Helios – and a sunflower

A few weeks ago we went to to Coventry to see the Helios art installation.  To quote from the National Trust’s website, “Helios, a seven-metre sculpture of the Sun, has been created by artist, Luke Jerram. It’s been made from 400,000 photographs of the Sun’s surface and observations by NASA to replicate swirling solar winds and sunspots.”

This installation was outside in the garden of Charterhouse, Coventry, and it was fascinating to see how people interacted with it.  I used the wide-angle lens on my Pixel phone to get a good view of the differences between those who chose the sun and those who chose the shade.  There’s a bit of a circular thing going on, in that the sun is illuminating the sun and also casting a shadow of the sun.

Getting right underneath it with a fisheye lens on my OM-1 allowed me to get the whole diameter of the Helios sculpture.  I tried to get the supports coming from the corners.

The gardens at Charterhouse were full of flowers and pollinating insects.  What better flower for a hoverfly to sit on than a sunflower?   My trusty Olympus 60mm macro lens and OM-1 was the perfect combination.  The unopened sunflower was a nice distance from the other plants and the brick wall behind the flower, so the background nice and fuzzy.

As I post this Helios is still touring, so why not try and track it down?