easy on the eyes, hard on the skull

[15_the_circle]

[OT from cottage renovations]

there are lots of ways to play with light.  one of which I have not yet tired is through these images the many effects of light on Grove vegetation. 

another is one that I've always wanted to get a chance to work with but never have: glass, as in glassmaking.  design and execution and the properties of glass have always had a strong appeal to me.  some day I do hope to get a chance both to study and to try it (on visiting Venice I was anxious to learn something from the Murano glassworks; they were happy to sell their wares but when I tried asking about technique suddenly it was all "non capisco" (though "vietato" would have been more like it)). 

oh, well.  some day. 

(click through this thumbnail for higher resolution image)

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Chestnut Avenue

hanging in friends' yard is this attractive and clever design for a birdbath; a shallow glass dish suspended in a wrought iron frame with a basket handle.  it was a couple of years ago when they first put it up, hanging from a tree branch just at the height of my forehead and indeed that was how I first encountered it, with a sudden clonk to the foreskull followed immediately by a drenching from its erstwhile contents.  it's now a few inches higher and their yard is that much safer. 

[in the interest of reasonable disclosure I have to fess up to having messed with this image some: in order to get both its near and distant rims in reasonable focus what you see here is actually a composite from two different exposures]