studies in monochrome

Winter storm Boreas brought the Southwest a nearly unprecedented period of overcast, featuring grey skies, fog, and snow.  The feeling and look seemed deeply monochromatic, which of course, is false given the meaning of the word.  The Oxford English Dictionary definition is: "containing or using only one colour" or "...light or other radiation of a single wavelength."  Monochrome is defined as "reproduction in black and white or in varying tones of only one color" and is closer, but perhaps it is the human brain and eye teaming together to give the landscape uniformity when an overcast sky combines with the snow-covered earth.

I will be out shooting later after the temperature warms above 20 degrees fahrenheit, but for the time being, the photographs here are, in my mind's eye, monochromatic.

No wonder the best-selling "novel" features multiple shades of grey.  They are everywhere.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image 

this time of year

November is a limbo month.  A time when autumn is quickly becoming memory, snow is falling in the mountains, and dry leaves cover the river banks.  Below 8,000 feet, it can be wonderfully sublime or completely mad.  This year, it has been stunning, with high temperatures in the 40s and 50s fahrenheit and lows in the 20s.  The complete absence of significant wind during periods between storms is extraordinary, leaving me enchanted but warily curious as to what the winter will bring.

Coastal California, naturally, doesn't really have winter, so harvests there and in the Central Valley continue.  Our friends Sara and Chuck in Santa Barbara, sent us home with avocados and pomegranates from their yard.  Yes, from their yard!  Naturally, I had to photograph the pomegranates, one of my favorite subjects.

Back on the mesa, the strawberries, happily housed in their cold frame, are becoming comfortable in their fall fashions.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

More ways to photograph wedding flowers

Continuing the theme of last week's blog, here are more images which show how the art of flower arranging and decoration can be photographed.

There is nothing like a room with sheer white curtains to diffuse light, and to reflect and bounce light back into a subject.

The signs on the table are a nice touch, but notice the business card on each napkin.  Attached is a flash drive containing all the songs the DJ played at the reception.  A Silicon Valley trend coming to New Mexico, no doubt, in the not-too-distant future.

The "roundness" of the arrangement below is made so much more intriguing by the types of flowers and greenery used, reaching out to just about everyone at the table.

Amidst the beauty provided by Mo Wilson of Perfect Parties by Mo shown in this blog, it is good to remember what this date in history means.  This text was included in a recent Veterans for Peace blog.

"Congressional Act (52 Stat.351: 5U.S. Code, Sec.87a) approved May 13, 1938, made November 11^th of each year a legal Federal Holiday,“A day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as ‘Armistice Day’.”

The ceasefire on the, “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918 along the European Western Front was such a relief to all those involved as the world had never seen such horror and carnage as World War I. The horrible conflict that had come to be known as the “War to End War” brought the bulk of humanity to contemplate abolishing war."

Thanks to the veterans of any conflict, and those veterans of peacemaking, who are frequently one and the same. 

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

Let me count the ways....

Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the Sonnets from the Portuguese wrote "How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways."  Flowers have come to represent love - the many ways in which they are arranged, the types and colors of flowers used, and their placement in any given scene - speak volumes.  Arranging is an art form, and an enormous part of the personalized wedding plan.

At our niece's October wedding, I photographed the decorations and flowers.  The bride, her mother, and Maureen Ward, owner of Perfect Parties by Mo in Auburn, California, collaborated to create one of the most stunning wedding backdrops I have seen or photographed.  For the next couple of blogs, I will feature some of the photographs, as I try to count the different ways arrangements and decorations can be created and photographed.

The colors the bride chose are eye popping and worked stunningly together, and the use of paper lanterns complimented the existing architectural elements brilliantly.

The bouquet in the bride's hand, featuring a grandfather's pin and her ring.

"Mo" made sure each surface, even portico walls, were decorated.  Here, red carnations were placed in small containers holding banana leaves at the base, and separated by white votive candles.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image