My first Spring and Summer of photography ended up centering on flowers. But in the Fall that began to bleach away as the flowers shriveled and disappeared, all their lovely work done.
Where I live in the Twin Cities we have been trickling deeper and deeper into Winter for more than a month. Those flowers have been disappearing for longer than that. Almost everything is dead now, in that classified way the lives have here, where they hold a tiny kernel of life unseen, but beating secretly, in their hearts.
So each time I find some faded flower and take its picture I have lately thought:
This is it. This is the last flower of the year.
But I didn't want to let go. Because I love the flowers.
The birds let go.
The butterflies let go.
The bees let go.
I'm the only one left.
The birds are in the trees.
The butterflies are in Mexico.
And the bees are dreaming the long, inscrutable dreams of bees.
I'm here. But I think it's time.
The only thing to do is to accept the change that cannot be held back.
So here you are then, the last flowers of the year:
That red one is amazing! Have you considered taking pictures of indoor plants and flowers?
ReplyDeleteWhat about winter? There used to be a woman here in New Hampshire, Beatrice Hunter, who was an amazing photographer. You'd have enjoyed her, I think. One of her specialties was frost patterns on the window of an unheated porch at her house in rural NH. The window faced either the rising or setting sun, I forget which, so in addition to "just frost" pictures, she was able to get some wonderful colors. I haven't tried googling her, but if you should want to try, her middle name is Thum or Thrum or something like that.
Many of your increasingly close-up sequences remind me of her photos.
Thanks. I'm glad you like it.
DeleteI have taken some indoor flowers and such, which is fun, but I really like the "it gets me outside" aspect of photography, so we'll see. But some of my pictures have used light panels and glass sandwiches in my apartment- so there may be more.
I looked up Beatrice Trum Hunter and she is more famous for Natural Foods Cookbooks, and though her photography is readily mentioned her pictures aren't much on the Internet, which maybe makes sense for someone born 100 years ago (she died a few years back I guess). I did find one frost picture that was... intriguing. I'll keep my eyes open. I'm sure Winter will have its things to picture as well, but the outside flowers are done for the year, for good or ill. Geese? Ice? Crows? Who knows?
I forget that Beatrice was more known for her cookbooks than her photographs. I was at her home for a couple of days once and I recall more conversation about pictures than cooking. But this must have been 20-25 years ago; I don't recall specific pictures, but the frost ones were front and center. I know she's had displays at the Currier Art Gallery in Manchester.
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