This image is made from 2 photographs. One being a surface reflection of flowing water, and the other, remains of a seagull.
The seagull caught my eye because as it was lying in the water at the river’s edge, the wings were moving with the rhythmic lapping of the water, as though somehow, there was still a touch of life.
© Karen McRae, 2013
Taking things apart.
Above are the two separate images I had combined in the previous post. The duck is cropped to make it less central. It still feels very familiar to me this particular bird-in-flight form.
It twigged a memory of watching the herons in flight during the last days of Autumn, just before migration. It is such a different form.
[Thank you to everyone who joined in the discussion for the last post. It was very interesting!]
© Karen McRae, 2013
I admit Kitsch is not ever usually what I’m after photographically, but this image just somehow seems to me an embodiment of landscape sentimentality and it got me thinking about how we perceive images and how difficult it is to make something new.
I photographed the landscape (slow shutter speed and camera movement), and the duck separately and then merged them together in Photoshop. It immediately made me uncomfortable and it took me a little while to figure out why.
Here’s the thing; I feel like I have seen the essence of this image a million times in a million different ways over my lifetime. As though it holds the spirit of so many images (sculpture, painting, photography, …) that came before it. I realize, also, that the composition is imperfect and I think it adds to that sense of kitsch.
Most images echo back to the past in some way, but this photograph seemed particularly striking to me. How does a bird in flight hold so much meaning? And why does it make me feel a bit wobbly? I suppose it is the idea of finding that you have made something that has been made a million times already. The same , only different.
© Karen McRae, 2013
We are creeping ever so slowly out of winter and these pale robin’s egg blue tones seemed to have a little whisper of spring in them, (which I am craving today!).
(Water reflections of trees and frosted winter flowers)
© Karen McRae, 2013
Sketching the landscape with photography. These photographs were made using a slow shutter speed and camera movement. Other than some minor level adjustments they are as the camera saw them.
Animate bar(k)odes: the data of the landscape.
© Karen McRae, 2013
It’s not just what you see but also what you hear. This water moving in the cold of winter, it is not soundless. There is music here.
Photographs of surface reflections on moving water from the series Surface, Submerge.
© Karen McRae, 2013
An image from a photographic series layering the ephemeral (withering flora) and the enduring (ancient fossils). This image is an in-camera double exposure. You may recognize the form of the orchid from the previous post.
© Karen McRae, 2013
Dessicated orchids, still in bloom.
© Karen McRae, 2013
A sugar-coated day never lasts long. The ices are responsive to the day.
© Karen McRae, 2012
draw and shoot 