Rob Ralley
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robralley.bsky.social
Rob Ralley
@robralley.bsky.social
3.5K followers 830 following 5.3K posts
Historian of science and medicine. Editor for The Casebooks of Simon Forman and Richard Napier (1596-1634), now writing about Napier, slowly. And taking photos. Views my own.
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robralley.bsky.social
Wind-pump sail.
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekCforCloseUp 📷 #photography
The bottom corner of the white-painted frame of a wind-pump sail, with some bluish canvas tied to it by a rope that is also taut from holding the sail(s) still. Dark wooden boards are just visible behind.
January 25, 2026 at 2:05 PM
robralley.bsky.social
This afternoon's sunset.
📷 #photography
The top corner of a half-timbered house with brick chimney, and the top of an old-fashioned-looking streetlamp, silhouetted against blue sky and a cloud lit from below by pink light.
January 24, 2026 at 6:08 PM
robralley.bsky.social
The path off the beach, Allonby.
📷 #photography
A sandy path between tufts of seaside grass up to pale blue wintry cloud and a rather jumbled terrace of white houses with black-lined windows and slate roofs, one of the buildings with a pair of very wide chimney stacks.
January 24, 2026 at 12:56 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Small face with lichen, Church of St Peter and St Mary Magdalene, Fordham.
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekCforCloseUp 📷 #photography
A small carved stone face on a wall, weathered, with moss and lichen growing on it. The eyes have rough patches of pale (almost white) lichen on them.
January 23, 2026 at 7:17 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Graves and tree, Church of St Peter and St Mary Magdelene, Fordham.
#scape #ClassicMono 📷 #photography
The edge of a graveyard bounded by a mossy stone wall with a large bare-branched deciduous tree just inside it, and around the tree there are gravestones, one a pale cross.
January 23, 2026 at 2:23 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Disused building, Fordham, Cambridgeshire. 📷 #photography
The gable end of a single-storey building at the side of the road, with a half-timbered look in the top (the white paint discoloured and peeling off) and two arched openings side by side in the bottom half, one a doorway and the other a window, both very wide, round-topped, and painted a bluey green so tired and grubby it probably just about counts as Cambridge blue. In front, a yellow cone is half-sunk in a puddle, fallen into the hole it is presumably there to warn about. There are trees behind the building.
January 22, 2026 at 9:29 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Evening light on flowering grass, midsummer.
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekCforCloseUp 📷 #photography
Several stalks of flowering grass against a background of dark greens and browns. The grasses in the foreground are caught in golden light.
January 22, 2026 at 8:36 AM
robralley.bsky.social
Tree shadow on brick.
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekCforCloseUp #WallsOnWednesday 📷 #photography
A close-up of a patch of old wall made of yellowy brown bricks. A tree is casting branched shadows across it.
January 21, 2026 at 1:35 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Woodland light.
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekCforCloseUp 📷 #photography
The base of a rather substantial tree trunk, with the earth of the woodland floor in front and leafy trees downhill behind. Light filtered through the canopy is illuminating the trunk and earth in patches and streaks.
January 20, 2026 at 11:59 AM
robralley.bsky.social
Board between shop windows.
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekCforCloseUp 📷 #photography
A small rectangular white-painted wooden board (of unknown purpose) between the windows of two shops (one window frame painted white, the other sage green). Shadows are cast across the board by the winter sun on the prop for an awning.
January 19, 2026 at 8:51 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Ely Cathedral from West Fen Road, yesterday.
📷 #photography
A view of the cathedral's west tower, with the octagon further off, rising above bare-branched trees and gleaming in the sun. In the foreground is a white-painted two storey house with a patch of sunlight low down on its front. There are telegraph wires across the road and there is a streetlight standing to the left. A road runs towards the house then goes left and right either side of it.
January 18, 2026 at 3:10 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Tree.
#BlueskyArtShow #One 📷 #photography
A solitary bare tree in a field on a grey winter's day. Just visible are the tops of other trees further off and a little downhill.
January 17, 2026 at 12:23 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Winter walk.
#scape 📷 #photography
A field of rough, tufty grass, with a slightly darker line trodden into it that runs straight ahead. Around the field are tall largely bare trees catching the golden winter light. The sky is textured blue-grey cloud.
