Labor of Love.

Beautiful Streams in Smoky Mountain National Park.

Timols’ 40th was coming up with a dash of speed in early July and I thought a handmade ring would suit the occasion.

A bit of reading revealed:

Birth Stones – July: Ruby “The gleaming ruby should adorn, All those who in July are born. For thus they’ll be exempt and free From lover’s doubts and anxiety.”

First stop was my mate Michael Finch Jewellery with “Timol in tow”.

But then it became “Andy in tow” when Timol’s mind got “expansive”.

I therefore abandoned Timol, with her consent of course, and set out on a solo mission to conquer the purchase of my 1st ring ever!

Next stop was Leaza of Touch Stone Gems who showed me a lovely selection of synthetic and real-deal stones.

If I was going to pay Mike 1/2 my salary to make a unique once-off ring then I couldn’t possibly choose a synthetic stone.

I saw such a lovely Sky Topaz but then oops!!!

My eyes also missile-locked in on a shiny glistening pink red ruby.

No choice – I took both before Leaza could leave with her showcases of jewels.

I showed Mike who immediately blurted out “Sorry brother, you need another ruby to balance alongside the Topaz or it’s TWO rings”.

Leaza could not supply us with any firm guarantee in the short space of time before deadline.

One ring became two, which Mike so eloquently described in his surfer Buddhist drawl as follows:

STONES

1 x 14x12mm Sky Blue Topaz – long cushion cut

1 x 3.5mm round Select Ruby – 0.195ct

METAL

Approximately 17grams of Sterling silver was used in total.

DESCRIPTION

These two stones were set in two separate rings.

The Sky Blue Topaz was tube set in a cupped setting and mounted on a 6mm wide court shaped silver band with a milled finish.

The Select Ruby was gypsy set (rub over) in a court shape silver band with poished rims and a milled finish.

I took the images below in true amateur Andy style, being my first attempt at close-ups of rings in terrible light and like always; refusing to try any manual settings – full auto for me!

An introduction by Andy Carr , who is incidentally and definitely not me.

“Have you ever been overwhelmed by the astounding beauty of vistas that you have come across in your travels? Have you been frustrated in that you never seem able to capture the feeling of the magnificent view of the vistas in front of you in a single photograph. For this reason I have experimented with the combining of multiple photos to achieve a better representation of what one sees in front of one at these special power spots in our world.

History

I started to play around with the combination of multiple photos to build up a 360° views as a project when I was at university. After capturing the vista in black & white with anything from 40 to 60 photos, then developing and printing them and sticking the photos down on a board, to build up the image. The results where promising, the process challenging and ultimately the results where ok, not fantastic.

After finishing army national service in 1989 as a photographer I left photography all together, only to be grabbed by photography again in 2008. Astounded by the versatility of digital photography and the ability to manipulate images, opened up the idea of once again trying the multiple photo approach, to 360° views.

The web site is a documentation of the results of this journey over the last few of years.”

What lovely and amazing pics by a cool artist!

Check them out right here.

7 April 2010

Bellair Road, Durban South Africa armed only with a Samsung G800 Camera Phone.

A very poor area; plagued by crime and other misfortunes, such as fire.

At 12h36 that afternoon the three delighted young chaps shown below were having a whale of a time.

The water was shooting up high into the sky and they were laughing, dancing, bopping, weaving and smiling from ear to ear.

Whilst I would have liked to have had my Canon handy; I do believe that the camera phone captured the essence of what transpired then and there.