More of the Louvre

Since blogger is grudgingly and slowly letting me upload some pics tonight, some more pics from Paris, still sticking with the Louvre theme:



I.M. Pei's glass pyramid which now functions as the entrance to the Louvre, descending down into the pyramid to a vast space with the ticket desks, information and entrances to the various wings of what is probably the world's most famous museum. Turn the other way and walk through the Jardin de Tuileries and you come out into a square leading your eyes up a line straight to the Champs Elysees and L'Arc de Triomphe.



heading into one of the wings with some of the Louvre's astonishing amount of Classical material



Which includes the world's original supermodel, The Venus de Milo. Who I believe is now romantically linked with Paul McCartney :-)



La Joconde - the Mona Lisa, smiling for the many tourists. While photography seemed to be fine in most of the Louvre they did ask - as is the usual case in any gallery - not to use cameras in the rooms with the paintings, probably because so many idiots don't know how to switch off their flash which damages them. Despite the fact I rarely use the flash I still kept my camera in my pocket for this wing, despite masses of tourists - especially the many Japanese - merrily ignoring the rule and firing camera flashes off right in front of the paintings which made me want to slap them round the head, bloody idiots. There were so many the curators didn't even try to stop them. I broke my rule and did take one painting pic for this (no flash so I don't feel to guilty) as people were standing right there in front of curators snapping away.

One of the things I really liked in the wings with the paintings was the fact that several artists had been allowed to set up their easels to paint their own versions of some of the works, something I found to be rather satisfying to see. Actually La Joconde wasn't the most impressive painting there, famous as she is - the best work I saw (and there were many we didn't have time to see properly, it is vast) was one that annoyingly I can't remember the name of, but it reminded me of one of the Venetian paintings I raved about on here a few years back when there was an exhibition on at the Royal Scottish Academy. I wish I could remember the name or artist, but like a couple of the works I saw there it leapt out the frame at me, the colours, especially the blues, so amazingly bright and vibrant it was like the artist had painted Mediterannean sunlight right into the canvas, still pouring out of the painting centuries later.



In the Richelieu wing there was this terrific open space, essentially a sculpture garden indoors, with this amazing glass and steel roof (like a smaller version of the brilliant one now on top of the British Museum in London) shielding us from the elements so it felt like being outside but sheltered. Natural light floods this space and its twin further along the wing (these are the ones in the video clips from the other day) and a lot of artists were making the most of the light to sketch some of the friezes and sculptures; I'd imagine the statues would afford a great class in how to portray human anatomy and form and what a terrific space to draw in. Or take pictures in.



I love this space, I think I could sit here for ages






Inside the glass pyramid - I love the spiral staircase with no visible means of support (not even thin suspended wires); the column it is wrapped round is actually a lift. Its open at the top and the entire column sinks down - it doesn't telescope down, the entire structure actually slides down into the floor, very cool!



As usual click the pics to see the larger version on the Woolamaloo Flickr stream (only 184 in the Paris set so far, still a ton to add; no doubt many more Paris pics and vids to come!)

On the BBC

The photograph I posted here last weekend of the new moon hanging over a twilight street of Victorian tenements has been put up by the BBC on their website in their weekly 'your pictures' section of the Scottish news part of the BBC site (it's the fourth one in). I was quite surprised this shot came out at all, actually, it was my usual gonzo photography, spur of the moment, see a scene, try and snap it - no kit, just my small compact digital that lives in my bag, a tiny 3-inch mini tripod meant for table top use that I sometimes have in the bag and a handy gatepost to sit it on - and a lot of luck. I'm pretty chuffed that it worked and even more chuffed that the Beeb picked it for this week's crop of images from round Scotland, especially given how good some of the pictures in that feature are each week (click to see the larger image on my Flickr).



Since I started posting digital photos I've had some borrowed for articles, for teaching guides and other uses (and that's not counting ones I've taken at comics conventions for the work blog) - doesn't pay anything but it does give a damned big feel-good factor. And being an old web-hand I still have that old-fashioned belief that the web is meant to allow us to share a bit ( a lot of us who started online in the early 90s still feel that, I think), so I kind of like the fact that a number of different folks have asked to use some of my pics on occasion.

New moon



Just after sunset a pale new moon hangs in the sky over the Victorian tenements of Edinburgh



The same section of canal as the earlier canoe photos, only a couple of hours later on (click for the bigger versions on Flickr)

snowy Saltire
Originally uploaded by byronv2

Wind whipping around a Saltire above the entrance to the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh as snow makes streaks across a leaden night sky

Whoo
Originally uploaded by Beckbecky

Courtesy of BeckyBecky, one of my Flickr and Fotolog chums, comes this scene from SantaCon which is both funny and disturbing at the same time! If this is Santa I hate to think what state Rudolf and his red nose are in...

