Let it Be Legenderry

UK City of Culture - Let it Be Legenderry

In 2013 Derry will be the first city to be designated as UK City of Culture for a year. A programme of events is being planned. The banner across the white ex-barracks building declaring “Let it be LegenDerry” is a reference to those events.

Ebrington Square, Derry was formerly the parade ground of Ebrington Army Barracks. So it makes an appropriate venue for the “Cow Parade” occupied it in the summer of 2012.

Under the guidance of Ilex (the local Urban Regeneration Company) the parade ground has been transformed into a public open space. Gradually the buildings around it are being renovated and finding new largely cultural uses.

Each of the cows in the parade was painted by a different artist. Each artist was paired with a community group and worked with them to identify a theme.

One of the cows in this panorama – the one with the little girl climbing on it – was created by St Columb’s Cathedral Youth Club. Its theme is “shared history”. They painted it under the guidance of artist Bridget Murray. I also cropped out a rectangular panorama of about 180° highlighting this painted cow and the little girl climbing on it. It is available as a print

The other cow – with its back to us is called “Clover Patch” and was created by North West Quilters’ Guild and artist Sean O’Donnell. Its theme is industrial heritage – remembering Derry’s garment industry.

The global Cow Parade project is said to be the largest participative art project in the world. Having been seen by 300m people world wide it certainly has a claim to that title! In fact there are many cow parades. The organisers provide plain white fiberglass cows – mostly in three characteristic stances – and artists and community groups in a local area come together to decorate their cow in a way that highlights a locally relevant theme.

There are twelve, or more of these cows in Ebrington Square and a few others scattered around Derry.

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Europe / UK-Northern Ireland

Lat: 54° 59' 54.77" N
Long: 8° 19' 40.95" W

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: High. Pinpoints the exact spot.

Equipment: The source images were taken with a Canon EOS 5D, Zenitar 16mm fisheye f/2.8 lens. The camera was mounted on a Kaiden Kiwi panorama adapter on a Manfrotto 190XDB tripod.

Horizontal photographs were taken at 60° angles and also two ground shots and a sky shot. Each "shot" consisted of three bracketed exposures from +2 to -2 stops.

A total of 27 separate images were combined using Hugin in order to achieve this High Dynamic Range type result.