Shadowy Figures.

Here’s something very slightly interesting.  You may have seen this aerial picture, taken by paragliding photographer George Steinmetz for the National Geographic, in 2008.  It’s slightly odd at first glance because there’s no horizon or sky.  It’s only after you realise that you’re looking at camel shadows not at camels, that the actual camels are the tiny foreshortened whitish streaks below each shadow, that it makes sense; and it’s still disconcerting to see ephemeral shadows describing solids in a much more convincing and informative way than the images of the objects themselves do.

With that in mind, I’ve taken lots and lots of pictures of Topsy and her shadow.  I’ve found it to be much harder than I’d expected but on Monday it snowed, and with a white background and plenty of bright light I’m hoping there will be more opportunity to capture the interesting poses, though I still don’t know what I’ll make with them.  Here’s a few of the ones I got yesterday:

Unlike the camels, these are foreshortened.

Jack.

Having buried Alex the ex-Yorkshire terrier at the bottom of the garden earlier in the summer (he was 19 and still going strong, but he was hit by a truck), my daughter Alma has now acquired Jack, a Silky terrier.  They are Yorkshire terriers crossed with Australian terriers; slightly larger than Yorkshire terriers but still pretty tiny, with very soft fur like a cat’s.  He’s now 11 weeks old.

If you click on the pictures you will be able to see him in his full glory – and practically at full scale:

He hasn’t had much contact with the goats yet, but he gets on very well with Topsy, who treats him like a small child and generally looks out for him.  He’s too young to take for walks; we’ll probably start in the spring, he’ll still be too short to walk around in snow this winter.