Hunting werewolves

Full moon this weekend, good werewolf hunting weather (hey, everyone needs a hobby and it gives me some exercise and gets me out into the fresh air):



(all this scene needs now is Christopher Lee in his Dracula cape; click for the bigger version on my Flickr)



(the full moon reflecting on the Union Canal; fun to compare this to summer evening pic of this same location I took a while back on my Flickr)

No lycanthropes were harmed in the making of these photographs, although my fingers got sodding frozen.

(click to see the full size pic on my Flickr page)

The lovely Victorian merry-go-round in Princes Street Gardens as part of the Winter Wonderland; annoyingly I missed getting pics of the official switching on of the Christmas lights and opening of the Winter Wonderland and the craft fair and German market because I didn't know what time it started on Thursday, although I did see it all coming on and fireworks going off as I sat on the upper deck of the bus on the way home. Still, the evening before, on a wild, windy, wet winter's night I saw them testing out the lights and the colours through the rain-spattered caught my eye and since reflections on the bus window or camera shake didn't matter much for this kind of pic I thought I'd just snap it.

Bitesize

The BBC asked if they could borrow one of my photographs from my Flickr stream recently, to use as part of their Bitesize revision guides, in this case to be part of a audio-visual slideshow to accompany a reading of "The Field Mouse" by Gillian Clarke - my pic of a harvest-time field, taken just outside North Berwick near Tantallon Castle is the first one in the presentation. No money, sadly, but the feel-good factor is quite rewarding, especially since I'm so fond of poetry.

Greyfriar's Kirkyard 10
Originally uploaded by byronv2

Since it is Halloween, the night when the realms of the living, the dead and the supernatural intersect, I thought I'd stick up one of my more Gothic images from my Flickr set.

Ah broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll! — a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river;
And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear? — weep now or never more!
See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!
Come! let the burial rite be read — the funeral song be sung! —
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young —
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.

"Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride,
"And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her — that she died!
"How shall the ritual, then, be read? — the requiem how be sung

"By you — by yours, the evil eye, — by yours, the slanderous tongue
"That did to death the innocent that died, and died so young?"

Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song
Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel so wrong!
The sweet Lenore hath "gone before," with Hope, that flew beside
Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride —
For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies,
The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes —
The life still there, upon her hair — the death upon her eyes.

"Avaunt! to-night my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise,
"But waft the angel on her flight with a Paean of old days!
"Let no bell toll! — lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth,
"Should catch the note, as it doth float — up from the damned Earth.
"To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven —
"From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven —
"From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven."

"Lenore", Edgar Alan Poe, 1845

Tttttttthththt That's all folks!



This incredibly cool set of Looney Tunes characters such as Wil E Coyote and Bugs Bunny (one of my personal role models as a child, which might explain a lot) as skeletons is for the Day of the Dead and was snapped in a Hollywood cemetery where the great Mel Blanc (a saint in my Church of Seventh Day Cartoonists) is also buried - the item on the lower right is apparently a rubbing from his headstone. It comes from Superape's Flickr stream, via Boing Boing. Happy Halloween and a macabre Sahmain to you all.

Doors Open Day

Tomorrow (Saturday 29th) is the annual Doors Open Day for Edinburgh, when people can get into buildings and areas of buildings that aren't normally open to the public. It's pretty interesting and also free so accessible to anyone - certainly every place we tried last year proved to be pretty busy with folks making the most of the opportunity. The Cockburn Association has all the details and there is also a Flickr stream for last year's Door's Open, which, I'm rather chuffed to say, also has one of the photos I took on it after the organisers asked if they could use it to help promote the event - hopefully I can get some more pics tomorrow with the new camera this time. I'm looking forward to wandering round with some friends poking into parts of my city that I don't often get to see.

Giraffe Squadron

Messing around on Flickr with a new bunch of pics taken in the refurbished Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow. We just don't see enough giraffes in the same photograph as classic World War Two fighter planes.

Flickr

I've enjoying posting small photographs here and on my Fotolog, so I decided it was about time I set up a basic Flickr account so I could upload more images and try to group them together (Fotolog is great, but the free version is limited to one a day - I do like the way friends on there interact though), so now we have the Woolamaloo Gazette on Flickr! I've uploaded a bunch of pics today, some of which have been on here before, but I'm going to hopefully add a bunch more as I go along.