Sepia Saturday 311 : 2 January 2016

Welcome to a new year of Sepia Saturday and the start of a new set of themes which will run for the first half of the year. This year we are abandoning wordy prompts and just leaving you with an image which you are free to interpret as you like. You might want to look within the image for shapes, places, objects, words, colours ... or whatever you want : the choice is yours. And, in the finest Sepia Saturday traditions, you also have the choice of ignoring any talk of themes and just sharing an old photograph and a few new words. When Marilyn and I were putting this set of prompts together we thought it might be fun to have an hidden theme within a set of themes - let's see if anyone can spot it within the months to come.

Whatever you decide to do with the above image - which is a 1942 photograph of the Grand Grocery Co. of Lincoln, Nebraska from the Library of Congress stream on Flickr Commons - do it on or around Saturday 2nd January 2016 and link it to the list below. You can see the next couple of Sepia Saturday prompts below and a full list for the first three months of the year can be accessed via the link in the sidebar.

 

As you will see I have done a little tidying up of the Sepia Saturday Blog. If your blog has been inadvertently dropped from the list of participants please let me know and I will replace it. It is nice occasionally to have a little spring cleaning of our Blog, after all it is the shop window of Sepia Saturday. And talking of shop windows ....

Sepia Saturday 310 : Christmas and New Year 2015

Here is our Sepia Christmas image for 2015 which will carry us over the festive season. I apologise for it being a little late in appearing - my hand is still heavily bandaged after last weeks' operation so typing is a slow and tedious process. But I now have a couple of weeks until we return for the start of our 2016 Sepia campaign - so I will try and get plenty of rest and physiotherapy in (think of gently lifting glasses overflowing with fine ale) before returning with Sepia Saturday 311 in the new year. Our Christmas sepia prompt traditionally covers the entire festive season so all you need to do is to post your posts anytime between now and the new year - and add a link to the list below. Don't forget you can find a complete list of all our prompts for the first quarter - and indeed by the start of next year, the first half - of 2016 by looking HERE.

As you will know I have been hors de combat recently with my hand, but hopefully from the start of 2016 I will be back to my old sepia ways. In the meantime can I take this opportunity to thank you for all your good wishes and to send to you all the very best wishes for Christmas and the coming year.

A HAPPY SEPIA CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL

Alan

Sepia Saturday 309 : 12 December 2015

As Sepia Saturday moves relentlessly towards the end of another year, we pause before the final push to seek a little rest and relaxation. A cup of coffee perhaps, a glass of beer maybe; and why not, it's nearly the holidays after all, a tasty donut. Let all thoughts of that final round of Christmas shopping be abandoned for the moment, and as we pause at the doors of yet another Shopping Mall - legs all weary and wallets all empty - let us recall the words of the September 1919 issue of The Mess Kit - "A Man May Be Down But He's Never Out". The image comes from the National Library of Medicine Flickr stream and may suggest any manner of things to the imaginative Sepian. All you have to do is to post your post on or around Saturday 12 December 2015, add a link to the list below, and reward yourself with a donut.

Whilst you are eating it you may want to ponder on our Christmas theme for this year. And if you want to think further ahead, you can find a list of all our themes for the first quarter of 2016 HERE.

I go into hospital tomorrow for my hand operation so I probably won't be able to post this week, but my eyes should be OK so I will relax and enjoy myself by reading all your posts whilst enjoying a jam donut.

Sepia Saturday 308 : 5 December 2015

Sometimes, in the midst of all the hustle and bustle of daily life, you can feel alone. Your body might be walking down the supermarket aisle searching for your Christmas brussel sprouts, but your mind is miles away, walking along the beach of some desert island. Your hands might be writing anodyne words in endless plastic Christmas cards, but your imagination is exploring the very special world of old images. Be they old postcards, old family photographs or old book illustrations, it doesn't really matter: they all have a special attraction to us sepians. And as we sort out our images and write our words, we suddenly discover the footprints of other lovers of old images - footprints in the sepia sands of time.

Which is merely a single malt-whisky induced convoluted way of introducing our theme image for Sepia Saturday 308 (post your posts on or around Saturday 5th December 2015). Make of it what you will fellow sepians, let your imagination travel as far as that of Daniel Defoe when he wrote Robinson Crusoe - from which this illustration is taken (via the Flickr Commons stream of The British Library).

But before you start following the footprints in the sand, spare a thought for what awaits you next week. And don't forget you can see the rest of the 2015 theme images HERE, and the theme images for the first quarter of 2016 HERE.

But now it is time to sift through the sands of time and see what you can come up with for Sepia Saturday 308