The Queen of Summer

I love photographing Queen Anne’s Lace flowers. So this morning I went in search of them at Lake Minnewashta Regional Park. And I found a huge patch of them thanks to a tip from a photographer friend.

I think of this flower as

blooming as she does in late July or early August. She is so feminine, delicate, and interesting.

I love the lacy shape of the flower, the funky looking buds, and the way I can photograph her from different directions and angles and always see something new. It was a couple of years ago that I first photographed queen anne’s lace flowers and I found that I wished that I had taken more time and explored them more. Today I had the chance to do so.

But the wind was blowing a lot this morning so I had some trouble finding enough stillness to make good photos. Fortunately, even the blurry photos where everything was in motion spoke to me today. Sometimes I like to show the wind by allowing movement blur in my images.

Queen-Anne’s Lace

Her body is not so white as

anemony petals nor so smooth—nor

so remote a thing. It is a field

of the wild carrot taking

the field by force; the grass

does not raise above it.

Here is no question of whiteness,

white as can be, with a purple mole

at the center of each flower.

Each flower is a hand’s span

of her whiteness. Wherever

his hand has lain there is

a tiny purple blemish. Each part

is a blossom under his touch

to which the fibres of her being

stem one by one, each to its end,

until the whole field is a

white desire, empty, a single stem,

a cluster, flower by flower,

a pious wish to whiteness gone over—

or nothing.

— William Carlos Williams

I want to go back to photograph the flowers again when the wind isn’t blowing. And this time I will bring a knee pad so that I can get down underneath the flowers more easily to photograph them from below. Now that I know where to find them I can take along just what I need to do close-ups as well as other kinds of photos.

One of the things that I love about making photographs close to home is that I can always go back and visit another day, perhaps when the light is better, or when the wind is not blowing. I also love photographing what I know and love. What I strive for and hope is that seeing my images evokes a kind of feeling in the viewer of how the scene feels to me.

Fall Photo Classes at Minnetonka Center for the Arts

Registration is open for Fall 1 classes at the Minnetonka Center for the Arts . This fall I’m teaching a class called Expressive Photographs (September 11- October 9, Wednesdays from 9:30 AM – 12:30 PM), which is all about expressing feelings, mood, and emotion in your photographs. We’ll explore using light, weather, motion, color, and more to express mood and feeling in your images.

I’m also teaching a 3-session workshop, ICM and ME Photography (Intentional Camera Movement and Multiple Exposure), Sept. 25 – Oct. 9 from 1:00 – 3:00 PM. This is a fun creative way to play with making expressive photographs using blur and other effects.

Minneapolis area photographers, I hope you’ll join me in class this fall. I’d love to work with you and share my love of this art form with you.

May you walk in beauty.