Wildflowers – Gapfiller Art in Christchurch

Due to there being a sudden increase in empty lots in Christchurch, as damaged buildings are demolished, a group of local artists have got together and come up with a concept called GapFiller. Its where they bring art to the empty spaces, and also to the people. Some is on a small scale and some is surprisingly large, and as far as I know, they are doing it for free. I am assuming that this mass planting of wildflowers in the middle of the city, where a group of shops used to be is one of their efforts, and as I drive past it on the way to work, I noticed when the riotous mass of colour burst into bloom. A visit with my camera was required!

All colours of the rainbow

There were so many different flowers, many I had no idea what they are, and I am a gardener, so it was interesting for me. Just seed scattered on bare ground and then left to fend for itself, and out of nothing you get wilflower beauty….

I have no idea what this purple flower is but the bees loved it

strawflower

godetia

I started out shooting with the 17-55mm on to get all the wide angle shots, it does a fairly good job of closeups, and then I remembered my nifty fifty was also in the camera bag, so back for a swap over. It does a better job of blurring the backgrounds and separating the subject from them, in my opinion.

The colours were amazing, and it was a great day for it, not a lot of wind and lots of overcast cloud so very soft shadows but bright enough to be useful. I have learned the hard way to keep an eye on what the sky is doing and go out when it is right, if you wait too long, the cloud will often blow over and you lose that lovely softening filter effect that they provide.

Fabulous blue cornflower

First of all, greetings to the new blog followers, I had a few join up after the Chinese Lantern post. Thanks and I hope you enjoy reading my blog.

This was my favourite shot of the day for several reasons, first the amazing colour, and second because I did a stupid thing and forget to CHECK MY SETTINGS before I started shooting and had the ISO up to 1000 from the last setting. This shot has been processed in the Lightroom4 Beta and its noise reduction is much better than LR3 has. It did a great job of the background of this flower.

And this is a shot of one of the biggest of the current Gapfiller installations, a giant shadowboard with a sense of humour. I shot the huge thistle in the foreground as the focus of this shot

So, out of devastation there was nothing, out of nothing there was art, and in the art was beauty. I had a good day out with the camera on this day 🙂

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