Category Archives: fantasy

The December Solstice

The Changeling

The Changeling – As the nights became longer and the darkness thicker, she could feel the transformation beginning to take place deep in her bones. The December solstice was approaching, and her inner animal was becoming restless.

The December Solstice

I love this time of year. I am sitting in my office watching it snow and snow, big fluffy flakes. I think I will probably take tomorrow off just to go snowboarding. As the saying goes: no work or friends on a powder day. I live in the mountains of Colorado, and this is really the most magical time to be here. All of the branches of the trees in town are delicately wrapped with lights that twinkle and glow. Red ribbons, wreaths and evergreen garlands drape the light posts, and people are gathering to be joyous and merry. There are parties, food, and drinks, old friends come home, and the town seems quainter than usual. Yesterday, I saw a postman stopped on his route to enjoy a cup of something, looking suspiciously alcoholic, with friends who were lingering on a street corner. Things will get delivered, but now friendship is the only real priority.

In the Northern hemisphere, tonight will be the longest night of the year, the December solstice. Tonight, will also be a new moon. This is a powerful combination of pure darkness and new beginnings. For the next six months things will only get lighter each day. The change is exponential, in that the difference between light and dark grows faster in the spring and fall than the summer and the winter. This is due to the elliptical nature of the earth’s course around the sun. In the southern hemisphere tonight will be the longest day of the year, and holiday parties are more associated with trips to the beach than going skiing. But, I am in the north, and I am feeling the power of this night. The darkness already begins to fall and twilight shadows are creeping at four in the afternoon. I saved this image to release tonight, even thought it has been complete for weeks. I have been waiting for the magic.

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This image is about transformation, about becoming your truest self. It is about contracting and expanding, about the binaries of our inner worlds, about a truth that only you know. From the darkness comes light, and with that all things are reborn. This is why we make our resolutions at this time of the year, as we feel the potential within ourselves for transformation. This is the time to take on new projects, to let creativity flow, to share with friends and family, to feel the divinity of our universe. It is also the time to linger, to give thanks, and most of all to luxuriate in the darkness and dream.

 

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The Beauty Queen

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I have been staying alone in my childhood home in Basalt, Colorado for the last ten days.  Surrounded by my past, I decided to look around the house and use props available to me to create this image.  The dress I wore to a cousin’s halloween wedding years ago, and the trophy is some antique, team sportsmanship, horseback riding trophy that was on my parent’s mantle piece.  I’m sure someone won it at one time or another, but I don’t really know its history.

The dress is really over the top, and between watching the Oscars this week and the trophy, I just knew I had to portray the runaway beauty queen.  Unfortunately she finds the world is a cold, cold, place.

Thanks to Brooke Shaden for the texture… what a wonderful blizzard it makes! #shadentextures

Princess Buttercup and her Magical Performing Horse

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I recently had the opportunity to visit my family’s organic citrus farm in Coachella, California.  My parents move out there for the winter and bring their english show jumping horses.  The horse in these photos is my mother’s Andalusian, Penafor or “Pete.” When Pete was young, before he joined our family, he was trained to do tricks for some sort of dinner show in Spain.  Today he will do just about anything for a carrot.  I had the help of my mother and best friend to make these images, as I could not handle Pete and the camera at the same time.  Everything you see here he does for fun and treats.

The idea behind this image was to bring to life the type of crayon drawings little girls do of princesses and their magical white horses.  I wanted to embody every little girl’s fantasy.   Buttercup is a role model princess who is strong, self-aware and poised, but also kind, gentle and loving.

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A few years ago, I walked three weeks of the camino Santiago in Northern Spain.  All I carried for a camera was a little Cannon g12, but it served me well and proceeded to kick the bucket just after the trip.  While walking, I tried to stop in each of the little towns, as well as the big cites and do a little sightseeing.  Somewhere, that I cannot recall, I visited in an ancient church that was being renovated.  The day was rainy, but the light was beautiful.  To protect the weathered old statues, workers had covered them in a protective netting.  There was something so eerie and haunting about these figures.  This week, I took these images as my inspiration.  Rather than netting, I chose fabric, but the result is similar.

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The Lavender Project

A few weeks after I moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico I was feeling a bit overwhelmed.  I was in desperate need of some time away from the city to breathe fresh air, get away from people, and feel that I was in nature.  Thankfully, I had just made a new friend, Carrie Haugh.  Carrie was in the final stages of acting in a short film that would go on to be an official entry in the Guanajuato Film Festival.  The last scene they needed to shoot was a dream sequence that takes place in a flowering lavender field.  Although, there is a lot of agriculture in this area of Mexico, it is mostly known to be a hot and dry climate.  One is much more likely to think of towering prickly-pear cactus trees than French lavender fields.  Alas, this place is always full of surprises.

After forty-five minuets of barreling down a Mexican freeway in an old van with questionable steering and brakes, we pulled onto a dirt road and followed the signs to an enormous lavender farm. For various reasons, Guanajuato is a state from which men emigrate heavily to find work in the USA.  The sad side effect being that whole towns are left with only women, children, and the elderly to continue to support their community.  Rather than allowing these pueblos to sink even further into poverty and ultimately disappear, an NGO out of Albuquerque, New Mexico is bringing in The Lavender Project.  A wonderful program, these co-op lavender farms have created a fantastic renewable source of employment and income (Please visit their web page to find out more: http://thelavenderproject.com/).  The products they make are divine and they have a chocolate-lavender soap that smells so good I could live in it.

It was such a relief to step out of the car and inhale the fresh lavender plants drying out after a light rain.  The film crew went to work and I was left with several hours and a field of my own in which to play.  I even crawled over the fence and into some of the aforementioned prickly pear cactuses to take photos. It really is stunning to spend an afternoon in a place as surreal as a lavender field and I can assure you my need to “get away from it all” was quenched.

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Xochicalco

In the Mexican state of Morelos, there is an ancient temple complex that may date as far back as 200bc.  This archeological site is known as Xochicalco or “the place of flowers,” and during 700-900ad it was populated by up to 20,000 inhabitants. The actual identity of the people who lived there is unknown, but they are believed to have been Mayan influenced.  Although in its heyday, it was a bustling trade city, this place is now a tranquil park, more suited for meditation, and contemplation.

The day we went to Xochicalco was hot and humid, two things that this polar bear does not suffer well.  As soon as we reached the temple complex, I was off and running, trying to make as many different images as possible before my sightseeing companions got bored and wanted to head home.  Within ten minuets of working I was drenched in sweat.  I really wish I had had more time to explore, as Xochicalco is truly magnificent.  Although, it is an UNESCO World Heritage Site, you basically have the run of the place and can climb the temples and explore the ancient ruins at will.  I don’t know if in the hour I had to shoot, I was able to capture much, but I do know in the future I would love to return to another temple complex.  In the end, I got scurried away by a grounds keeper that wouldn’t let me use my tripod, but was fascinated by what I was doing.  He kept trying to to use my camera to take my photo for me.  If my phone hadn’t started to ring, telling me to come back to the car, I’m sure I could have gotten a final shot with more than one of me standing on the top of the temple.

I used my Neutral Density filter for these images, and although I do love it, I am still learning how to make the best images.  I have not yet decided such things as how I look in sun versus shadow, etc.  After doing so much work at night, I can generally visualize exactly what will happen in any given circumstance, but in daylight I am often surprised. One of the things I don’t love about this filter is the color shift; it generally muddies and grays out colors.  Thus, I decided to push them off the gamut.  I like the results, but they are not set in stone.