Slideshow of the day

Is over at The Guardian, and combines the two enchanting traits of good photography and rampant adorableness.

See it here.

One example, by Helen J Arnold:

Pictures of the day

I haven't featured How to be a Retronaut lately, one of my favourite blogs. Today, it has is a wonderful collection of photographs of people at the age of one hundred, by a photographer called Karsten Thormaehlen. There is a glorious, lucent quality to them. You can have a look here.

This is just one of the collection:

Loss of the Day

The wonderful Eve Arnold, who has died at the age of 99.

Here she is, at work:

She is, of course, famous for taking beautiful and candid and rather moving photographs of Marilyn Monroe. I have reproductions of a couple of them. What I did not know until today is that she also took one of the happiest pictures I have ever seen of our own dear Queen. Here it is:

Discovery of the day

There is an amazing story in the New York Times about a gentleman discovering a treasure of lost photographs taken by Captain Scott, of his doomed Antarctic expedition. I have seen a few pictures of that trip before, and they are always unbearably poignant, because one knows the end of the story.

These new ones carry all that poignancy, but also a great deal of beauty too. And mystery as well: some of them look as abstract and foreign as pictures of the moon. You can read the whole story here, and see all the photographs in their full glory.

This is one of my favourites:

Can never resist a hardy old pony.

Lovely picture of the day

I don't know why I love this so much, but I do:

It is a picture from Sweet Paul Magazine, something of which I had never heard, until I discovered it today through the always lovely Dustjacket Attic. 

Simplicity of the day

Plums:

This beautiful photograph is taken by a gentleman called Luis Valdiz. It comes from the website of a delightful-looking shop in Canada, called Marche St George. (That Marche should of course have an e acute on the end, but Blogger seems mulishly to refuse the insertion of filthy foreign accents. It makes a difference because as written it means 'Walk St George' rather than 'Market St George'. Anyway.)

The point is, what I find remarkable about the internet is that, through a series of accidents, I chanced upon the site of a shop I shall almost certainly never visit, in a country thousands of miles away, and found myself so charmed by the beauty there that I did not mind at all that I could not go and actually buy anything. (Sorry, that was an appalling sentence, but I am too tired to rewrite it.)

Go and have a look here. The photography is outrageously good. And if you are Canadian, and you live anywhere Vancouver, go to St George Street and get some of their lovely bread.

One more photograph, because I can't resist, and another example of taking something utterly simple and investing it with singing beauty:

Style icon of the day

I know nothing of Rhoda, Lady Birley. Here she is, photographed  in her garden at Charleston, by Valerie Finnis. When I grow up, this is exactly what I want to look like:

Found, whilst noodling around on the internet, ostensibly doing 'research', at the excellent Finding my Way blog.

Jolly Gentleman of the Day

I'm not entirely sure about this lady's hair. (That horned look is always a little doubtful, in my book.) But I do like the bouncing fellow.

From Marie Claire, Australia; found via the always lovely Dustjacket Attic.

Favourite blog post of the day

The marvellous How to be a Retronaut never lets me down. He recently posted a haunting series of photographs of the abandoned city of Pripyat, in Russia. There is a terrible, mournful beauty to them.

You can see them here.

New blog of the day

In the mysterious way of the internets, I stumbled upon an absolutely beautiful blog by Laura Trevey. (I was looking up something for work, I promise.)

I have always wanted to learn how to take photographs like this one, with all that lightness and brightness, the sharp focus in the foreground, the delicate blurring in the background. It is a perfect Friday picture:

You can find more delightful images from her, here.