Altered Horizons 60

Altered Horizons 60 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricated landscapes in her therapeutic photography, dealing with depression and coping with grief.

The algae I pull from the pond almost daily is heavy and saturated. It drops from my rake in thick wooly sheets that often contain tiny snails or squirming baby turtles that wriggle their way back into the water before I can photograph them. The heavy dumped algae, drained of its water, seems to drink up the light. It is such a contrast to the peony with its soft, delicate petals reflecting the sunlight and fluttering slightly in the air. To me it’s like the difference between life and death, elation and depression, a luminous moon and a messy muddy swamp.

In Photoshop I combine algae and peonies over and over again in fabricated landscapes.

 

Altered Horizons 60

 

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Altered Horizons 59

Altered Horizons 59 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricated landscapes in dealing with depression and coping with loss.

In the quiet dark of a summer night, fireflies twinkle like stars. Much folklore and symbolism related to death surround fireflies, also known as lightening bugs. There was a Victorian superstition that if a firefly was spotted in the house, someone would die soon. In Japanese legends fireflies are the souls of the dead, particularly of warriors who had fallen in battle. Some say that gazing into a field of fireflies, one can feel the presence of lost loved ones.

My camera couldn’t capture the flickering and flashing dances of the fireflies. So, creating this fabricated landscape in Photoshop, I painted tiny white lights over images of algae sheets raked from my pond. I topped it off with a photo of the pond reflecting the sun and clouds.

 

 

Altered Horizons 59

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Altered Horizons 58

Altered Horizons 58 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricated landscapes in dealing with depression and coping with change.

This is the hosta plant that faithfully, magnificently, takes over a good portion of my garden year after year even though I do nothing to help or encourage it. In late summer, if left on its own as it always is, the hosta will sprout tall shoots topped with pale lavender-colored flowers. This is the hosta as photographed in early June before something nibbled its leaves down to bare little stumps. I’m not at all sure what this means for its future. So I decided to memorialize the poor plant, in a fabricated landscape, making it into a golden hill. In Photoshop, I added a picture of the sun reflected in my pond, along with a negative image of tangled straw-like weeds to make an agitated sky.

 

Altered Horizons 58

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Altered Horizons 57

Altered Horizons 57 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricatesd landscapes in dealing with depression and coping with loss.

I was thinking of my father when I fabricated this landscape. All day yesterday, as I weed-whacked up and down my long driveway and then raked and pulled pondweed, I remembered how pleased my father was to do work around his house. He taught me that it’s a privilege to have a nice home and to keep it in good shape. He had come to the States in the early 1940s with nothing but ambition; he worked hard to build up his dreams. When I do yard work around my home I feel like he’s watching me.

In Photoshop, I turned the reflection of a bare tree upside down and “planted” it in a foreground of pebbles. The image was not good enough to honor or represent my father so I framed it in multiple built-up frames, like the biggest hug I could give.

 

Altered Horizons 57

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Altered Horizons 56

Altered Horizons 56 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops a fabricated landscape as part of her healing and dealing with depression.

June is my favorite month, mainly because the daylight lasts so long. Also, everything outside seems to be bursting with vibrant color: the greens of the ferns, the peony pinks, the spectacular spirea bushes.

This particular Goldflame Spirea shrub had grown over the garden bed onto the flagstone walk. It was so flamboyant that I photographed it. Later, I flipped the photo in Photoshop, and added an image of my sump pump cover to serve as the sun in a fabricated landscape.

 

Altered Horizons 56

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Altered Horizons 55

Altered Horizons 55 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricated landscapes as therapeutic photography for depression and coping with loss.

My overgrown pondweed situation was almost under control the morning I noticed pollen forming over most of the pond’s surface. It was like a giant floating oil slick. To make things worse, feathery tufts falling from nearby trees were being carried by the wind and landing on the ugly oily film. Unlike the algae and pondweed I’d been pulling out the past weeks, this would be almost impossible to get rid of. But I don’t mind hard work. Sometimes, immersing myself into hard physical labor, I can forget to be miserable and depressed. And it feels pretty good afterward to have been productive, to see the fruits of my labor.

The few clear spots on the pond, where the surface tension had broken, reminded me of meandering rivers. I photographed the mess. Then, dropping one of the images into Photoshop, I added a “sun” crafted from a shot of the sump pump cover on my lawn.

 

Altered Horizons 55

 

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