Rob Ralley
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robralley.bsky.social
Rob Ralley
@robralley.bsky.social
3.5K followers 840 following 5.4K 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
Yesterday's beautiful, strangely coloured sunset.
📷 #photography
A view across grass and a path, towards a tree line. It is sunset and there is a streak of peachy orange sky behind the trees, then mauve cloud above with glimpses of pale blue sky beyond.
February 8, 2026 at 2:12 PM
robralley.bsky.social
#sunlight on the sea #BlueskyArtShow
📷 #photography #ClassicMono
A black and white photograph of sun breaking through dark clouds and shining on the surface of the sea. Rays are visible from the break in the clouds downwards and outwards.
February 7, 2026 at 4:20 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Sea view to Scotland from Allonby.
#Scape 📷 #photography
View across long seaside grass, with the winter stalks of a bush sticking out of it, to wet sand and the sea, and beyond that to low hills. Above there are glimpses of blue sky through cream, grey and bluish cloud.
February 6, 2026 at 2:08 PM
robralley.bsky.social
I must confess 'stoolball' was a new one on me. About June 1604 Agnes Grove of Biddlesden died; she had recently been widowed when her husband died 'with a surfet at stoolebale'; he headed off after she had given birth, 'played at Stoolebale & strayned & dyed'. #earlymodern
Manuscript image of the quoted text (NOTE2490 in the online edition).
February 5, 2026 at 5:03 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Cromwell Road
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekEforEponymous #UrbanGaze 📷 #photography
A view along a residential street, largely in shade from the late winter's afternoon sun. The houses are yellow brick and two-storey, and a row runs across the picture at the junction at the end of the road. There are parked cars down the right and there is a tall telegraph pole on the left.
February 5, 2026 at 2:47 PM
robralley.bsky.social
House shadow.
📷 #photography
The ends of two houses and the narrow gap between them (with a fence separating them and a shrub in the foreground). The house on the right has a red brick lower half and a white-rendered upper half; its roofline and chimney are cast as a shadow against the wall of the other house, which is pebbledash with a tiled roof darkening with age and a substantial red brick chimney, and has a rather oddly scattered set of white uPVC windows of varying size on its end wall.
February 4, 2026 at 3:52 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Trees, winter.
📷 #photography
A view, on a sunny winter's day with a haze of thin white cloud in the sky, across an expanse of grass streaked with the dried stalks of longer grasses. In the middle of the picture are two leafless trees catching the light, and beyond them at a distance a line of tall trees.
February 3, 2026 at 3:08 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Fuchsia.
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekEforEponymous 📷 #photography
A branch of red and purple fuchsia flowers in front of a doorway in a stone wall, with gravel on the ground and green plants visible through the doorway.
February 2, 2026 at 3:34 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Palace Green sunset.
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekDforDramatic 📷 #photography
View across a (dark) lawn towards a very old brick building and an orange sunset beyond that, which is visible around it and through two aligned windows at the corner of the building, and is silhouetting a tree in the foreground.
February 1, 2026 at 4:49 PM
robralley.bsky.social
#Cloud #BlueskyArtShow
📷 #photography
The bottom of a dark raincloud, with blue sky and fluffy white clouds visible below/beyond it.
January 31, 2026 at 6:34 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Dusk walk yesterday.
📷 #photography
A narrow, winding tarmac path at dusk, with grass and trees around in the foreground but further off a pair of hedges enclosing it on either side. Close to the camera bare tree branches reach into view.
January 31, 2026 at 1:25 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Aldeburgh beach.
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekDforDramatic #scape 📷 #photography
A view along a single beach towards a row of seafront houses and a sky of thick bluish clouds. Bright winter sunlight is reflecting brilliantly off the sea and sparkling on the shingle, and is also catching a slight mist rising off the beach. A few people are walking around.
January 30, 2026 at 1:21 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Street view, Ely.
#UrbanGaze 📷 #photography
A sunny view along the front of a hotel, with three storeys of yellow brick and rows of sash windows, and two pink-painted doors onto the street. A woman in a pink coat is trundling a four-wheeled walker past the doors.
January 29, 2026 at 2:41 PM
robralley.bsky.social
#otd 1607
Napier's diary: 'Jan 29 I pared my cornes' #earlymodern
Manuscript image of the quoted text (NOTE3310 in the online edition).
January 29, 2026 at 1:40 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Walkway.
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekDforDramatic 📷 #photography
A diagonally upwards view of the gap between two tall brick buildings (at Snape Maltings) with a walkway (incorporating a short flight of steps) running vertiginously between the upper parts of the buildings. There are also cables between the buildings. It is a bright, sunny winter's day.
January 28, 2026 at 7:17 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Trees.
#ClassicMono 📷 #photography
The gap between two two-storey sandstone houses, one with gable windows visible; in the space is a car on a driveway and two tall trees whose branches overlap, reaching upwards. One has a small group of nests in it.
January 27, 2026 at 2:02 PM
robralley.bsky.social
Storm cloud.
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekDforDramatic #ClassicMono 📷 #photography
The top storey and roofline of a brick terrace of houses, with sunlit clouds in the distance and a very dark cloud overhead.
January 26, 2026 at 7:03 PM
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