Friday, April 30, 2010

Daffodillia III. Daffodil reflection.





I am out amid the daffodils that cloth the slope beneath the flowering maple trees. It is early morning, I have a mirror tucked under my arm and my camera around my neck.

Carefully the mirror is propped at an angle beside a clump of yellow blossoms, thus creating what I hope will be some interesting repeating images. The first photos are disappointingly flat, - the sun has not reached down to the ground yet and the shadows of night linger on. Out with flash and try some more. The results are dramatic, bright yellow flowers and darker backgrounds or, if the mirror is slanted more, the trees above and blue sky. It is difficult though to keep the camera and photographer out of the picture. I do my best and then go on to take other images of bracken ferns and later download them onto the computer for a proper examination.

There is an interesting image of a bracken fiddlehead, some passable daffy shots and a slew of images where the camera and its attached human are all too visible. I wander off for a few minutes, come back to begin deleting the disappointments and catch myself just in time. Those rejects are insisting I get out of my rut and take a second look.



A fiddlehead image repeats in the mirror but what is this?, - a hand farther back in the darkness holds a green stem across its palm. It is vague, out of focus and almost out of the frame but it is mysterious. I do not know what is portends, but I know this is a keeper.

A daffodil shot has a large bright fuzzy back of a flower in the foreground and the camera and its flash in the opposite corner. If I cropped the camera out, it would still not be all that useful, but wait!, - this is one of those feral images that, like a de-constructionist novel, walks outside of normal conventions. Create a mirror image of the mirror image so ‘Nikon’ is show normally and not reversed and I have a profoundly disturbing image and the camera and flash are vital to its impact. The big daffodil in the foreground is also the small one close to the camera`s lens in the background, the fingers of the photographer over there are invisibly close to our eyes. One can get sea sick being two places at once. The sky and the framework of upper branches fill a background that our sense of balance says is all wrong.

Images like this can keep me looking forever. What is real after all? This feels like another take of another, or is it this, dimension.

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