Most Boring Photo of 2024 Competition Winner

Today was a very slow, so slow that it was almost stationary, blip day. Today's image was shot in our driveway and is of some of the 'fruits' of our ongoing declutter. It even does a disservice to the term emergency blip! If there had been a competition for most boring photograph of the year to date I think this would definitely challenge for the top place on the podium! :-)
I'll try to redeem it as it does at least have a story to it. The speckled odd shaped item in the red box is actually a fake orphan rock (can a rock actually be orphaned?).
It was supposed to be part of the set for one of my sister's touring theatre productions. My sister didn't want fake rocks on the stage but the stage manager was insisting that there was no way that they were lugging real rocks of that size across the country so it was decided they would have to source some fake rocks on the understanding that they looked real from the appropriate distance. Apparently there were no fake rock manufacturers in the UK so they had import three from Germany. Unfortunately, only two were deemed suitable when they arrived with this example being the least rock looking fake rock. It has therefore never had its moment in the spotlight, was abandoned to a dusty corner of our garage for several years and is now due to be cast out into the wilderness, or the recycling centre (can you recycle a fake rock?), whichever is nearest. I bet you never thought you'd feel sympathy for a fake rock! 

From the ridiculous (or just ridiculously bad!) to the sublime. There was an excellent documentary on BBC4 exploring the life and career of the photographer Tish Murtha.
Image after image testify to her skill and insight with her photographs being as uncompromising and fierce as she was. Her images captured the reality of life surrounded by decay and state abandonment, a life that her friends and family experienced in Elswick in the West End of Newcastle in the second half of the 1970's and early 1980's. One of ten children, her mother encouraged her and her siblings to follow their creative aspirations, and she began to document the effects of unemployment and shattered futures but what set her apart was that she was part of this community, not a voyeuristic outsider using people as career props, and consequently her images also show the joy, spirit and sense of togetherness that others would have failed to capture.
She gained a place at Newport College of Art, where her lecturers immediately recognised her talent at a young age but sadly she was never able to make a living from her photography and died tragically young at 56. Poignantly her wonderful photographs were finally recognised, as they should have been much much earlier, and now form part of the permanent collection at Tate Britain and her daughter Ella made it her mission to get her mum's images published in three books "Elswick Kids" (1978), "Juvenile Jazz Bands" (1979) and "Youth Unemployment" (1981). If you get the chance please do try and find some of her photography online.