Day: Aug 20, 2026

#1278 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Firestone Bay, Hybrid Printmaking, SerendipityLeave a comment
Partial Eclipse 2026, work in progress.© theoldmortuary

It is just over a week since I bobbed during the partial eclipse with 9 other bobbers. At the time the experience was both peculiar and beautiful.  Peculiar because we swam for virtually the whole of the eclipse experience. Quite often with special Eclipse glasses which gave us a completely safe experience to view the eclipse in real time, but our vision  was limited to black and red vision of the black moon obscuring most of an orange sun . While our bodies were experiencing the sensations of the sea and our ears were hearing the happiness and exclamations of a bay, full of happy swimmers.

When we didn’t have the glasses on we were experiencing ever changing highly saturated colours that slowly darkened and changed as the moon crossed the sun. One of my Eclipse glasses visions was of sparks of light like golden diamond twinkles firing off the perimeter of the sun. I think caused by drops of sea water on my eyelashes or on the plastic lens of the eclipse glasses.

I knew I wanted to create an image of the experience, but which one?

Until I decided to throw caution to the wind and put all my recollections into one image. Not as mad as you might think for someone who worked in medical imaging. For example a CT scan image is made of many amalgamated pictures taken from lots of different angles at slightly different times.

My hybrid printmaking technique with photography and painted or mono printed images uses exactly that technique, modified a little.

Yesterday I had to get a bit of a wiggle on to get this image off to a printer for a test run Giclee print. It is still not the finished article but I will need to see how a print looks.

So that’s where the image is currently but what about my personal recollection?

Really one of the loveliest things I have done in a really familiar home environment. I still haven’t quite found the words to describe the experience. But I have found the many layers of a half decent picture.

#1277 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Film, Hugo and Lola1 Comment
First Love

What’s the last movie that made you cry?

Not the last movie that I watched that made me cry, but the most significant.

Purely because the whole cinema experience, done well, rips off a skin layer or two of my stoicism and protective emotional guard. The most insignificant scene in a well made film can make me silently blub at its beauty, musicality, prose, costumes, acting, scene setting or some hidden, to others , personal connection. I am a regular cinema sniffer and silent weeper.

Marley and Me.

I had just left my canine first love, Mr Hugo, with his grandmother on his first holiday with her, and my first time of leaving him.  On the flight the person next to me was watching Marley and Me. I was reading a book but every time I looked up I could see the scenes being played out before me in absolute silence.

My book is unmemorable but often enough when I glanced at the film on my neighbours screen, my eyes pricked with emotion, nothing to do with the book. I knew how the film would end and I didn’t want to witness how the love of a dog plays out  before I experienced it for myself.

Marley and Hugo had the same lifespan.Similar life events happened, Hugo was not exactly expelled from puppy school, but we didn’t stay the course. As with many pets,difficult  life decisions were made, not only the final one. Age is as unkind to dogs as it can be with humans.

I have never actually watched the film with the dialogue. I am almost certain I never will. But if I had watched it an hour ago, a week ago or any time span it would be the film where uncontrollable sobbing would occur, probably the whole way through. Nobody needs that as entertainment.