This week’s Daily Post Weekly Photography Challenge is to present photographs that show the world through your eyes, thinking carefully about the subject of your image in order to convey just what you saw/thought/felt at the moment you pushed that shutter.
I love to photograph flowers, and I’m most happy with them when they express a particular point of view – the way I see the world – instead of being just another pretty flower picture.
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These studies were done at Seattle’s Pike Place Market, where food and flowers overflow and tourists contentedly wander the ramshackle wooden buildings and stroll along the old brick street. From inside the market flower stalls present a stunning array of color and form that changes with the seasons, as local farmers bring in new varieties. It’s an irresistible scene to photograph and I’m sure it’s been done thousands of times.
Out on the street, the long row of flower stalls is open to the air. Most people don’t pay attention to that view because cars crowd the curb, and it’s the working end of the business: the buckets, scissors and florist paper, the workers assembling bouquets. In chilly weather the vendors hang clear plastic tarps at the back of their stalls to keep out the cold.
One early spring afternoon I noticed that buckets of flowers were pushed back hard against the tarps, making interesting flattened images; it was a whole different view of the flowers. Pressed against the dirty translucent plastic, they took on new, compressed shapes and softer colors. Flecks of dirt and scratches in the tarps conveyed the feeling of Old European still life paintings.
I squeezed between the cars, nodded to a shabbily dressed man having a cigarette, and photographed the small masterpieces head on. Bright lights shining through the tarps and the ambient light reflecting off the plastic made it challenging. But it was worth the effort. It was the world through my eyes. It was right there for all to see, and it could have gone unnoticed but it caught my eye. Now, with a few clicks, I send it along to you.
More Weekly Photo Challenge entries can be seen here.
bluebrightly 
Captivating still life photography. Thanks for sharing your artful eye.
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And thank you. I’m so happy to do it.
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very unique view of the world of flowers.
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Thanks!
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Lovely images! 🙂
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Thank you – good to hear from you!
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Truly brilliant presentation for “the world through your eyes”. The photos present magnificently artistic creativity. I thought it was all behind the glasses before further reading.Thank you very much for sharing with us.
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You’re very kind. I know you spend a lot of time looking at, thinking about, and photographing flowers, so I appreciate your thoughts.
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These are beautiful, Bluebrightly! You are so right, they are very much like paintings. I love your point of view; it really is all about “paying attention” isn’t it?
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It is. Thanks so much.
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Wow, Lynn, I love these images, especially the first one and those tulips!! They are magnificent. At first I thought you used some kind of filter or some kind of photoshop effects, but now that I read how you got the pictures, I’m amazed. It just takes having that special ability to notice, to see things that other people wouldn’t see. Wonderful. You are so talented. 🙂
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I always appreciate your detailed comments! Very little photoshop/lightroom needed here. I’m just always looking for something different.
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Well, your photography is always wonderful and inspiring, whatever you do!
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Pingback: Weekly Photo Challenge: Traveler’s Palm Through My Eyes | Humbled Pie
I love the dirty plastic tarps.
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Yeah! Thanks you for stopping by!
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So beautiful pictures! i love the glase on the flower, and yet their beautiful colors and shape.
And I loved Seattle, I got lucky, when I was there for a week when I was 17, it was only sunshine the entire week…
Let’s say then that I don t really know Seattle as it is mainly raining there…
But I loved it and the market above the sea beautiful …
Luxembourg resembles a bit Seattle without the sea…
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Thank you very much – I’m happy to hear that. I got lucky too when I visited here before moving – a lot of sunshine. You can say you do know one part of Seattle. The winters are very gray, but the rest of the year the sun does come out and the temperatures never get too hot or too cold, so it’s better weather than NYC! I would love to visit Luxembourg…maybe someday.
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I think you ll like it, plus it very central so 2 hours later by train you ll be in Paris for example or 1 hour by plane and you re in south of France or London Amsterdam …
I would like to come one day back to Seattle.
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Wonderful! Like Cath I was thinking “what a clever effect”, and now I find the beauty was there for all to see. Thanks for sharing. 🙂
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Love these Images to bits.
