Strangeness

“Photography is the recording of strangeness and beauty with beguiling precision.” ~ Sebastian Smee

Last year for my birthday I requested some time to go for a walk without my little dog so I could take some outdoor nudes. As I wrote in on my blog back then. It been over a year since I had got out and taken pictures like that and I wanted to have the chance to do it again. It was a beautiful day and managed to get a couple of great shots from the outing. As you will also read in the post that has the original edit of this picture, I was also caught in the act by another dog walker. To this day I hope I brightened his Monday and can only apologise if not.

So to the image. I love the original so much. It captures the experience of taking the picture, the warmth of the spring sunshine, the deep blue of the April sky. A month when spring is really starting to show itself with buds on the trees and ripe green of the first flush of undergrowth.

When I was editing the original picture I was increased the blue tone of the sky just a tiny bit. At one point whilst doing that things went awry and the sky turned purple. Whilst I wanted to keep the original image as close to how it looked straight out the camera as possible the purple sky caught my eye. Something about it reminded me of The Wizard of Oz where the sky in Oz is often a weird colour and so I played with the greens too. The result is this weird kinda psychedelic landscape and I have to admit I absolutely love it. You can’t really compare it to the original because it is so very different. I think they are both great just for very different reasons. One is good because it captures the reality of the moment and other is good because it distorts it giving it a strangeness that somehow feels both weird and familiar at the same time