May 2--Any Colour You Like

[zyzyly]

Ok, I slept so well last night and woke up with my good spirits intact. I feel better now.

I still have a busy week ahead of me, but nothing that can't be managed.

I walked a lot today, but didn't take any pictures, so dug into the ten years ago archives. When I started this year, I was planning to do that more often--revisit where I was 10 years ago when I first did a post every day for a year. I guess I just got caught up in my life as it is, rather than it was.

Anyway, this is from 10 years ago today:



Im the image, the girl in the picture is my niece Hanna, who is now 10 years older and all grown up studying to be an optometrist. The picture captures about the time she was transitioning from a little girl to a teenager. Note the frown. She has blossomed into a very smart and beautiful young woman.

The flowers are irises. After my first wife died, someone gave me a pot with some blooming irises. They died, and I tossed the pot out the back door into the yard and thought nothing more of it, until these lovely irises bloomed a year and a half later. Their blooming coincided perfectly with the blooming of the new life I was putting back together. They were the primary motivation for taking this particular picture. These guys have bloomed every year since, except for this year. I think they were victims of the drought. I will dig up the rhizomes this fall and see if I can revive them.

I didn't want to just take a photograph of some lovely flowers, so I cut them and put them in a vase. but that wasn't enough either. I was a photography student and felt the need to be creative. So I put up a white backdrop and tried that. Not enough.

There was a pack of photography paper on the table. I glanced at the image and immediately knew what I wanted to do. It was a cloudy day, and the sun was coming in and out, and rain was threatening, but I pressed on.

The scarf was my first wife's, and was featured in a number of images I did after she died. I still have it. The beads are one of her rosaries.

Here is a picture of the photographic paper package that inspired this image. I always had some of this paper around, but got rid of the last of it when I cleaned out my office at the beginning of the year.



This would be the first of a number of images that I took that emulated a previous image. It was a great way to learn.

I can clearly remember the creative rush I got from putting this all together ten years ago. One of the pieces of the puzzle that made up the life I have now.

Comments

[neptunia67.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you explained the creative process behind taking the photo. After reading and looking at the image on the photo paper package, I went back to study the photo. It's quite good, lots of good play on light and I like the composition. Those are things I probably wouldn't have noticed otherwise in my usual scroll-happy state.

[zyzyly.livejournal.com]

It was kind of fun to remember how it came about. That period was the first time in my life that I ever felt at all creative.

[jadeejf.livejournal.com]

Oh, that is a lovely picture and a lovely story to go with it.

I was immediately drawn to the irises because they are my favorite flower, and purple's my favorite color, but oh, you did such a good job re-creating the image on the paper. I like yours better, but of course I do.

Thank you for posting, as always.

[zyzyly.livejournal.com]

thank you! I sent a link to my niece and she loved it.