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Oh that’s good to hear. Thank you Hanno.
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Beautiful images! Great!
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Thank you, so glad you like them.
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Very beautiful !!!
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They have the look of classic paintings. Very tasteful!
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It’s always good to get a comment from you! Thanks!
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Thank you for sharing them, Lynn…I do enjoy the perspective through the tarp. You have done something like this in the past, and seeing them again, I wondered if you captured them in a similar place or if you had used some type of texture/finish on the images. Very nice……
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I did post a few from the same series a while ago, so that may be what you’re remembering. I went back several times to take more but they pulled the tarps up. Sigh. I have played around with textures in photoshop a little, but this was different. It’s like there are always many paths towards a particular point…but that point is never the same, either, is it?
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No, the point is never the same…and it seems that a singular path is never the same either, no matter how many times or ways we try to retrace it…..oh, life….. 🙂
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Fantastic! Where is that LOVE button already?! They do look like paintings… Thank you for this 🙂
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And thank you for the love! 😉
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I was at the lake this weekend and only had the iPad with me, had to wait until I got home to see your post on my iMac. I mean seriously, your photos are too stunning for me to fully appreciate on such a small screen but at home, just now, on my 27″ monitor, Lynn it’s pure loveliness. (As I knew it would be!) The photos, particularly the last one feel like they were taken underwater. They have this dreamy, other worldly aquatic quality about them. You did it again girl! 🙂
“His aim throughout is to shake us, out of lethargy of custom so as to refresh our sense of wonder – indeed, of divinity – in the every day, the trivial, and the familiar.” William Wordworth
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This is too nice – but so god to know, too. These are some of my favorites. Adding the quote is going the extra mile, typical of you and much appreciated. It IS the sense of wonder that I’m always involved in, and in the everyday. Exactly.
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These are simply gorgeous. I usually look at the blogs on my ipad but happened to be on my mac+cinema screen at the moment and they just explode! Well done.
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Tina, thanks you very much. That’s great to hear. I need to print some of them. I appreciate your thoughts!
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Very beautiful.
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Thank you so much.s
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What to say??? The tarps, and your wonderful eye, give them all such a glorious patina. Beautiful!
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Thank you Patti – always great to hear your thoughts!
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These are lovely. They speak to me of the passing of time, fragility, and pure beauty.
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Karen, yours is some of my favorite work, so I’m really very honored to hear that! It makes sense what you said – passing of time, fragility, beauty. Thank you.
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Pingback: Weekly Photo Challenge / B4 Retouch: The World through my Eyes (Les Amants Nimes) | What's (in) the picture?
Great series, Lynn. Viewed through the tarp they take on a very personalized view – I love it.
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I’m glad, Lynn. Thank you -very much!
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just just just so lovely…so much personality conveyed and imbued
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I like your study in RED most; whole gallery like paintings!
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Well done Lynn for recognizing and seizing the opportunity. The result is a selection that elicits a totally different response from the usual still life shots.
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Thank you!
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Stupendous BB 🙂 I really love the way you have presented these I really do . Very me 🙂 too
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Love the Seattle’s Pike Place flower Market. Beautiful shots!
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Can you take another praising comment…? Well, here we go: Fantastic images, and yes, they do look like old still life paintings. But the first thing that crossed my mind was the idea: there is a filter inbetween here, like glass or plastic, but who is inside and who is outside? Am I standing outside, watching flowers that are inside, or is it the other way around, are the flowers outside, perhaps in the cold? There was a play like this in my mind, and it made these photos not only very beautiful, but also intriguing. WordPress, install “love”-buttons, quickly!
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Of course, I’m thrilled to hear another comment. I like the fact that it was unresolved – I love that play, back and forth. Keeps us going! Thank you so much!
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Beautiful images, very well done!
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Exceptional images! Exceptional point of view!
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I love your photos, they are stunning
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You’ve made surprising and meaningful things happen with that plastic tarp…no small feat. Congratulations for being such an adept observer.
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