January 16, 2026 at 2:30 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Victoria Road.
#UrbanGaze 📷 #photography
A view slightly uphill from the sea end of Victoria Road, Aldeburgh, with a glimpse of its crossroads with Wentworth Road. The buildings are cream-coloured and largely rather old, though the one on the corner is blue, with an M-shaped double pitched roof and a jumble of rather large sash windows. A single traditional-looking black street light stands tall in the middle of the frame. It is a bright winter's day and one or two shards of sunlight have caught parts of the building walls.
January 15, 2026 at 3:00 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Work in progress.
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekBforBooks 📷 #photography #ClassicMono
The end of a stack of pages open in a ring binder (the rings are not visible). On the left page faint lines can be seen from printed text on the other side of the paper.
January 14, 2026 at 7:55 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Framework.
📷 #photography
A view across a low fence of thin pieces of wood wired together, and past a thicket of bare-branched hedge and the end of a metal-framed gate, to a playing field with two sets of football goalposts backing onto each other and a set of rugby goalposts facing the other way. There are low buildings in the distance. The sky is hazy blue and there is a strong late-afternoon winter light.
January 14, 2026 at 2:46 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Parkland, winter.
#ClassicMono 📷 #photography
A view along a path trodden into short-mown grass curving away up a slope, closely flanked by young bare trees.
January 13, 2026 at 4:42 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Beach, Aldeburgh.
#BlueSkyMonday 📷 #photography
A blue and white painted boat (with LT7 on its side) on a trailer, surrounded by fishing nets and equipment, on a shingle beach with blue sea in the distance and blue sky above. In the foreground is concrete with grasses growing through cracks. The white on the boat is gleaming in the winter sunlight.
January 12, 2026 at 4:32 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Distant light.
📷 #photography
A view across gloomy rough grass under low cloud to a scattering of trees silhouetted against a bar of late winter's afternoon light above the (low hills at the) horizon.
January 11, 2026 at 2:56 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Spirals.
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekAforAbstract 📷 #photography
A close-up of the carved bog-oak pulpit at the church in Wreay, Cumbria, with deep vertical grooves and small spirals carved in the outside surface. It is catching coloured light from a stained glass window.
January 10, 2026 at 2:49 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Wind turbine, Watchtree Nature Reserve, Cumbria.
#scape 📷 #photography
A view across a ditch in a large flat grassy area, looking towards low hills in the distance that are gloomy and bluish-looking. There is a large wind turbine standing a little way off edged with reflected sunlight, and the light is also shining on the grass and the tops of the clouds.
January 9, 2026 at 2:19 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Civic Centre, Carlisle; completed 1964.
#UrbanGaze 📷 #photography
A modernist square tower whose faces are grids of small rectangular windows framed with metal and concrete. In front of it is a car park and in the foreground some parkland, with long winter grasses and bare (or nearly bare) trees. The sky is clear and the light is the pale gold of a late afternoon in the depth of winter.
January 8, 2026 at 3:57 PM
robralley.bsky.social
January 1625 - Richard Napier briefly owns a swan.
3 Jan: 'Mr Grub sent me a Cygnet ... I gave him 2s'. 8 Jan: 'My Cygnet did flye away'. #otd #earlymodern
Manuscript image of the (second) quoted text (NOTE8280 in the online edition; the other quote is from NOTE8279).
January 8, 2026 at 12:42 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Beach scene.
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekAforAbstract 📷 #photography
A view across a shingle beach with the narrow shadows of two people falling across it. The result is a large rectangular block of pale blue (sky) above a narrow rectangle of deeper blue (sea) above a rectangular block of a kind of finely textured brown, and across that, two narrow black triangles extending from the right.
January 7, 2026 at 3:44 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Sun on the snow, Ely.
📷 #photography
A yellow-brick detached house on a housing estate flanked by red-brick houses and viewed past the end wall of another yellow-brick house. It has snowed but the snow has begun to melt in the afternoon sun. There is a bright blue sky with just a tuft of cloud, and there is sunlight on the top half of the front of the house and on its roof, but the snowy road is in shade.
January 6, 2026 at 3:07 PM