15 January 2015

Paper tree



It's time for 2015's first edition of the ROY G BIV photo challenge, so we are once again beginning with the color "red" (the "R" in ROY). My images this month are of our 2014 Christmas tree, pre-"assembly."

The Christmas tree was always one of my favorite traditions of the holiday season, but getting an evergreen home on foot and up fifty-five steps became such a project, and then I always felt guilty having to dispose of the tree in the new year. So, as an alternative, for a few years we made one of tissue paper pom poms suspended from the ceiling fan in a pyramid arrangement that loosely represented a tree. Last year we were in Sydney over the holidays, but my daughter emptied several bookcases to create a tree of books that we draped with beaded garlands and a string of lights. I really liked that one, but it made accessing many of our books a bit of a challenge until we finally got around to disassembling it some time in February!

Last November, as I was hunting out crepe paper to make streamers for my daughter's birthday, I found some luxurious (i.e. beautifully sturdy) red and purply-red papers. Since the holidays arrive soon after her birthday, I grabbed some olive crepe paper as well, thinking maybe it could at some point be brought into the equation, extending the birthday decorations into December. The ceilings in the living room are a few meters high, and I envisioned a second, more intimate, "ceiling" composed of crisscrossing streamers.

After trimming the paper into narrow sections, there were far more than I needed for the birthday decorating, so they sat, pretty little rolls, in a basket. I liked how they were all kind of squished together, somehow reminding me of roses. At some point I got the idea to create a Christmas tree with streamers. We gathered the ends together at the top, suspended them from the trusty ceiling fan, and then attached the loose ends to a ribbon-covered hula-hoop...so there we had it——a lovely "tree" of red, purply-red & olive streamers.

But first, I took a few pictures...










Incidentally, I find red to be a very difficult color to photograph accurately when it is the main color in a composition, so I tried under a number of different occasions before getting the handful of images you see here. Controluce, with the day's later light, seemed to best capture the reds & purply-reds. Then all of the JPEGS became washed out once they were imported into Blogger, giving the lovely reds a pinkish cast, so I resaved them as PNGs. (I include this info because I know others have also had issues with photos retaining their properties in Blogger...the PNGs are a bit darker, but definitely truer to the originals.)


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I just wanted to say thanks again for the condolences and very kind comments in response to my last blog post. Things continue to be hard here; it still feels like things will never be the same in our little world, but the support is very much appreciated. Thank you...

 

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And, for those of you who may not be familiar with the
ROY G BIV photo challenge from past years, it was first begun
by artists Jennifer Coyne Qudeen & Julie Booth. Each month is
devoted to a different color of the rainbow, and once we do each
of these we will move on to other colors later in the year. All
are welcome to join in the search. Please visit Jennifer & Julie's
 blogs for links to other participants. Guidelines are here.

28 comments:

  1. un rouge pourpre! j'aime! beau! ...je vais aussi participer et publier du rouge...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Merci, Elfi...je suis heureux que tu es inspiré de participer aussi!
      - Lisa

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  2. As usual, I'm blown away by your photos, Lisa! Someday you're going to have to do a book of your photos...I would buy multiple copies!! Thanks for playing another round of Roy!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Julie - happy that you enjoyed these, and I appreciate your sweet comment about a potential photo book (someday!)...
      - Lisa

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  3. Speechless ... these 'roses' these photos are so spectacular I'm just going to take them in and not try for words.

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    Replies
    1. I'm glad you liked the "roses" too, Mary Ann - thank you for your comment!
      - Lisa

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  4. Simply stunning. Just. Simply. Stunning.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, Jennifer, for the comment & for inspiring us all to do another round of ROY!
      - Lisa

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  5. Your photographs are the best and these are just delicious. Don't ask me why but delicious is the word that popped into my head.

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    Replies
    1. Delicious! I like that...maybe it's the red - I think it's quite a "delicious" color. I always think of orange as my favorite color, but I absolutely love reds, purples veering toward red, and red & purple together!
      - Lisa

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  6. Replies
    1. Thanks so much, Linda - I'm happy to hear you like them!
      - Lisa

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  7. Your photos capture the luxurious reds very well to my eye,and I love reading about all the innovative ways of making /Christmas trees you've come up with...

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    Replies
    1. Sharmon ~ another good word for reds - luxurious. I think the particular light ended up working quite well - funny how it the reds were so "cold" with the midday light.
      And yes, the "Christmas" trees have been fun to come up with. I do miss the smell of a fresh pine, but my mother gave us a pine-scented candle that recalls the scent surprisingly well! And of course there's always the great outdoors for true pine goodness...
      - Lisa

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  8. They're stunning! - eric

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  9. Regarding the pictures,I am sorry but I am not sure what is PNGs and Blogger ?


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    1. Hello, Céline, PNGs are a type of file, like a JPEG or a TIFF, but I don't know what sets them apart - only that they came through better when I uploaded them to the post. And Blogger is the platform (I believe you would call it) that this blog is hosted on. I am not very tech savvy - I usually just try out different things or do a Google search when things are working out well - but hope that answers your questions!
      - Lisa

      P.S. I just looked up "PNG" on Wikipedia and it says this:
      Portable Network Graphics (PNG) is a raster graphics file format that supports lossless data compression. PNG was created as an improved, non-patented replacement for Graphics Interchange Format (GIF), and is the most used lossless image compression format on the Internet.

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  10. Excellent photographs make something grand of something otherwise ordinary.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you for your kind comment, Roxanne...it is amazing what potential different papers can have!
      - Lisa

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  11. Lisa,
    Thank you for the information ! I am going to check that. It really gives a different look to the pictures.

    Hope you and your daughter are doing better, a day at a time.
    Thanks
    Céline

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    Replies
    1. Hello again, Céline ~ I think it's likely the controluce giving the "different look" to the images...they look very close to how the JPEGs appear when I resize them in Photoshop. It just seems to be that the JPEGs don't look like their original selves once they're imported by Blogger. I think I will try PNGs from now on, as they seem to reproduce so much truer in the blog posts. (Hope I haven't further confused the issue with my attempt to explain!)
      - Lisa

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  12. Such a sumptuous evocation of reds - it feels like a bouquet of red roses...

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    1. Thanks, Fiona! I must say, I did enjoy seeing them just sitting in the basket (though the "tree" was most enjoyable too!).
      - Lisa

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  13. scrumptious reds ........ a whole basket full. yummmmmm

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    1. Thank you, Susan! Indeed, it's given me great pleasure to look at that basketful of reds each time I notice it!
      - Lisa

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