Gargoyles and Sunflowers

Today I prepped for the gargoyle photo safari by wandering around the UO Library and Art Museum and pointing my camera's zoom lens at the stone heads adorning the walls.   I'm made the following observations

• Early morning sunlight or evening sunlight will turn stone ruddy.  Noon time sunlight turns stone white or yellow.  Unless there's a forest fire 100 miles away.
• Deeply embossed designs or fully three-dimensional heads probably photograph the best on the side of the building the sun isn't shining directly on,  i.e. the north side at noon or the west side in the morning or the east side at dusk.  
• I think shooting a stone face or figure with sunlight striking at the extreme right, left or top will result in a high contrast shot that will confound the camera's ability to deal with light levels. . . unless there's a neighboring building or sidewalk providing light in-fill.
• It's probably best to shoot heads and gargoyles as directly in the front of them as you can.  Shooting wall details at an angle may result in awkward trapezoids.
• I thin better views are obtained by standing across the street or equivalent distance from a building, otherwise, you're looking at up gargoyle noses.
• It's hard to hod a two pound camera still in order to keep images centered when the zoom is all the way at 83X Zoom, unless one has a tripod.  

In different news, the big sunflower outside our deck has suddenly wilted; all the streaming yellow petals are sagging.  I guess the inner flowers have all been pollinated by the bees and the big flower's job is done--its head is swollen with seeds and hangs down toward the ground.   The smaller, newer sunflower blooms are still tracking the sun, and I suspect they will be holding their heads up for another week or so before it's their turn to droop with seeds.  The squirrels will probably discover them before too long.