pecunium

With pictures.

I like birds of paradise, both of them, the birds, and the flowers, but the birds aren't endemic to where I live. Funny story (as I digress), back in the 9th grade we had to write a story, which our instructor (freshman English... someday I ought to compare the high school I went to in the poor part of town, to the one I went to in the wealthier suburbs), was going to send out to a friend of his.

The idea was for us to get a feel for the ways in which different audiences would approach our writing. I got it back with some interesting red-pencil. The other instructor didn't like some of my word choices (the one I recall was foray, I was talking about a trip to the zoo; and had [as I recall, almost 30 years later] divided the day into segments. She thought it 1: too military, and 2: archaic; some mention was made of castles; and made me think of sally ports. I always was a strange,and over-educated, child).

She also didn't like my referring to birds of paradise as animals. They were only (she stressed this) plants. I took a couple of lessons from this, not all of them as intended, but back to the flowers.

I like birds of paradise. They are such a contrast. A dull heap of leaves, aggressive, and often drab; unless carefully maintained the interior will be a mixed mass of live and dead leaves.

Then there is the flower. A proud,and garish, beak. Fleshy in it's appearance, the green point splitting open to reveal the waxy gleam of the orange petals, which fling themselves back before stabbing forth wit that blue-purple tongue.

Somehow I can't seem to manage isolating out the essence of them. I'm getting better, but there is something missing still.

This one is somehow too busy. I can't tell if it's the confusion of the petals, or the way the repeating elements of the leaves parallel the petals and so diminish them.

Dragon's Headdress

This one is a bit better. The leaf in the background isn't too distracting, but it would still be better without it. It could also use a bit more negative space in the top. All in all it's not a bad documentary shot, but it's not really art. I think the problem is the side view is too much a flat presentation. The lines don't move much. The first manages to do that some.

Finery

All in all, as I look at this to explain them, what I see is a lack of the sense of motion they have in life. I need to find a way to catch the active lines of the flowers, without losing it in the busyness which so garish a display makes it all to easy to either get lost in, or run too hard from (none, and I mean none, of the serious close ups I've attempted has been worth a bucket of warm spit).

Then there are the amaryllis. I think I understand them.

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