One Lunation later...

Greetings Everyone,

I hope your summers have been gentle, sweet and savory so far. I've been incredibly busy, so much so that there has been no time to write in this blog. But the big push is finally  nearly done and as a result I have many new little creations that I'm eager to share with you! But before I do that I need to catch you up on how the re-shooting of the Beach House went, so here we go!

  As you may recall, the Beach house was created as a celebration of the pleasures of the summer. The house was designed to stand in shallow waters to catch the reflected lights of warm summer sun and pink moon risings while at the same time several different wind toys were added to play with the gentle breezes.  After the first round of images, I realized that the entire structure looked a bit lop-sided so I added a third little "room" to balance the space a little better. Here is how it looks now:

   I took everything down to the lake to a different location on the day before the actual full moon. I knew the moonrise would be pale because the sun was still 30 minutes from setting but I wanted to try out the new location as I was not entirely certain it would work for the full moon rise which was to be the next day. ( I'll be you didn't realize so much planning went into these shots!) This way, if things did not work out, I could go back to the location I used last month if I had to. While I waited for the sun to go down, I enjoyed the high contrast of the white parts of this house against the deep blue sky reflected in the water. At the top right of the sculpture you can see the large sea shell nestled in the crook of the branch, way up high. This is a little bathtub so the Faeries can take baths in the moonlight!

   The evening was warm and the water was too as the little bay was very shallow, but perfect for what I needed. I hated disturbing all the shorebirds that were using the edge of the water for foraging, but there were other sections that they could use (and did) while I was here for just a few hours. I set the new house up and took my compass heading hoping I had calculated where the moon would be rising close enough to get it with the house. All went very well and though the moon was indeed very pale, the pink light was just wonderful and made the house glow beautifully. I also realized that I want to add some tiny lights to this structure eventually to make it really come alive... ah! an artist is never happy, are they?

    So all seemed perfect for the next day which was to be the actual full moon rise. I returned to the same spot (after a hectic day of shooting other houses up in the mountains - more on that in another post) and again, set up the house and the cameras and waited. And waited. The clock bell on the local library in the nearest town rang the hour and I knew that the moon should be visible any minute now.... only, all I could see was a pale lavender-grey horizon... and then... I realized it: the distant mountains were holding a bank of clouds... there may not be a moonrise at all this evening! Tense minutes passed as I continued to scan the sky hoping for a glimpse... and finally nearly 25 minutes late, it cleared the tops of the distant clouds and began to shine across the water. The deep twilight made for some very tricky shooting conditions as the wind was now up. The camera needed longer time exposures to get the image but all the wind toys were now blurry in the images from moving around and the reflecting moonlight was broken up by the wind-riffled water.... still, it was not a total loss, as I hope you will agree... here are the second round of moon rise images over the Beach Faery House. If you have a favourite one, I'd love to know.... myself, I can't choose which one I like the most! Whichever one is voted as most popular will be the one I include in my new greeting cards which are in development now.

Lots of new houses will be appearing here soon... still shooting and processing images and there are new projects to tell you about too so come back for more news shortly.

Blessings of Peace to you and yours!