Mono Monday: Touch

Today has been a pretty quiet day - boring even, though all the national turmoil and unpleasantness of the past few weeks has brought me to a point at which I rather appreciate being bored.

The one exciting thing that happened was that I spotted and managed to photograph a single fresh Common Blue in the butterfly field this afternoon - though he wasn't especially happy about being stalked, and as he was flitting around in a way that suggested he was waiting for some females to emerge, rather than nectaring, I left him in peace as soon as I knew I had a few decent shots. It's definitely a measure of the way I'm living my life these days that this simple find was such a high point of my day - but actually I rather like the fact: I've never worried much about being in tune with the zeitgeist, and I'd far sooner be fascinated by wildlife than by celebrity, for example.

I would have liked to blip Mr Common Blue today but I'd have struggled to shoehorn him into the theme, and anyway, he lost rather too much in being converted to mono - his colours are absolutely delicious. I'll go and look for him again tomorrow, because he's certainly small enough to qualify for Tiny Tuesday - and if I can't find him I'll post one of today's shots as an extra.

Instead, I asked R to give me a few chords on the guitar and took some shots at wide aperture, with the focus on the finger holding down the string. When he saw this image he said that he really likes it, though he commented that his hands are looking old; I sympathise with the feeling, because one of my own hands appeared in a few test shots today - and in some I took when a Meadow Brown butterfly came unexpectedly to rest on my sleeve - and I was rather upset by how heavy and wrinkled they now look. But the fact is that R and I are both approaching retirement age, and our hands have been in use for six decades, more or less - and when you think of how much we use them, all day, every day, for work and for leisure pursuits, it's not surprising that they're looking a little well-used.

Personally I find hands very interesting - they're a feature I always notice, and I can visualise the hands of people I know well as easily as I can conjure up their faces - and I'm enjoying how many of them are appearing in this week's Mono Monday entries. I hope to produce a shortlist of my favourite shots - with or without hands - by Wednesday evening UK time, and I hope you'll also find the time to look through them and decide on your own favourites.