Tag Archives: Snow

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.

Untitled3

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.

 

Please subscribe, to get more behind the scenes blogs about my work.  Cheers and happy holidays!

The Beauty Queen

Janelle_Pietrzak-1

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

Project 52

Over the past year, I have come to really admire a few young, female, photographers, such as Brooke Shaden and Kristy Mitchell.  Their dedication and endless creativity is such an inspiration.  Although each of their work speaks to a world of dark surreal fairy tales, they both get there in different ways.  Brooke uses photoshop to manipulate her images as a painter would work with a canvas, and Kristy spends hundreds of hours building costumes and sets to fulfill her vision. Each path has its merits and I am fascinated by both as a means to achieving vision.  The one thing they have very much in common with each other is a dedication to their art and a boundless drive to create.

Thus, in honor of these ladies, I am announcing my new years resolution.  I am going to attempt a 52 image project.  This means shooting and publishing one photograph a week for a year.  This project is intended to push my creativity, and my output.   I will be experimenting with all kinds of themes and techniques but trying to stay in the vein of picture making rather than just picture taking.  It won’t all be my best work, maybe there will be some real gems and some total bombs, but ultimatally its just about the process. The one thing I ask for is lots of support.  I do this for myself, but it is always so much easier with cheerleaders, in fact, I think everything is probably better with cheerleaders.

That being said here is my first image:

“I only grew up on the outside”

DSC_0040