Monday, March 28, 2016

Sarah's Gift

Sarah's Gift, March 2016
Have you ever been blessed with the kindest person in your life? And if you're extra fortunate they live near you?  I am that doubly fortunate.

My neighbor Sarah with an "h," (unlike my sister Sara with no "h")  lives across the street from us and in the last few years we've all become great friends.  We look out for each other, cook with each other, feed each other and try to do kind things for each other.

This lovely bouquet was a gift from Sarah to brighten up our house on a cold dark March Saturday afternoon.  I didn't over work the set and simply added the minimum amount of complimentary colors with a silky, shiny neck scarf and my favorite rich green background.

I think the flowers speak for themselves. Sweet. Simple. Fragrant. Thoughtful.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Just Because in Blue

Just Because in Blue, February 2016

I think I've fallen in love with this blue tone style of imagery.

"Back in the day" of film processing they called this style Cyanotype and it was a very rare photographer who created these well.  It was before my time but I always loved them.

Thanks to today's post-processing technology I converted the warm tone image into a Cyanotype-like portrait.

I used most of the elements from the Warm Tone portrait shown previously and added a few elegant items to make this classy and feminine.  As I said when I was a portrait photographer, women can rarely go wrong with pearls.






Just Because - Warm Tones

I don't ever really need a reason to buy a flower arrangement.  Sometimes it is simply just because I want one to brighten up my day.

Having friends over for a dinner, however, is always a good reason to buy a fresh bouquet of flowers.  So I visited one of my favorite florist shops with the intention of just buying a small, inexpensive, bouquet.

This day I actually purchased an already stylized bouquet because it seemed to call my name.  It was simple, yet varied and had nice muted colors, in other words not a big screaming at you arrangement.

But the surprise was that after paying for the bouquet I saw this moderately priced gold/bronze vase and I knew it would be a good investment for this arrangement and others.

As always I came home and watched the evening light through the windows of my home studio to see if it was going to give me some of her magic light and yes, she did.  So I started the process and let it organically evolve.

Just Because in Warm Tones, February 2016
Backdrop was set up from a previous session and I thought it worked perfectly.
Two surface clothes from my inventory of shawls
Flowers in the new vase
And then I paused and looked around my studio room to see what was calling to me saying it wanted to be included in the photo.

Since it was still a cold  February day outside my friend Doug Sievers' book "Trees In Winter" seemed the perfect literary addition to work as the base.

Beverages in beautiful glasses were added.
Two pears
The final object d'art was my glass bird - just because.

I played with the sunset light for about an hour and chose this one as my favorite.








Hands Are Full

  petrichor   heavy in the air   fills our hands