England finale: Poppies
Oct. 25th, 2014 06:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neadodsAfter the Holmes exhibit, we split up. L stayed with her friends, and The Other M, while M and C and I left with Jean and Fake Keith of Staggering Stories to meet up with Keith, AsdaMan, and El Presidente of Staggering Stories. (Only Jean is a London native, so the Staggering Storytellers were taking the opportunity to do a little in-country tourism.)
I had no idea until I got there the impact and the sheer size of the installation, which is flooding all around the Tower, lapping and pouring and advancing in waves.
I also had no idea, until we turned the corner and saw the line of volunteers (200 per shift) that the poppies were being assembled, not just being taken out of a box and stuck in the ground. Someone -- usually in military uniform, the Tower is, after all, still a military base(ish) and a historical site -- hammered in a stalk. Then a volunteer in red would gently place the petals on the stem and screw them down with the center of the flower.
The last third of my photo album is a wash of red. It's really impossible to show the impact, much less the size of it, in 600 x 600 pixels. Here in America, we keep seeing the same two photos: poppies waterfalling from the "Weeping Window" and heading to the Thames, and the Queen and Duke wandering among them. Like St. Mary's, I kept trying to get the right "emotion" shot.
Photos in America only show the right side of this.
Trying to get the scale of it. My mind refuses to grasp that every flower is a life; there are too many.
The line of volunteers
Jean had a professional camera and isolated this volunteer. Scott put video of the poppy assembly on my Facebook.
This is my best shot, I think. It was the end of shift and one of the volunteers stopped to... get a photo? Pray? Couldn't tell from the distance.
From the sublime to the ridiculous. Staggering Stories and Friends at the Tower.
I had no idea until I got there the impact and the sheer size of the installation, which is flooding all around the Tower, lapping and pouring and advancing in waves.
I also had no idea, until we turned the corner and saw the line of volunteers (200 per shift) that the poppies were being assembled, not just being taken out of a box and stuck in the ground. Someone -- usually in military uniform, the Tower is, after all, still a military base(ish) and a historical site -- hammered in a stalk. Then a volunteer in red would gently place the petals on the stem and screw them down with the center of the flower.
The last third of my photo album is a wash of red. It's really impossible to show the impact, much less the size of it, in 600 x 600 pixels. Here in America, we keep seeing the same two photos: poppies waterfalling from the "Weeping Window" and heading to the Thames, and the Queen and Duke wandering among them. Like St. Mary's, I kept trying to get the right "emotion" shot.
Photos in America only show the right side of this.
Trying to get the scale of it. My mind refuses to grasp that every flower is a life; there are too many.
The line of volunteers
Jean had a professional camera and isolated this volunteer. Scott put video of the poppy assembly on my Facebook.
This is my best shot, I think. It was the end of shift and one of the volunteers stopped to... get a photo? Pray? Couldn't tell from the distance.
From the sublime to the ridiculous. Staggering Stories and Friends at the Tower.
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Date: 2014-10-26 02:44 pm (UTC)