SouthBank Xmas Activities

Having missed ( due to swine flu' ) hearing Haydn's 'The creation' when it was performed at the Proms , for our Xmas music treat we went to see the Orchestra and Choir of the Age of Enlightenment perform it at the Royal Festival Hall. What a sound! - really appreciated the individual instruments and the swelling crescendos of the choir compared to hearing it on CD. A packed hall too (including David Dimbleby - it must be so hard to go out of an evenings entertainment when you're recognised and followed by lots of whispers )

Beforehand we'd gone to Somerset House to see the exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery on London Building Sites 1952-62 by Frank Auerbach. An interesting combination of powerful impasto oil paintings with the preliminary sketches and also photos. The video podcast of those based on the Shell Building Site gives a good overview. My motivation for going was based on my interest in the building sites around here- particularly the cranes but here was a rather different view: " not drawn to the spectacle of modern buildings reaching the sky but to the primal qualities of the earth displaced in their wake"

On our way back across Waterloo Bridge towards the SouthBank (and an early dinner at The Canteen) I had more choice of subjects for practising 'digital fireworks' ( moving my camera when capturing image in nightscene mode)