Sally D’s Mobile Photography Challenge: Challenger’s Choice-Still Life (with White Gerber Daisy)

22 February 2016

Lens:

I. Used Polamatic and Snapseed

1. White Gerber Daisy; Copyright © 2016 Sally W. Donatello All Rights Reserved

II. Used Polamatic and Snapseed

2. White Gerber Daisy; Copyright © 2016 Sally W. Donatello All Rights Reserved

Let me know which you prefer. Click on image to enlarge, which takes you to another page. If you decide to leave a comment, please return to this page.

Pens:

Lately, my attention has been coerced to view the lives of white flowers—flowers that seem to add a level of clarity to the grey days of winter. This pre-occupation seems to mirror the lack of floral presence on a wintry landscape, which (in my part of the world) is stripped of technicolor most days. White brings a new source of freedom where less has become more. But it’s also about the idea of a white bloom as a symbol of all that is free, pure and seemingly absent of color, just like the view of my gardens.

Logically, white appears to be devoid of color, but a mixture of psychology and science tell  us differently. In fact, it contains all the primary colors. It is much more that what our naked eye reveals. I know that. Still, it does not always connect with the synapses that produce my visual thoughts.

To see white is to conjure interpretation, content and context through an odd prism of knowledge. It requires one to contemplate more than the mind wants at the moment of noticing. Also, its presence depends on it malleability, on the slightest of colors that peek out from the veil of its seeming purity.

That pure white is cloaked in a veil of deception, which creates a slanted view of what we see. That visual disconnect produces a shroud that provides a one-sided coin.

The human mind plays with our sense of what it. When I study the white flower, it is clear that up close it is anything but white. It’s a living thing that shows its tiny streaks of yellow or green or browns running through the petals.

When I began the inner journey of post processing the white Gerber (from my favorite florist) seen in the Lens section, my ambition was to make it coincide with the conflict of seeing one thing and knowing something else: to show its totality in the whitest of whites, even though it isn’t.

To achieve that goal, I had to blow out the image, giving it as much light as it could take without reducing it to a complete abstraction. Light, of course, being the source of the spectrum of color or lack thereof. Light being the heroine in this scenario.

(another view of the Gerber processed in FX PhotoStudio, iColorama and Snapseed)

3. White Gerber Daisy; Copyright © 2016 Sally W. Donatello All Rights Reserved

Imagine the freedom that purity can bring to its subject; there is an opportunity for appreciation and consideration in ways that the opposite usually cannot sustain. It’s a place of contemplation that offers a monkish response.

My interpretation of the white Gerber is as much a portrait as a still life. As an image-maker my instincts are guided by natural light, simplicity of composition, perspective, and negative space. A still life can contain multiple or singular themes. I prefer a simple uncluttered composition that defines exactly my intention.

Part of my quest to find the “white” of white flowers was to discover that visual voice that is fragile and seductive. The Gerber is one of the floral jewels that coaxes my attention and does so each day as it changes. I watch it as it moves into a metamorphosis–a metamorphosis leading to shades of off-white and even beige.

The symbolism of white is very much a metaphor for much of life: what appears to be one way is truly another, sometimes even the opposite of our mind’s notions. But it also represents the wintry landscape, where it seems to be  grey and lifeless. While on the surface and below much is readying itself for spring’s burst of coloration and renewal. On the surface that Gerber aims to please, and it does so throughout its various stages that  reinvent its white color into other phases of its visual voice.

Tip of the Week:

I consider myself a gentle editor of my images. I have become fond of several apps that intrigue my instincts and spark my intuition. My favorites are Hipstamatic, Polamatic and Snapseed. Some have come and gone, this trio remains in my arsenal. Recently, I added iColorama to the tool kit. Click here to learn about it. Teresita Alonso created the app, and it can be used on iPads and iPhones (different uploads for each at the iTunes store), if you’d like to read more about that process and the app, read an interview with Alonso from 2013; click here. I find myself turning to iColorama more and more. Hope that you try it.

Photograph by Teresita Alonso, creator of app iColorama

View other entries for this week’s challenges:

https://sustainabilitea.wordpress.com/2016/02/22/sally-ds-mobile-photography-challenge-challengers-choice-driven-to-abstraction/

https://piecesofstarlight.wordpress.com/2016/02/22/two-views-of-tilden-for-sally-ds-smart-device-challenge/

https://decocraftsdigicrafts.wordpress.com/2016/02/23/sally-ds-mobile-photograhy-challenge-freedom/

http://ohmsweetohm.me/2016/02/22/early-morning-rain/

http://pilotfishblog.com/2016/02/22/sally-ds-mobile-photography-challenge-street-photography-on-michigan-ave/

https://angelinem.wordpress.com/2016/02/22/sally-ds-mobile-photography-challenge-early-morning-still-life/

https://photographyplusblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/23/crystal-activation/

https://shareandconnect.wordpress.com/2016/02/23/birding-seasons-and-rowing-sport/

https://zimmerbitch.wordpress.com/2016/02/25/8332/

https://chasinglifeandfindingdreams.wordpress.com/2016/02/25/emotion-through-art/

Note:

As always I welcome comments about this post or any part of my blog. My photographs for the mobile photography challenge are taken with an iPhone 6.

If you’d like to join this Mobile Photography Challenge, please click here for details and history of the challenge. If you have any questions, please contact me. Below is a reminder of the monthly schedule with themes for upcoming challenges:

1st Monday: Nature.

2nd Monday: Macro.

3rd Monday: Black and White.

4th Monday Challenger’s Choice (Pick One: Abstraction, Animals, Architecture, Food Photography, Night Photography, Objects, Panorama, Portraiture, Still Life, Street Photography, and Travel).

5th Monday: Editing and Processing with Various Apps Using Themes from the Fourth Week.