Canvas to the Imagination

Japanese Maple leaves turn the most vivid red of any tree I’ve seen. They are a favorite site when autumn rolls around and their intense colour seems bright even on the rainiest fall days. These were both taken along my street while I walked to catch the bus to work one morning.

These are some of the shots I took this week during Polaroid week 2009. I jokingly commented to someone on the above photo on flickr that being a photographer gives you an excuse to buy interesting shoes to use in photographs. It’s not a bad idea.

My mom has always been one of those people who clips things out of the newspaper to either keep (like recipes) or share with my sister and me. It’s a habit we find both endearing and irritating because sometimes there are a LOT of clippings awaiting our inspection, and we aren’t necessarily interested in the same things she is. Despite the fact that I now live on the other side of the country my mom still saves and sends large collections of newspaper clippings whenever a package or letter is headed my way.

When I showed the latest bunch to Boris he said they are her, “Google Reader shared items.” I thought this was a pretty accurate (and funny) way to describe them and it also gave me the idea to further share the articles she’d sent me. For your reading pleasure, here are links to a few of the clippings from my mom:

Hershey the Mystery Duck
Warm Fuzzy Tale of a Good Swimaritan
How to Make Room on your cellphone

(It was too tedious to locate online all of the articles she sent, and the Toronto Star archives is apparently very limited.)

Little did you realize that each and every flower has a symbolic meaning. I rediscovered this recently via Conscientious and a link to an extensive list of the symbolic meaning of flowers. I recall as a teen that roses had different meanings depending on the colour, and girls always wanted red ones because they represented love, while yellow represented friendship.

I’ve always been more of a tulip loving girl, with a passion for dahlias and for poppies when they’re in season. At the moment the poppies are out in full force and I’ve been celebrating their yearly appearance by taking a million photos.

And what you might ask, is the symbolic meaning of poppies? Imagination, dreaminess, and eternal sleep.

These are the concluding shots to my week of shooting polaroid. I took eleven shots over the course of the week, using up the last shot in one pack of film and going through a second full pack. I now have four left out the ten my sister Kathryn sent me as a belated birthday present last August.

Friday: A Gathering of Tulips

Friday: Maggie Keeps an Eye on the Neighbourhood

Thursday: As the Sky Burst into Flower

I really enjoyed shooting with the polaroid this week because despite shooting mostly digital lately I’m still a film camera girl at heart.