Twelve ii

Everywhere I look faces are illuminated by the screen of an iPad, iPhone, computer or some other lighted screen. The portal to the rest of the world.  It has a kind of balayage effect that's focused on the chin, nose and eyes that are bathed in it's weird artificial light- the head and hair left out like a darkened halo...

My favorite subject, my daughter, positively glows in it. It's not unusual that I brought out the old Android to capture the screen glow reflecting on her face from the ever present iPad.
Screen Shots.
Her skin and face are a thousand times more glorious in Nature of course but this has it's own reward..

 

In this artifice her vulnerabilities translate onto the camera just as strongly as in natural light and I am interested in that consistency, the heart of which is the skin.  She has a slight greenish tint to her white skin that makes me wild for photographing her. I have been recording since birth. And here is even Mr. Sink's version.
Although she is a most unwilling subject on occasion she gives me a break and indulges my vision.

What fascinates me the most is how light falls on objects and on skin to form contours.  The radiance emanating from skin is not so easy to 'get right' mood-wise. There are props ... Photoshop, digital, hand coloring and other techniques that I don't yet know enough about. Love recording the beauty that surrounds me.  Phone camera's often do the trick  and it's spontaneous   

Mary Day 2011

Mary Day Celebration

Every year some women friends and I celebrate the Goddess with in us on the 15th of August. It is the Catholic holiday set to commemorate the Assumption of Mary, the Mother of Jesus as she is whisked into the Heavens. I pick this day not because I am particularly religious but because it reminds me of my childhood. When I was a child, living in Bavaria, in southern Germany, Maria Himmelfahrt  was a really big deal. As I have written in other blogs, on that day of celebration, the whole town comes out, children in traditional costume and  with crowns of flowers on their heads, favorite cows adorned with wreathes of herbs and flowers and of course, the statue of Mary carried through town from the Abbey to the main church. It is a beautiful spectacle and I always see it first and foremost within that childlike vision.

In the last 10 years it's been a way  to connect with women friends that are dear, share stories - some of them about being women, some of them childhood memories, others are myths we know or half know and want to explore.

Our Lisa is the story teller and fascinates us with her memory of women stories, both learned and intuitive.

We read our coffee cups and have  wine, let our daughters join us in the lighting of the candles and writing of secret messages on little scraps of delicate paper that we then send up in smoke to the sky, hoping that our daughters too will find some fascination in the mysteries and bounty associated with the Mother.