It's time for me to get busy again (as if I'm not busy enough!). Meaning, that I've taken a few weeks off from schoolwork--a well-deserved break, IMO--and now I need to return to it again. Oh, but I'll still be spending much time in the garden, I'll be taking photos, and I'll certainly have many things to blog about! But it's time to get out of bed (hmmm....did I mention that I am still in my pajamas--ACK!) and get on with the day and get some things accomplished!
Happy Friday everyone! :)
5/04/2007
busy as a bee
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4 comments:
I think this is my favorite picture of yours so far, and that is a difficult choice. I LOVE IT!!! It makes me happy just looking at it.
Thank you!
Sara:
You're such a gifted photographer, I feel I have much to learn from you! Do you mind telling me why you like this photo so much? Is it the execution of the photo or the subject matter? Just curious. :)
Why, thank you, Jana. You know, it takes a special person to realize that all those blurry pictures of food in the process of being eaten and over-sharpened crops of individual granny squares are actually an accomplished, deliberate, artistic statement. You are obviously a woman of vision. ;)
I love this particular photo partly because I am in love with details and this picture is rife with them. Especially blown up to full size at the Flickr link, you can see every hair on the bee, every line of down on each lavender stem, every vein in every petal, at least in the foreground where it counts. I love that.
Then there is the subject. I love bees. Love them. Much of our lives are only possible because of bees, and yet the North American honeybee is almost extinct. Seeing one happily going about her bee business thrills me, but I loved them even before I knew they were in trouble because I love produce, and produce happens because of bees.
I love lavender. The smell, the look, that particular cultivar which can only be grown as an annual here or in a really hot solarium or greenhouse eight months of the year -- lovely stuff.
Then there's the light. Shooting up into light is a bit on the challenging side, even with the source of the light behind you or off to one side. I don't know how much you had to do in PhotoShop to balance it (perfectly respectable to do that, BTW; we used to use darkrooms, but now we use PhotoShop, which is better for the environment), but whether it was lots or nothing, the end result is very fine. IMO.
It took me awhile to think of why I love this so much, and it turns out it's something I've been thinking about for a few months, not so much with regard to this photo, of course, but to non-portrait photography in general. I can't remember if it was a course description at the DeCordova or a book in the Dover catalog, but somewhere within the last few months I ran across a description of an art teacher's goals which included trying to teach students about emotional response to landscape. I think I have an emotional response to this photo partly because I have my own associations for the subject, but also there is just something about light at certain angles that swells the heart. It's something it might take the rest of my life to figure out, so sorry to be vague, but I think you'll agree that it's kind of a cool thing to contemplate.
What does inspire an emotional response when you're viewing a depiction of a plant, a hill, a still life, or a stand of trees? Do you know what does it for you? How much of that can an artist imbue in his/her work, and how much of it depends on who's looking?
Sara:
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on my picture. My photos bring me a lot of joy and it's a thrill to know that others enjoy them, too. :)
I'm also always striving to keep playing with the camera, to see what sorts of serendipity will happen. The bee photo was incredibly hard to set up, given that bees move so fast! So the lighting, angle and everything were just a matter of the moment, and not of any grand plan. But I am lucky that one of my fav places to hang out and relax in the garden is adjacent to my huge lavender bushes (they are about 5 ft in diameter and I have English and Spanish lavender). Needless to say, the bees love my lavender, too! Though most of the bees here in SoCal are supposedly 'Africanized', I've only experienced a couple of scary swarms as I've been gardening, and one-on-one, these little guys make pretty good garden companions (oh, but I can't say the same for the evil gopher who's consumer 4--yes, four--of my broccoli stalks in the last 2 days. I fear that my broccoli-eating days are numbered this season...)
FWIW, I don't photoshop any of my photos unless noted in the post. I also don't even crop them nowadays. For me, I like the challenge of having what I 'shoot' in the garden be just what you see here. Showing you just what I've seen, makes me feel more like ya'll are there with me. You're seeing what I saw, and not some pretty, artier version of it. Does that make sense? (Not that I am totally against PS, but that's just where I'm at right now with my own photos).
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