Backyard Lace

The challenge in the Globe and Mail camera club this week is to take pictures in your backyard and post them.  The idea being, I guess, is that the really good photographer can take the ordinary and make it extraordinary. Here's the link to some pretty interesting pictures of really nothing special, except that the photographer has made them amazing.

Here is my attempt.  I have entitled this post "backyard lace" because I will try to take one or two of these patterns and turn them into lace or they may become the seed of an idea for a scarf or shawl then again  a whole collection could be incorporated into a "really grand theme". When I have a moment.  :)

This is Holly with "weeds".  I think that I should have moved the small branch that is there out of the picture.  For me, it detracts a little from the idea of holly after Christmas - the party is over - the steamers have fallen...etc.  I guess that this is part of the age old argument of art vs nature - how much do you alter a picture to make it look "nice."  Given that people spend hours with pictures in Photoshop changing the original so that it is barely recognizable, to move a small branch out of the frame is quite minor - but I often have to think, am I disturbing something that ought to be?

Well I didn't move it, so here it is.  And here is another.

This is a little eerie in the sense that it is an attempt to "frame" something that can't really be framed.  How do you take the boundlessness of nature and contain it within a canvas? If I were to do any "paintings,"  I would have a little something (or a lot) go beyond the frame - things that don't obey the rules or refused to be "caged."  I am always amazed that so many artists work within a "picture frame."  People often think of artists as unconventional and yet so many of them seem to be able to limit their ideas to a rectangle.  Time to move out of the box.

Here is another

A pod from my Rose of Sharon tree.  I like to think of them as "podcasts" - bursting open and throwing their seeds to the wind.  These are my winter flowers.

Have an amazing day!!!