Cherry Leaf Slate Fade

Cherry Leaf Slate Fade, originally uploaded by ...escher....

I am quite excited about today. I've found a new place to make land art with huge amounts of scope, lots of interesting nooks and crannies, wild places and interesting materials too. What's more I have permission to make whatever I like there so no more worries about annoying land owners (that's annoying them rather than them being annoying). It will give me the opportunity to persue some more involved projects over the coming winter. I can't wait!

That's where we went this morning for an explore. I didn't take my camera kit with me so didn't make anything but I had to use the wonderfully coloured cherry leaves I collected beforehand, as they fade quite quickly.

I learnt even more things about leaves today, how some hold their colour after being torn whereas some don't. The different colours that cherry leaves turn must all have different chemical properties. In a couple of places where the colour changes in this sculpture there was only one leaf of that shade so I had to be economical with them. One in particular, which was the right shade of green to go between the normal green and the yellow/green, went brown once torn. So you can see towards the bottom that there is a brown line. Despite that line being the right shade of green at first and it being placed there as I was finishing up so they were relatively fresh it still had turned brown by the time I could photo it. But then if I hadn't told you that you probably would have thought I'd done it on purpose!

With the nights drawing in I'll have to be getting out earlier than I have of late. I was having to do 3 second exposures to get these pictures as it was getting dark. And what with getting home late and loading up the photos there has not been time to write proper stories either, and as Monday morning looms so does work after a very nice week off. Autumn may bring wonderful opportunities for colour but as the daylight is squeezed it also brings less opportunity to use those colours. Such is the cycle of life and the seasons.

Oh and I was surprised to see this still there, although the flowers had drooped (must have the knack of making mud balls) and this too.