Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Picture Perfect Weekend

After what felt like days of rain, it was nice to get some dry time in St. Louis this weekend. I played a couple hours of pickleball on Friday, and spent Saturday going through family photos for a relative who recently lost her mom. I scanned all of the photos I had of this lovely woman, and emailed them to her daughter. My photographs are the one area of my life in which I was uber-organized. Through the years I have taken all of our photos and neatly labeled and placed them in albums. And then what happened? The experts came out with the recommendation that all photos be removed from their albums and placed in acid-free storage boxes. Seriously? All the procrastinators who tossed their photos in boxes were ahead of me on this one. I have slowly begun to do this, starting with the oldest (and most problematic) albums first. Some of the photos are extremely stuck to the albums. I have purchased a small (and I mean small) stainless steel spatula to try and safely remove the pictures from the pages. The dental floss trick did not work, so this approach has been suggested by photographers. We shall see.

Sunday was so pretty in the morning that I high tailed it to the Missouri Botanical Garden, my happy place. In addition to all the beautiful flowers, the garden is in full swing with its second Chinese Lantern Festival. I learned from the last one in 2012 that it is a good idea to photograph all the lanterns during the day so that you can see what they are made of. When they are lit at night, it is really hard to tell. Afterwards I put the day and nighttime photos of each lantern side by side in a book, and I really like how it turned out. My husband and I are signed up to attend the photographers event at the festival on July 20th. From 7:30-10:30 that night, the attendance will be much more limited than on any other night. Plus we can bring our tripods in, which is not allowed at other times due to them being a tripping hazard in the dark. It should be great, and a number of my Women in Focus photography friends are coming that night as well.

Phoenix Reborn

Porcelain Elephants

Crane Paradise

Dandelions and Pandas

Lantern Way

At 5:30 on Sunday night the opening reception of "Stillness and Light", the second show of the Women in Focus photography group, was held at the art gallery located within the Webster Groves Christian Church. There was a pretty nice turnout, and once again I am in awe of the work that is produced by the women in this group. It is fun to see the diversity of photos that are taken, and to listen to the public's reaction to the shots. Radio63119 attended the event, and I was one of the people interviewed for an upcoming show. I am hoping at some point to be a guest on the station to discuss how to research the history of a home.

my three photos
inside the gallery

1 comment:

Mrs. Wryly said...

You are genuinely a phabulous photographer!! Your garden scenes are stunning. And I can see the butterfly-on-the-bloom from the show, which is excellent. Many reasons the garden is your happy place. Stay happy.