Visual Reflections: Nature Photography in the Age of Uncertainty, No. 17 (Dried Flowers Photomontage)

30 October 2017

Lens:

Taken in Camera+ and edited in Snapseed and Pixlr.

Dried Flowers Photomontage; All Rights Reserved 2017 Sally W. Donatello

Click onto image to enlarge. Let me know your response to this photomontage. Prints are available upon request.

Pens:

Nature displays herself through many kaleidoscopic effects. She beams and navigates pathways in a multitude of directions, never making it easy to guess her next visual symphony.

One of the most unappreciated forms of the autumnal portrait is a leaf or flower is its dried state. The extension of its life’s presence can astound.

There is a meditative element to the collection and savoring of buds, flowers and leaves in various stages. My process of air drying is a glacial dance of what was and what surprisingly can be. The newly-minted can mesmerize for years.

While larger flower heads experience their metamorphosis in the upside down position, smaller samples of nature’s bounty can be left on a shelf or molding around an object or hidden between the pages of a poetry book (seems apt). Regardless of the site of the specimen’s change the afterglow can be dazzling and sustaining.

In the Lens section is an example of a photomontage that blends two such gems: an anemone and a coneflower. Each picked a few weeks ago and offering days of entertainment.

Sometimes I find this dried form one of nature’s most curious examples of the unexpected and unrecognized. These elements and qualities are blissful characteristics of Mother Nature’s limitless serendipity.

Note:

In this week’s Opinion/Editorial section of The New York Times an article focused on the extraordinary nature murals to be found throughout New York City. “Public Art Takes Flight” (by The Editorial Board, published 24 October 2017) gave front and center to public spaces that honor the nineteenth-century painter John James Audubon. He was renown for his paintings of bird life, and lived near the Hudson River in upper Manhattan. Here is an excerpt from the article: “A tour of the Washington Heights and Harlem neighborhoods with the aid of an Audubon map amounts to a new sort of bird-watching. It takes a search to track down the Williamson’s sapsucker, bigger than life, down by the West Side Highway. The black-billed magpie is visible all day now on the Broadway gates of the defunct New Happiness Chinese Restaurant. Elsewhere, Audubon himself is rendered in flesh tones and with mutton-chop sideburns, staring curiously at a cerulean warbler on his shoulder with neither his rifle nor palette at hand.” For those who will not be in the city to see these fabulous murals, view the story here. The art is a spectacular gift to the city’s visitors and residents.