Picture This Photo Contest “Down on your Knees”

Here is my entry for
August’s
“Down on your Knees”
Picture This Photo Contest at
http://www.gardeninggonewild.com/?p=7067


Cattail Sparklers. Typha latifolia


These fluffy, white seeds were once used for stuffing blankets,
pillows and toys. Native Americans would put them inside
moccasins and around cradles, for additional warmth,
but don’t talk to me about additional warmth
right now!


“This wonderful, poetic image stirs up all sorts of emotions, questions and intrigues, and at first glance left me with the impression that I must be seeing upward from under water.

In the larger version on his blog, you can see that the glowing, backlit cattail leaves and fuzzy seeds in the foreground are crispy sharp, which satisfies the eye’s need for an anchor and order, and sets up a visual tension that enhances one’s slightly voyeuristic sense of peering into a world where your presence is unseen and unnoticed.  Delicious!  We are watching from behind something, peering into a world not quite our own, and one that has a certain timeless, dreamlike, Alice-in-Wonderland quality to it.  Compositionally, there is the sun, the brightest part of the image where my eye starts its journey before traveling down those eye-leading, image-framing, diagonal flares to the brightest of the fluff below the little girl and then upward to her.  There is motion in the child at play, in her wispy hair, in the extended magic wand of a backlit cattail.  And winding up through all that, there is this receding, but traceable world of cattail fluff, extending from the razor sharp foreground, just inches away, upward and toward the sun, and off into the faint scattering breezes of the blue sky ether above the little girl’s head.  This image meets every one of the criteria set out in the contest parameters”.

Judge: David Perry

http://www.davidperryphoto.com/

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Meet the Author

A Central Texas Garden Blog. Zone: 8b. Welcome to the East Side Patch. This site tracks the inhabitants of a house and garden on the east side of Austin. All material © 2021 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant) 14th century planet Earth techniques.

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Annie in Austin Aug 27, 2009, 5:59 pm

    Congratulations, ESP! Just read that you won the Gold Prize for this wonderful photo. Pretty cool.
    http://www.gardeninggonewild.com/?p=7499

    Annie at the Transplantable Rose

  • Les Aug 27, 2009, 11:43 pm

    Congratulations! When you posted this earlier, I knew there was not poing in anyone else entering if they wanted to win.

  • Les Aug 27, 2009, 11:45 pm

    That should be “no point” and not “not poing”. Sorry for the typo, but it just became happy hour here.

  • eastsidepatch Aug 28, 2009, 2:46 am

    Hi Annie. Thanks.
    It was a really nice surprise to wake up to the news!
    Perma-grin.
    ESP.

  • eastsidepatch Aug 28, 2009, 2:55 am

    Les!
    I have read these two comments numerous times and laughed and panicked at the same time…did I write poing? and where? I am totally confused!!! It does sound like something that would happen to me though! Trust my ty’poo’ to say that! I am so happy that the typo did not ‘put off’ the judges :-)

    Still laughing…ESP.
    Hope you had a good happy hour Les.

  • hayefield Aug 29, 2009, 12:00 am

    Oh, this is such a silly place! What fun. I’ll just quickly add my congratulations on winning Picture This with your outstanding photo. And how great that you have a spiffy new home to display your gold medal!
    -Nan at Gardening Gone Wild

  • eastsidepatch Aug 29, 2009, 2:06 am

    Hi Nan.
    Happy you find the Patch as silly as I do, a mad place with even madder characters (both alive and dead)!
    I want to thank you Nan and all at GGW for hosting the format that enables us, the amature photographers of the world, a format to hone our skills and enter such fun competitions.

    I love my spiffy new medal!

    Still grinning,
    ESP.

  • Ditto Aug 29, 2009, 3:36 am

    Congratulations. Yours was definitely my favorite blog I discovered through the contest. I’m happily following your feed now.

  • eastsidepatch Aug 29, 2009, 4:04 am

    Glad you found the ESPatch, and glad you have suscribed to the patch…I hope you will continue to track my madness!
    I always love new intergalactic visitors.
    Stay tuned, ESP.