Last year I began a winter photography project called Flowers for Five.  I picked up flowers or a flower for five dollars and photography the daylights out of the bouquet or stem. The project brought together two of my passions...my long-standing love affair with flowers and a new found infatuation with photography.  When my world is clothed in monochromatic winter white, flowers paint my soul with all the colors of a rainbow after a spring rain. Photographing the ephemeral beauty that embodies flowers is a joyful pursuit.  

I found a small bunch of pale, pink gossamer petals that whispered light, love, and tulips and resisting was simply not in the equation.  

 

What is more romantic than pink tuplips, soft and vulnerable in the dead of winter?

"You agree--I'm sure you agree, that beauty is the only thing worth living for."

~ Agatha Christie





Collage Favorites

I have hundreds, maybe thousands of photos on my computer.  Some files have more than a hundred photos of one subject.  Yikes! What better time to organize all those files than now before the  new year begins?  Each photo is placed in one of thee files:

1. Really bad...delete without haste 
2. Love, love...place into favorite file
3. Not that great of a shot, but tells a wonderful story none-the-less...keep in monthly or subject files

So that's my process. 

One of the cool things I learned in 2010 is how to create collages with photos and other images, including backgrounds, textures, and text.  Here's my favorite collages for 2010.

March Rain

What's not to love...cupcakes, a favorite cup, and jumping in puddles.

While many attack dandelions in their yards with hoes, chemicals, and cursing, I rather like dandelions, the unloved recovery plant that smiles at the world in sunny yellow and eventually sends off downy kisses on spring breezes. 

My two sisters and I spent a couple June nights in a cabin. Not far from the cabin was a stand of pine trees shading funny, magical mushrooms that popped out of the ground with exuberance.

Pink...soft, sweet, happy, feminine, elegant, sexy.  Pink is one of my favorite flower colors and nothing says pink with a pinch of panache like coneflowers.  

Yes, I created many collages over the year.  Some for the Cottage, others for Write in Amazement, and others for fun.  There were collages with people, places, and things; animals, flowers, and food.  It was a new way for me to share photography love with all of you.

As I file away 2010, I'm planning to share my favorites of the photos I took throughout the year.  Then I can open a new page in the book of 2011 and begin telling a fresh story.