capillaries

i love how the tiny veins at the tips of these dried petals are both the practical carriers of water that they were in life, and the lacy patterns that now emphasize how delicate and thin the petals are in death. form and function. the beauty of the golden gate bridge that is both aesthetic marvel, and a reliable way to get across the bay on the way in to work.

dried carnation

janie’s composition

i spent the whole day today hosting a college junior interested in design. in the process of showing her my workspace and what i do, we sort of accidentally made this image. i was showing her how i setup, how i pick a subject, the things i consider while composing, and the camera settings i use to make the photo. then i showed her how i download the images and pick the best one, and finally how i edit them to get the background to bright white. under the guise of teaching, i had inadvertently made my STILL blog image for the day. i rather like teaching.

on shutting down the inner critic

tomorrow i am going to be hosting out of town guests for a full day of studio visits with some of the Twin Cities most innovative designers. it took most of my free time today to set up the itinerary and get commitments from everyone. so, when it came time to make a STILL blog photo, it was already late in the day, and i was preoccupied and a little bit at a loss. fortunately, there is my in-case-of-emergency drawer of colorful dried bits. equally fortunately, there is something about being in a hurry that shuts down my inner critic, and as a result many of my favorite compositions have bloomed out of the seemingly barren soil of distraction, hurry, and lack of resources. today i’m pleased to add another to the collection.

meditation

my husband tried meditating last year. it got a little too busy around here with tax season for him to maintain the practice, but i hope he takes it up again this spring. i think his brain looks like this tendril a lot of the time. meditation seemed to take hold of his tangled thoughts, and stretch them out into a peaceful sine wave.

wild grape vine tendril

teenage spirit

these tulips were on my kitchen counter in this arrangement. i simply slid a piece of paper under them and took a photo. when my son saw me editing the photo just now, he said “no. just no.” (he often offers unsolicited feedback these days. he’s 14.) a little surprised, i asked him why not. “because it looks like you are trying to look like a moody aspiring photographer”, he said. so there you have it. possibly a tumble of wilting tulips displaying graphic arcs and fleshy but newly wilting petal heads. or possibly a totally pretentious and empty flirtation with the moody dark side of still life. thank heavens for the teenagers these days. they march on washington. they tell the truth. they give no quarter. they might just change the world.