Yes, taking arty pictures of peonies makes me a giant walking cliche.
To tell the truth, I've never had a bunch of peonies or, indeed, actually encountered a peony in the wild - I've just gazed at picture after picture of perfect, dreamy, petal-heavy blossoms on Flickr and the delicious design blogs that I lurk on inbetween writing techy articles for the magazines...
...and dreamt that one day, I too would get up early, throw on a plaid shirt dress and pumps and ride my racing green bicycle with battered wicker basket to the market, where I would count out my pennies to buy a huge, billowing, intoxicatingly-scented bunch of the most delicately petalled pink peonies - and the smiling florist would wave my money away and hand me the bunch, and I would beam back at him in return before tucking the flowers into my basket between some freshly baked pastries, a paper bag of raspberries and a well-folded newspaper, and hop back on my bike and be on my way....
or something like that, at least. Well, ok, not much like that at all - it wasn't that early, I haven't bought a bike yet (despite having that on my to-do list for months), the florist was grumpy and I certainly didn't get them for free - but even though the peonies were tightly closed like painted ping-pong balls they were absolutely beautiful, and they made me smile from ear to ear.
Over the past week it's been a delight to come downstairs in the morning and see the five peonies open more and more – plus spending a few hours photographing them (and then a few more in Photoshop, swearing about the processing speed of our ancient home Mac) was a lovely way to pass the time.
Although these pictures are "nice", I haven't quite managed to take the peony photographs that I have in my mind's eye - but even that makes me smile. All it means is that I'll have to buy another bunch when these ones fade, and give taking my cliched "perfect peony" shot another go. Oh well...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Beautiful post
ReplyDelete