perspectives

I’m often struck at how your attitude to a person or a situation can be coloured by the humour you are in. That can be influenced by so many things, including the simple biological problem of not having enough fuel in the body.

This train of thought was triggered a few days ago when I was tramping through the woods, under grey skies, and intermittent rain. I’m not a fan of ashen clouds and drizzle, but here I am in Ireland, where we get a lot of it. It’s not the best light for taking photographs, so there is a tendency to resent it. Yet, if that’s what I have, then perhaps the best thing is to change my point of view and see it as a challenge. What can I capture in these less-than-ideal conditions?

I spotted these ageing heather sprigs, where the flowers had the quality of crêpe paper. The faded yellow background and diffuse light lent the image a fragile quality. Like a memory that is just beginning to fade.

At home on my computer I began to run the image through a few filters. I was thinking about how an image’s mood can be influenced by colour, shade, and tone.

In this one the addition of the border and the extra fading of the image adds to its sense of being a photograph from long ago. Perhaps it’s a postcard from Ireland to a loved one far away…

Here we are transported to a look from our great-grandparent’s era. Greyscale images have an inherent nostalgic vibe to them, even if they are of modern images.

Finally, I tweaked the photo so it looked more like a painted image – less realism, and more abstraction. The essentials of the heather remain, but parts of it are rendered into blockier patterns of colour.

I think this might be my favourite of the quartet.

I have created these various perspectives of the plant, but the heather remains intact in the grass by the path, stirred by wind and knocked by rain, and oblivious of my opinions.