SIbling Assignment #149: Vases

I gave the third of our sibling assignments with photography. " Create a collection...choose something that is easily accessible: soup bowls,cell phones, sofas, chairs, vases...whatever. Create a series of photographs on the collection all photographed the same way. Put them into a collage or a frame together. Write about the experience."

When I scrounge around yard sales and thrift stores I am always looking for vases for my vast collection. I particularly look for different sizes since the fresh cut flowers from my garden can have very short stems to long, long stems. A few of these vases have been gifts from people that know what I love! I also enjoy using unique canning jars for vases. They hold lots of flowers and with a little raffia around the neck, provide a bit of country charm. Old teapots and pitchers are also favorite vessels to hold flowers. The possibilities are endless. Today I photographed most of these vases on the piano shelf. The dark background worked well for most. The others moved to the window so the light could illuminate the blue and green.

Two Words: Strawberry Photos

 

I have been studying food photography recently trying new things and experimenting with light, styling, and composition. Here is a series of food photos I tried featuring strawberries.

Faceless St. Patrick's Day Photos

As I captured the wearing of the green today with my camera, not too many students even wanted to show their faces. It made the pictures much more interesting as I focused on the wearing of the green.

In a Word: Green

 “Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.”    Pedro Calderon de la Barca

 On this eve before St. Patrick's Day I honor green: 

 

 

 

 

In a Word: Song for Rainy Season

 Elizabeth Bishop is a genius when it comes to taking a simple subject and creating illuminating poetry. She can take just the right words and create images of beauty from something that could be dreary like rain. I needed to read about rain for it's beauty today.

Song For The Rainy Season by Elizabeth Bishop

Hidden, oh hidden
in the high fog
the house we live in,
beneath the magnetic rock,
rain-, rainbow-ridden,
where blood-black
bromelias, lichens,
owls, and the lint
of the waterfalls cling,
familiar, unbidden.

In a dim age
of water
the brook sings loud
from a rib cage
of giant fern; vapor
climbs up the thick growth
effortlessly, turns back,
holding them both,
house and rock,
in a private cloud.

At night, on the roof,
blind drops crawl
and the ordinary brown
owl gives us proof
he can count:
five times--always five--
he stamps and takes off
after the fat frogs that,
shrilling for love,
clamber and mount.

House, open house
to the white dew
and the milk-white sunrise
kind to the eyes,
to membership
of silver fish, mouse,
bookworms,
big moths; with a wall
for the mildew's
ignorant map;

darkened and tarnished
by the warm touch
of the warm breath,
maculate, cherished;
rejoice! For a later
era will differ.
(O difference that kills
or intimidates, much
of all our small shadowy
life!) Without water

the great rock will stare
unmagnetized, bare,
no longer wearing
rainbows or rain,
the forgiving air
and the high fog gone;
the owls will move on
and the several
waterfalls shrivel
in the steady sun.

In a Word: Simplicity

 "Year by year the complexities of this spinning world grow
more bewildering and so each year we need all the more
to seek peace and comfort in the joyful simplicities"

Woman's Home Companion (1935)