Show Me ( The mystery of the cherries)

I put this Renee photograph on my desktop for a week, thinking now what the hell is that? Did she superimpose a bright hand painted drawing or some clip art onto a photograph?

Best to click on the picture to see what I mean...

On my monitor this looks like thin, cut paper. The lines on the leaves look pencil drawn (but almost too perfect).

The color looked impossible, on my monitor anyway. A beautiful illustration. Like a cell from Song Of The South.

That is how I rate beauty , you know, something looks like a child's cartoon, a Disney or Warner Bros. cell, that's art if the colors are unreal.

Or, "Arf !" if you will.

I scowled that there was no explanation accompanying the photo. I've been planning for two weeks to confront her about it. Really. What the hell, that is just stunning, you can't leave a photo like that un-captioned!

She took me to see.

So, look. They hang from her rear-view mirror and one day as she and Zigfield were driving I-80 the sun came through the translucent plastic just right and she went "oooh!" and snapped the pic. The back ground is the windshield as they are speeding along.

Now I am admiring the background of the photo!

One thing about successful photography is just paying attention. (An earlier scroll of hers was titled 'pay attention'.)

Paraphrasing here, she told me how if you focus on an object and the surroundings are a blur, usually that gives the object depth. Well, that was another thing. But to me it was the string that seemed to give the "picture within the photo" depth. A reality that heightened the unreality. The blur surrounding the cherries was the blur of speed, motion, and maybe the slant of the windshield.

I'm not kidding, this pic so bewildered me, having the object finally dangling from my own fingers was a pleasant freek out.

"Smell them. " she said. "They're air fresheners."