Lens-Artists Challenge #356: Quiet Hours

Lens-Artists Challenge #356: Quiet Hours

I had a plan for the Challenge this week, but it was stolen from me. Not by time, but by circumstances. I spent more time in the local clinic than I had expected (thankfully, what I thought was troubling me turned out not to be) so the tasks that we had planned were put off to other times and, well, we find ourselves here. On a Thursday,  and my plan for the Challenge has turned to dust.

It was a guest host for the Challenge this week, Stupidity Hole (SH) from the blog of the same name. I've been a follower of theirs for a while, and really enjoyed their writing, and images. It's not always comfortable, but they challenge themselves and the blog is well worth a follow, not just for the Lens-Artists Challenge. Anyhow, the Challenge from SH this week is 'Quiet Hours'. (https://stupidityhole.com/2025/07/13/lens-artists-356-quiet-hours/)

'What are quiet hours?' they ask. 'Among many things, this can mean an empty space. It can be a sense of stillness; a lack of action; an absence of presence within a frame. Quiet hours are often associated with the time before people are waking up and getting about ... there’s a sense of quiet hours through a lack of presence.' Another term I have heard for this 'quiet hours' is Liminal Space, which may be thought of as, 'a transitional period or place that exists between two states or stages'. To my horror, that definition was taken from the AI Overview on Chrome, but it actually fits with what I was trying to express quite perfectly. The shame.

Liminal spaces are those places where there are no people at the time of taking the image, the space is seemingly abandoned, but at any moment will be a hive of activity. It's a transition between empty and not empty. A liminal space itself doesn't have to be an empty space, though that's often how it is portrayed, but essentially it's an area devoid of human presence. Of course, as soon as I say that, some of my examples of 'Quiet Hours' contain human figures.

These few examples were taken from what was quite an emotional period, the time around my Mother's funeral. It had gotten off to a dreadful start. We had left the relative calm of Portugal to discover on our arrival at Gatwick that there had been a landslide somewhere along the route and the trains from London Paddington to Pershore were all cancelled. I nearly just turned around there and then, but calmer heads prevailed and we ended up booking an overnight stay in a lovely little hotel near the airport. 

Before we left Porto, we were waiting on the plane to take off and there was a plane waiting next to ours to be boarded. This was actually the time I should have taken the image, the airplane enjoying its quiet hours before the hectic activity of the flight to who knows where, but I didn't. Instead, I was baffled by the sudden sight of hundreds of people walking along the side of the busy airport road to catch their flight. We wondered whether the bus they were due to catch had broken down (it was Easyjet, after all) but whatever the reason, the liminal space transition was well passed.

The next day we caught the early train to London Victoria, and slowly made our way across country by train and the inevitable 'rail replacement' bus. I should add that I didn't take any cameras with me, it did not seem appropriate, but I had my smartphone, and I just couldn't help 'seeing'. It was also a distraction from the events ahead. When we arrived at the station to Victoria, it was well before rush hour, and was a foggy morning. The station looked like it was waiting for the morning crush, and was taking a few moments to breathe.

We had planned to spend a few days with family before heading back. But with the continuing uncertainty over the rail travel we decided to leave a day early and spend a night in a hotel at Luton airport. The route took us through Birmingham New Street, a station I had not been through since the 1980s, and although it still retained its concrete bleakness, nowadays 'upstairs' the station has been completely modernised, and completely confusing.

We arrived to London St Pancras, and from that moment on, any thought of 'quiet hours' could be dispelled, though I did manage a quick image of the train after it had emptied its load of weary travellers, waiting for the next journey to begin. From there we went went to Luton Airport, and spent a pleasant night in an airport hotel. Our return journey to Portugal was uneventful  apart from one moment when we crossed between day and night. I'm not sure if this can be described as a liminal image, but I certainly felt it as a quiet hour as the hectic activities of the day gave away to the calm of the night.

This has been rather a long post, with not that many images for a photography Challenge, but it was a different post than normal that I hope Stupidity Hole, at least, will be pleased with. Themes for the Lens-Artists Challenge are posted each Saturday at 12:00 noon EST (which is 4pm, GMT) and anyone who wants to take part can post their images during the week. If you want to know more about the Challenge, details can be found here (https://photobyjohnbo.com/about-lens-artists/), and entries can be found on the WordPress reader using the tag 'Lens-Artists'.

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#QuietHours, #LensArtists, Lens-Artists, #Challenge, #LiminalSpace, #Limina, #Aesthetic,