Red Cardinal

Work catch-up after the hectic weekend went on until 7.00 am today, but I had print-ready files burned to disc and the job and myself put to bed at that stage. I only got a couple of hours sleep before going in to town to meet the printer and hand over the disc. We'd both been badly delayed in traffic, so it was around noon by the time I got to the bank to make a long-delayed lodgement. My bank branch is in the Bank of Ireland headquarters building on Lower Baggot Street, a building which dates from the '60s and whose design was heavily influenced by the work of Mies van der Rohe. It's looking a bit the worse for wear now, but it's brightened up by a couple of fine large-scale sculptural pieces in two of the public plazas. I've already featured one of these over at one of my other photoblogs, and this is the second one. It's titled Red Cardinal, is by John Burke, and dates from 1978.

I pass this by regularly and hardly give it a second glance. But blip responsibilities are increasingly opening my eyes to new ways of seeing, and I spent a hugely enjoyable ten minutes or so snapping away from a variety of unusual angles. Back home, it didn't take long to choose this shot as my blip of the day. It's been a dull morning and a wet afternoon, but the shots I got today of this dramatic piece are far better than others I took under what I'd normally consider much better conditions. That's another thing blipping is doing: it's forcing me to pick up the camera even when the sun isn't shining. Good old blipfoto!