A ‘love it or hate it’ place, New York is not for everyone. It can appear as an overwhelming monster to some, where to some it feels like the home they have been seeking all their lives. Both feelings are so strong and intense that there can be no middle way where this city is concerned.
photo~ Red Hook~ Brooklyn
…for the changes that are rushing our way? Are we settled to knowing that the world that we are leaving for your children to inherit is a safe and a clean home for them to build their future and their children’s future in? Or are we mostly living in denial?
It is in cities like Siena that the ghosts of the past remain to haunt us with the mystery of what has been as we meander in its old cobble stone streets. Can you blame them? Would you want to leave a city this beautiful?
Like all art lovers, I have dreamt of the first time I would lay eyes on Florence. I read, I researched, I gazed at art, I dove into the renaissance, its music, its glorious artists, its astounding architecture, and I thought what I would finally meet would be so awe inspiring. But Florence exceded my expectations by leaps and bounds. I fell in love instantly, I was smitten, I walked around with a mouth gaping open and I could almost hear my camera giggling with delight. It was magical, enchanting, rich in history and golden. I try with this image to paint my feelings about Florence as I superimposed them on what my camera registered.
I dream of a world where blue overwhelms the red. I dream of times when all will cease to compete for self gain. I dream of a place free of war, hate and anger. I dream in blue.
Color has such a tremendous effect on us earth dwellers , doesn’t it? We are surrounded by color and we are gifted with the ability to see it, register it, feel it and be influenced by it. We find ourselves drawn to certain colors, some colors give us inner peace, others charge us and energize us, some make us feel well and calm, others we may find agitating. Our sunsets are golden and they have a way of making us feel a certain stillness and a causing us to go inside of ourselves and into a contemplative state. But what if our sunsets were a different color? What if they were blue? Would our lives be any different?
Being alone in our world today is a luxury that my soul yearns for everyday. There are so many parts of ourselves that need us to check in with them that not doing so can cause so much undue stress. The alone moments I take for myself everyday cause such a great sigh of relief in me and I walk away from my time alone with a renewed sense of purpose and inspiration. I remember taking long trips to places like India to be alone in my early twenties and returning with a sense of calm that is not possible to attain in any other way than self reflection. I wonder if this is how a sailor might feel.
photo taken: a lone boat on the shores of Boracay~ philippines
Sometimes it takes being in a far away place and simply gazing across a horizon to appreciate something so simple such as color. Color surrounds us and permeates our lives on this rich planet and a realization as obvious as blue and yellow making green can be so profound.
Since very early childhood we find ourselves drawn to certain colors. We choose our clothes in those colors, we declare that color to be our favorite, we like to draw and write in shades of it and we realize from early on that color has a great influence in our lives. I remember growing up with a great sense of pride listening to the story of the first clothing dye having been brought to the world by the Phoenician grandfathers of my country. Tyrian purple (originating in Tyre, a harbor town in Lebanon) was a violet-purple dye derived from the shell of the Murex sea-snail, and was used to color garments of the Elite at that time in the whole region. And color is all around us inspiring us, influencing us, the charging red, the calming blue, the clarity inducing white, the appetizing orange…
As I have been drawn so much to sepia tones and black and white photography lately, I felt like posting a colorful shot today, the fresh juicy red pepper!
If you imagine a perfect place, a paradise that you can travel to in your mind when things become too crowded in your head, what would it look like? what would be it’s colors? what would live in it? how would it feel? For me it always has nature, a lot water and so much rich color. The sky would be blue and the sun shining on blue water, yes definitely water…
photo taken: The beautiful Sasha jumps through a doorway in Montreux