Night and Day

Sunday morning and I am awake - well coming round, with copious cups of coffee.

Yesterday turned out so busy (well we did get up a bit late). We had to get a few bits and pieces from the shops for the weekend first, but we tied that in with a bit of photography with my new camera - did I mention it already?

Finally after many years with just a compact digital camera I decided I need to go back to the old SLR photography - I just was not getting the results from the compact. Even my snapshots were substandard. I kept remembering back to my old Olympus 35mm with a zoom lens (can't remember offhand how powerful, but probably around 300) I had great fun with that and produced some really nice crisp, clear shots of things that were of interest to me - like shadows and leaves and reflections on water etc.

But of course I got tired of toting this lead weight along with me which is why I went for the compact. Now I am right back to the lead weight again - with relish! It is such a joy to be able to see crisp results and not have to endure endless lost shots because of shutter lag.

After lots of agonising, comparisons online and an almost fatal error when I plumped for and even purchased a camera that I realised (luckily just before I opened the box - so it was still fully refundable) was in fact not going to deliver the quality I wanted, I finally purchased a Nikon D90.

I find it quite bulky in my hands, but it does have a nice grip which allows me to swing it easily when I walk with it - but this is not a camera review - you can go online for that. I think I might have got a bit sidetracked there :-)

After our excursion into town we got back for 'breakfast' at one o'clock and after that I settled down to sort out a few photos to send to family. Of course this always takes an absolute age - and that is just to pick out some options. My eyes were positively square by the time I said to Vic "lets go down to the Martinique for a cocktail!" and I still have to finish sorting and printing the photos - that is a job for this afternoon as we want to get them in the post tomorrow.

So it would appear that it is a photo dominated weekend anyway, so my 'camera review' was not so out of place after all.

But now down to business:

Today's image is of two panels I made for the fireplace in my last house. They are large format reliefs approximately 1ft by 30inches. They are rather Art Nouveauy - nice and flowy and all sinuous lines and symbolism. Well, the very obvious symbolism is of course the Sunflower which represents the day and the Poppy which represents the night. If you look a bit closer then you start to notice the seeds which leads you on to the life cycle of the plants and of course of the rest of nature. My favourite subjects again. Well it was made for my fireplace!

True to form of course, I never did finish - eg cast them in something more durable than plaster so they never did get attached to my fireplace - and now that I no longer own that house, well it will never happen there. However, at the present time we are discussing ideas for our new fireplace in Spain - so who knows where they may end up!

By the way - the two panels look different in the two pictures because the sunflowers are cast in plaster and spray painted with silver paint while the poppies are cast only in wax at this time - brown, luscious wax like caramel