at a time although the result might be more than one photo. I will have not more than a week to provide the results.

Get those ideas flowing!

Photo Challenge 4

As promised, but a few days later than I intended, here is a series showing Winter Terraces here in Geneva’s Old Town. This was sparked by a remark from Claire who was surprised to see people drinking on the terraces with near zero temperatures. Althought he sun was shining when I took these photos it was bitterly cold out of the sun and only slightly less cold in it!

Photo Challenge 3.3

As promised yesterday, here is a mini-series of Geneva Public Transport vehicules.

That concludes public transport (well for me anyway .. your mileage might vary)! Tomorrow, I will be attacking eating out in Geneva in March I think.

Photo Challenge 3.2

Following on from the last post here are some pics of the local transport system for your viewing pleasure. I wonder how many urban cities have ticket machines in the street?

This post wouldn’t be complete without a link to the Local Transport Companies website of course! Here it is in it’s English version.

Tomorrow I plan to show you the trams, trolleybuses and buses to complete the subject.

Photo Challenge 3.1

Disillusion asked me to take pics of everyday objects like telephone boxes. I took her at her word while out and about the other day.

If you ever wondered what phone-boxes looked like in Switzerland here you can find out. They changed a few years back and you can now use the electronic phone book, send emails and short messages. There are a lot less than there used to be due mainly to the increased used of mobile phones. I guess this follows the same pattern as in your country.

(edited to reflect comment)

Salon de l’Auto

Anyone for a chocolate souvenir of this years Motor Show which is happening right now in Geneva?

Seen in a shop window last Wednesday.