Dreaming

A picture like this has to be landscape really. Any outdoor picture featuring the, er, landscape, means a landscape orientation is the first instinct. Interesting, then, to encounter a landscape painter who liked to use portrait orientation. The original of this caught my eye in an Oxford gallery. According to the curator... 

"The portrait format is important for enhancing [the dramatic effect]. It emphasises the sense of downward pressure on the diminutive figures. Although no specific message is being conveyed [it gives] a sense of how vulnerable and insignificant people are in comparison to the forces of nature. The notion of travelling away from the civilisation and materialism of towns and cities to the wilds of the countryside implied in such works may be related to [the artist's] interest in stoicism"

And you thought you were just turning the camera on its side! 

MrsM, who has far more art education and ability than me, said, "Didn't you think 'Hobbits'?" 

My view of the city that sees itself as a bastion of British civilization is from the top of one of its most nakedly materialistic structures, a cathedral of retail devotion in the heart of the shopping district. As a prelude to our Renaissance art, we found the corner of the complex that is an old-fashioned library, in which was an old-fashioned photo exhibition by the local society. Impressive and eclectic: pictures ranging from Oxford back-streets to Scottish castles and Nepalese mountains, British red squirrels to African big game. The standout 'wow' for me was a night shot of two rhino, mirroring each-other's pose, and mirrored in turn in a water-hole. Not taken locally. It is just visible on the extreme right of the group shot on this page. Landscape format