First, let me say how dreadfully sorry I am for not having made a submission to this month’s most excellent theme on a more timely basis. While my life tends to be rather uneventful, the month of May was consumed with a variety of activities, which precluded me from getting on-board in my more usual (i.e. earnest) fashion. In addition to the many impediments placed before me this month (an unexpected funeral, an anticipated wedding and a trip to Chicago) I also found my original plans for the theme did not work as my model was unable to fit their schedule into mine.
Drat, as our friend Mike might write.
Summer is definitely not my favourite season of the year, but I have created distinct musical connections to various artists over the years to summer. One such artist is Depeche Mode and while running through various songs in my mind I found myself quite quickly visiting and re-visiting Dressed in Black from the album/CD Black Celebration; one of my personal Depeche Mode favs. In need of a model for such a shoot I contacted my friend and neighbor Sandi, who was quite willing to assist in this endeavor and I think you can see why I thought of her for this project.
Sandi was a great sport in helping me with this month’s theme. I had actually stopped by her house to drop off a get-well card after she had surgery earlier this month and while there I noticed how nice she looked in the black around-the-house dress she was wearing. Clearly this thought remained in my head long enough to germinate and develop into the idea to ask her to model for me.
I confess I have very mixed feelings regarding the shot. I did get a small handful of good pictures and maybe one or two very good pictures, but the majority were so-so or fairly awful. But I’m not letting this bother me as taking pictures with a model isn’t something with which I have any real experience (other than the pics with the daughter from the Autumn of 2008). Lighting was difficult both indoors and out. Trying to convey my “artistic vision” was difficult as I really didn’t have one. After all, and I’ve stated this before, creativity isn’t exactly one of my strong points in life.
But I’m not walking away from this feeling badly. Nope. I spent a small portion of my afternoon with a great friend and neighbor. I enjoyed (and lamented) trying to think outside of my normal comfort zone (i.e. being creative). And I particularly enjoyed the process of going through the afternoon’s results and selecting what I thought were the best of the day’s work. Oddly, many of the ones I liked best on the small LCD screen of the camera were not one’s I selected for upload to Flickr. Go figure.
