Roddy's thoughts and pictures at the close of the day
Svårdsjön Panorama with PlantWave is a one minute movie clip that pans across an autumn panorama of morning mist lifting off Svärdsjön, Dalarna, Sweden. Svårdsjön Panorama The PlantWave midi recordings were from Horsetail Grass beside the boardwalk and a Young Sycamore Tree along the lakeshore - the grass plays the flute part and the sycamore... Continue Reading →
One big problem with the energy crisis is visualisation. I keep reading names and figures but until they have a geographical context I can't really understand the problems. So I've put on my Geography Professor Emeritus hat, sourced appropriate data from Eskom and done some GIS work to establish: Where are the power stations; How much... Continue Reading →
Cloudscapes have always been one of my photo passions and lately I've been extending my skills using the Olympus Live Composite mode. These dawn and dusk shots of the Hogsback skyline from Wild Fox Hill are the longest I've taken. They're 15 minutes of one second exposures, so each picture is a composite combining 900... Continue Reading →
Every few years the Government does its best to wreck the legal and economic life of Makana by proposing to move the High Court to Bhisho. In the mid 1990s I assisted the fight to keep the court here with some maps and population data that showed Makhanda (what was then Grahamstown) to be the... Continue Reading →
One of the most delightful pieces of Målerås Glass is Mats Jonasson's Otters Playing - two twisting otters chasing a fish, all embedded within a matrix of sheer lead crystal glass. I wanted to see if I could use light painting to add the effect of a flow of liquid to his creation so I... Continue Reading →
I'm so pleased with the reception of the Hogsback Symphony that I've decided to use my very first set of PlantWave recordings for another. I recorded the fruit trees in and around two of Dalarna's beautiful baroque orchards: at Gamla Staberg and Källslätten. They were all burgeoning with fruit in the glorious autumn weather: mostly... Continue Reading →
I was very pleased with the reception to the Juxtaposed Dalarna Landscapes posted previously and that's inspired me to try something similar with the work in the Hogsback gallery I have already published. Hogsback Juxtaposed: SuperMoon Rising In the Dalarna landscapes there's lots of potential to juxtapose images on top of the reflections of the... Continue Reading →
If you've followed posts in this blog or in my social media you'll know that I have a long standing fascination with mirroring and overlaying landscapes and nature. These three pictures are the latest incarnation. We were in Dalarna, Sweden, for the autumn of 2022 and here I've tried to capture - through overlays -... Continue Reading →
Every once in a while I'll return to one of my lifetime's passions - making maps. This post is about one of the biggest mapping problems. If you look either at the header to this post or some of the beautiful maps of South Africa's river networks they give the impression that the region is... Continue Reading →
This is something different. In July 2014 I had my first experience of plant sound - it was Dan Fox’s installation ‘Harmonica Botanica’ at the Cragside gardens in Northumberland. I just loved the concept and sensation of hearing a laurel plant grow. Eight years have passed since then but I recently discovered - to my... Continue Reading →
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