Thursday, May 7, 2020

She's a Sunshine Girl with Flowers in Her Hair



I will tell you that sometimes the original plan just doesn't work out.  I often find that the blogs and creative accounts out there that I am the most inspired by are those that are drenched in nature.  I love to scroll through galleries depicting leisurely strolls through forests and countrysides in long flowing dresses that seem to have just leapt out of a Jane Austen novel.   I yearn for spring blooms like nothing else.



The reality is that I live less than a mile outside of one of the biggest cities in America, and am surrounded by pavement and brick apartment buildings.  For many this is the ideal, sprawling industrial features, bridges, trains, fancy downtown buildings... and here I am on Google maps trying to find a new park that isn't a 20 minute drive away, or if what looks like 'green space' on the map is actually mostly parking lot and tennis courts.

I know that it would probably be much easier if I just gave up and leaned into the urban-ness of it all... but it just wouldn't really be 'me', and I fear my heart would be a lot less in it.

It's also possible that my social anxiety plays a pretty decent role in this— the thought of setting up my tripod on the L train to get a cool shot or stepping farther than 3 feet away from my set up anywhere downtown makes me very anxious.   I often don't know how to interact with strangers, especially if I'm doing something that might seem strange to them!

For instance, these photos were shot in our back stairwell of our apartment complex.  I've been trying to track down a decent blooming tree around town for weeks now, because my grand plan was to find a flowering tree and basically stand IN it and get some cool photos.

Well every tree that was blooming was either in someone's yard or surrounded by a playground and tennis court, and let me tell you, there are no angles that were going to make that tree work!   It would be nice if there was a single flowering tree in the one park nearby that has a backdrop of something other than people's houses, but it isn't so.   So after a lot of failed attempts at finding a workable tree, I gave up and decided to shoot in the stairwell, and use some photos I had in my archive to edit in the flower element I wanted.  The day I planned to shoot I went about my day's tasks, monitoring the light on the stairwell, and somewhere around 4pm it was looking pretty soft and diffused, so I headed out.

I kid you not, there's one set of neighbors gardening, another blowing bubbles in the parking lot below, and still others on the phone on their respective balcony.  And here I am posing shot after shot in this corner of brick trying to avoid eye contact with all of them amidst the BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP CLICK CLICK CLICK  of the camera shutter repeatedly going off. sigh.


What I would give for a field of lavender or a path in the woods at our doorstep.  Or at least less than a 20 minute drive away.


TLDR:  When it's tough to go to nature, bring nature to you!







Gap Jeans  |  Forever 21 Hat and Backpack  |  Vintage Sweater  |  Modcloth Heels











Until Next Time, 



—  The Lovely Red Fox

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