Mirror Maze

I'd found out recently that St. Andrew's Cathedral had acquired a mirrored sculpture garden, with inscriptions.  As this combined two of my favourite things (reflection photos and words) I headed along to have a look when I was in town the other day.

There's also a 200 year old olive tree

Overlapping words

 Split-sky and shadow

...in which I cunningly take a photo of myself from the back...

a slab of sky

There are also some amazing murals on the walls of the building across the street, by street artist Rogue-One.  I would not have guessed there was so much going on under the Clyde...

A final, excessively chocolate-boxy shot of the Cathedral (they're clearly big on mirrors in general).

Silver Shell

Petunias on the IMAX at Glasgow Science Centre (using Blender).

Highland Fling

I got the chance to go along to another social media call at Scottish Ballet  on Saturday.  This time at the Theatre Royal to watch part of a class for the dancers before the matinee performance of "Highland Fling", a Matthew Bourne ballet based on "La Sylphide" which I'd managed to get along to the evening before.  It's a wild, funny, tartan-drenched affair with drugs, tarot cards and sylphs like zombie fairies.  The Glasgow run has finished, but the company are on tour with it round Scotland at the moment, so if it's on near you you should definitely go and see it.

 Rehearsal pianist (and very tartan scenery)

Scenes of levitation

My camera was struggling a wee bit with the lower light levels so I also took a few shots with an unreasonably long shutter speed for the motion-blur-colour effects... 

A Break in the Ice

Adventures in Black and White

More Hipstamatic double exposures.  I don't know who this woman is, or why there are two posters of her in Ashton Lane, but she does go quite well with the leaves.

Glass roses

Obviously the tower had to feature at some point...

Clouded trees

Light through a star and "The Twelve Dancing Princesses".

Five Tangos

On Saturday morning, along with a another batch of bloggers,  I got to go along to a rehearsal of the programme for Scottish Ballet's new Autumn Season.  The ballet they were working on on Saturday was 'Five Tangos', but the programme also includes 'Run For It' which was developed for the Cultural Olympiad and 'Workwithinwork'.

The company consists of 35 dancers, and even though this particular ballet only involves 14 dancers, there are several different 'casts' all learning the part so that performances can be spread across the company during the course of the season.  

This meant that although everyone isn't dancing all the time during the rehearsal there are other groups kind of marking the moves in the background.

Claire Robertson who was dancing the main female role and whom we got to chat to after the rehearsal

along with Owen Thorne, above.  They gave us an insight into the dangers of over-decorated tutus (the men's arms get shredded by the sharp diamante when doing lifts) and the tendency to break into dance at odd moments.

Being launched through the air

Another dancer watches while sewing ribbons on to her shoes

Leaping

Tango Four (I think)

I'd never photographed dancing before and was quite keen to have a shot.  In some ways it was similar to photographing gigs, in that there was music and movement.  The main difference was the speed of the movement and the amount of distance travelled; even the liveliest band don't tend to move around the stage to the extent the dances do, or at anything like the speeds.  

To give you an idea of it I usually aim for a shutter speed of around 125th of a second when shooting bands.  At the Rezillos gig last year I pushed that up to 250th of a second as they were jumping around a lot, but here even 640th of a second wasn't always enough to freeze the dancers.   

It also wasn't enough to freeze just any moment as this could result in the sort of effect you get when photographing people while they're talking with people caught in strange expressions or, in this case,  strange postures.   It began to seem that in some  ways the dangers were like pendulums moving between instants of stillness and the trick to getting a good shot was to catch these instants.   

Anyway, I had a great time and will certainly be trying to see the programme when it's in theatres next month.   (There are a few more shots from the morning over on Flickr.)

Torchbearing

Only a week late - the photos from the Olympic torch relay through Glasgow.  After some discussion we all rejected the balcony at the top of the Boyd Orr as a viewpoint and went and stood on the steps outside.    

Kenny's llama t-shirt

It was quite some time before the torch appeared, being preceded by dozens of policemen on motorbikes.  And buses.

Lots of buses

Another bus

Even the No. 62 managed to get in on the act.  At this point the dog in the bottom right of this photo had given up in disgust

and was doing its best Greyfriars Bobby impression

Some people had dressed up for the occasion (or possibly were on their way to some sort of dance)

At last - the torch appeared.  It was much less fiery than I had imagined…

I quite like this one because it looks like the flag's been photoshopped in  

More torching...

Space Odyssey

Street art from under Kelvinbridge, escalator from Princes Square, daffodil from the garden.