This shot was taken out in the cobblestone yard of the big old house in Wallonia. The white background came courtesy of an old wooden barn door and the hat was a treasure recently found by Alysha at the Waterloo Market.
She used cosmetics on her eyes but that was it. What the light did with her skin, was nothing short of miraculous. I was stunned, once again, by the magic of eyes.
We had such fun. I'll put up a gallery of this shoot, and the shoot with that lovely Australian bloke, soon.
One of the wildcards, in terms of my photography, is that I have no set way of doing things ... there is no structure or formula.
Each person ... each portrait shoot, is a new journey. A setting off into the unknown
Sometimes I think about being terrified in these unfamilar settings, working in unknown or ever-changing light, with a person who may or may not trust me in my attempt at capturing them. But then I remember ... this is the space where the magic happens.
And so it was with the American ...
I didn't realise how much I love a bunch of flowers in a new place ... not just in Genova but in anyplace new. They are surely a way to arrive ... a way to feel 'at home'.
The Sweetpeas have been abundant in the garden herein Wallonia. They remind me of my childhood back home in Mosgiel. My mum loved them.
We were up early out here in the country this morning, a pavlova made from freshly-laid eggs went into the oven straight after breakfast. Gert whipped up a batch of his sultana and frangipani bread ... Welcome home gifts for the family who gave us their beautiful house for a couple of weeks.
Now to clean and leave for 't stad. Meanwhile, my beautiful flowers ...
And I mean that—everything is fiction. When you tell yourself the story of your life, the story of your day, you edit and rewrite and weave a narrative out of a collection of random experiences and events. Your conversations are fiction. Your friends and loved ones—they are characters you have created. And your arguments with them are like meetings with an editor—please, they beseech you, you beseech them, rewrite me. You have a perception of the way things are, and you impose it on your memory, and in this way you think, in the same way that I think, that you are living something that is describable. When of course, what we actually live, what we actually experience—with our senses and our nerves—is a vast, absurd, beautiful, ridiculous chaos.
Keith Ridgway, from The New Yorker article Everything is Fiction.
Maybe it's animalness that will make the world right again: the wisdom of elephants, the enthusiasm of canines, the grace of snakes, the mildness of anteaters. Perhaps being human needs some diluting.
Carol Emswhwiller, from Carmen Dog.
Momo took all the balls to his bed under the stairs ... game over.
Quote found over at Terri's marvellous blog.
This morning, we were first up and active here in the big old house in the country ... as is mostly the case but I decided I would try releasing the hens and their rooster.
It's a process. You find all the scraps from the previous day, add some dry bread, find the big stick and then venture forth. You walk the course to their water trough, and drop the bulk of the food there, then wander back to the big door and prepare yourself ... not unlike the prep required for an Olympic 100m dash.
I threw the door open and took off ... sprinkling bread as I ran. Laughing because, for-goodness-sake, they're just little creatures.
I looked behind me, the little brown hen, nicknamed Curious Chicken, was right there on my heels but the others were nicely distracted by all kinds of things. I may have thrown the food container aside as I sprinted. They recognised it.
Gert and Momo, the dog who protects all his humans, stood up near the outdoor dining table ... I believe they were both laughing too.
Mission accomplished, I returned to the table and we sat there a while to watch them ... as you do.
I noticed a little black hen climb into the sweetpeas. She didn't come out. I pointed it out, suggesting we might have solved the mystery of the rest of the missing eggs. We waited until she came out then found the big stick, called Momo ... was distracted an attack of the giggles as he played sillymomodog around my feet ... then set out.
Hot on the heels of Sabine discovering 7 missing eggs at the base of the Livingstone Daisy last night, we struck paydirt again this morning. ELEVEN eggs had been laid at the base of my beloved Sweetpeas.
I must say, the hens have good taste. The Livingstones and the Sweetpeas would have to be two of my favourite flowers.
In the space of 12 hours we have gone from the bizarre situation of hens and no eggs to hens and 18 eggs, just in time for the big happy family returning from France.
Anyway, meet Himself and his Women.
