I leave you alone with this one today.
Archives for posts with tag: nature
Meaning?
6
Snails are not really my favourite creepers, but I find their eyes amazing. They are constantly on the move. I observed this one navigating her way through her world: the rough terrain of our back door steps. She had one eye carefully cast in my direction, scrutinizing my every move (not that I moved much lying flat on my tummy in the carport), and the other forwards to watch where she was going. All her observing didn’t prevent her from having an accident – A second later she had fallen down the steps. It’s good that she was wearing a helmet! It didn’t take her long to come out of her shell again and continue. Now that I am writing this, I discovered the lesson she tried to teach me: Watch out, take your knocks …and continue your journey :)
I love this image of the submerged leaf with the fairy dust specular highlights, and the water softly flowing past. It’s very peaceful and calming. It’s almost as if the leaf is being caressed by the water. I love to hike up the mountains here. Rivers bathed in sunlight look like melted gold. (Yes, …there is gold up in them mountains.) And you return home so much richer.
Monday morning and I am running late. Might have something to do with the Wimbledon finals and us being on the other side of the world (it started at 1 am in the morning here).
This image here is called Down the road from the fairytale garden. People who know my hometown, know where it is. It is really down the road from the fairytale garden.
This image was taken on an island in the Baltic Sea, called Rügen. I think every German knows the scenery, it has been made famous by the romantic painter Kaspar David Friedrich. Even though the scenery is engraved in the common German memory, I don’t think that quite as many people have actually seen the white cliffs in nature. The island belonged to Eastern Germany when the country was still divided. It was military territory and therefore out of reach.
It is a mystic place, I could not describe it any differently. We went there in winter (summer might be a different story), and we had the place all to ourselves. The image I had in my post Friends!? was taken at the same place, but at the bottom of the cliffs.
When I look at this image I can hear the silence of the place and feel the protection of the trees all around me. I can feel the springy layer of humus under my feet and smell the damp moss. It is a huge problem I personally have as an image maker in that only I have all this additional information that went into the image and everything comes back instantly when I look at it. My images are always personal memories and this is the reason why I am hesitant to share them. They might evoke emotions in other people, but what the viewer feels will always differ from what I felt.
Of course we all know that advertising imagery is build on the common memory. It is never-fail generic imagery that evokes feel-good moods. But what is going to happen when we sit in front of the computer day in, day out and never learn what damp moss smells like. Will these images still work?
Landscape images are not really my thing to take. It annoys me tremendously that I can’t capture the grandness of nature. They always look flat. I usually work right at the other end of the scale in space by exploring the minute, the intimate, what’s right at your feet. Here I am often after a simplicity and a sort of flatness (for a lack of a better word). But unlike portraits of people (which I don’t ever attempt to take, except of people I know extremely well) I do sometimes try landscapes.
This morning I couldn’t decide which of the two images I should use today. They couldn’t be more different, so they have both ended up on the blog in one post. One is the weather as it is outside, the other represents more of my inner landscape at the moment. Which is which I won’t say!
This image here I took six years ago. I like the juxtaposition of the lines with the round crater. For obvious reasons I originally called it “Square peg in a round hole.” It is just a close-up of some rocks we were climbing over at the time.
When I accidentally came across this image today, a totally different interpretation jumped out at me.
There is a little story to go with it: A friend of mine, a school teacher, was once asked by one of her pupils: “Tell me Miss, what was the world like when it was still black and white?” I just love this story. The pupil was of course referring to black & white photography and TV. When I first heard the story, I thought it was so cute I laughed. Today, my answer would be: “The world was more colourful then…” as there must have been so much more room for imagination.
Today, when I glanced at the photograph, I instantly saw a smiling face with a rock hurled at it from a giant fist. When I showed my discovery to a friend, he couldn’t quite follow. So I coloured it in for him in Photoshop. Now the image is called: “Honestly, I didn’t see this coming!”
However this is a very disturbing interpretation, and I went looking for another image. It took me a while, but this time it is called: “Life is beautiful!” It shows two playful figures in the sun.
Thank God you always remember what you saw last. I have difficulties seeing the giant fist now when I look at the black and white original.
Everything around me is in flux at the moment. I am not a rock, I am a pebble.
Rocks brave the tide. They are strong and stand their position. But over time they will be ground down.
Pebbles on the other hand are small fries. They might get uplifted and swirled around, yet it is very reassuring they will settle again. A few inches to one side maybe, but there is always a chance it will be in an even sunnier spot.
For now I am happy it’s Friday again.
When I was rummaging through my old photographs yesterday on the hunt for my Tui image, I found this one as well. This was one of my first images I took with my Macro lens and I always loved it. It reminds me so much of an old weather-beaten umbrella, in fact it is a parachute perfectly designed by nature.
This is a much better image of a Tui bird, than the one I took last weekend. I have taken this one seven years ago. I remember clearly, there were no cats on the premisses… It makes a huge difference.
dedepuppets 