It’s another cloudy day with poor air quality in Minneapolis. A little bit of freezing rain early this morning created havoc on the highways. And though I am thankful for the beauty outside, this morning I’m remembering a bath powder commercial from many years ago with the catch-phrase, Calgon…
Take Me Away!
I am dreaming of escaping to someplace warm and sunny with not a care in the world. In this fantasy I bask in the sun, wander with my camera, and soak up warm breezes with the scent of flowers in the air. But I’m not escaping to a warm sunny place anytime soon. So, here in Minnesota, I play with photographing a bouquet of roses I bought on Monday to brighten my week. I’ve been photographing them separately and as a bunch, with different apertures, close and not so close. And I’ve been layering and mandala-making just for fun.
Soon I’ll stop my playing around with roses and begin working on my book project again. What I want to do next on that project is to continue writing essays for the book. I also want to begin trying out various hand-made bookmaking techniques for the project. Both of them are tasks that I’m not quite sure about so I find I’m dancing around them a lot and procrastinating by playing with making rose photos.
My rose photos and photo play are a kind of procrastination but they are also a way of bringing life and color into these all-too-white January days. I find that I need to regularly look through my camera and see the beauty of the world this way. It is as necessary as air and water for my well-being.
In the top photograph in this post I layered a photograph of the snow-covered trees that line the path I like to walk on, with a soft close-up photograph of a rose. Then I chose a blending mode called “Exclusion.”
Life is an Experiment
I love the way that layering photos and choosing different blending modes in Adobe Photoshop create surprising results. Finding a result that pleases my eye is a matter of experimenting wildly and then experiencing surprising results. Though I’m better at predicting which photos might combine to create interesting results, it is still a matter of trial and error. Life, itself, is an experiment, I think. We are constantly discovering new things and being surprised.
Life is so full of unpredictable beauty and strange surprises. Sometimes that beauty is too much for me to handle. Do you know that feeling? When something is just too beautiful? When someone says something or writes something or plays something that moves you to the point of tears, maybe even changes you.
― Things The Grandchildren Should Know
Creative endeavors and playing around with photographs are my “take me away” elixir. In one sense they take me away, but in another they help me go deeper and discover what really matters to me. They also bring me joy. And joy is not a small thing my friend. Joy is as necessary as the air we breathe.
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb. (Don’t Hesitate)
— Mary Oliver
Wishing you a joyful day.
May you walk in beauty.
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