{"id":3127,"date":"2021-09-13T07:14:21","date_gmt":"2021-09-13T11:14:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=3127"},"modified":"2021-09-12T15:15:03","modified_gmt":"2021-09-12T19:15:03","slug":"altered-horizons-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/altered-horizons-17\/","title":{"rendered":"Altered Horizons 17"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Altered<\/a><\/p>\n

At the beginning of summer I photographed fresh hostas and dahlias in my garden, well before the ravages of time, heat, rabbits and slugs, too much rain, and not enough rain. Early September\u2019s photo-shoot of the same patch of plants showed brown-tipped, yellowed and nibbled leaves with dusty spider webs between them. For my contrived landscape this week, I decided to go with the earlier photos. Transporting them to Photoshop, I crafted the young dahlia into a sun rising over a field of bright raindrop-splattered hostas.<\/span><\/p>\n

Walking along a trail with friends recently, our conversation somehow turned from comparing favorite foods at Trader Joe\u2019s to lamenting about our growing old. It seems many of us are now experiencing devastating loss of our former beautiful, strong, young and healthy selves. And it\u2019s kinda sad how we view our aging faces and bodies as pathetically imperfect. Not particularly eager to display my current bespectacled, slightly wrinkled appearance, I, myself, have not updated my profile photo in years.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Photoshop, I manipulated images of a favorite ancient scarf to frame this picture. Graceful aging, in some things like vintage clothing, is respected. Valued, even.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are no great mysteries to sort out in this fabricated landscape. Except, maybe, why I chose to use July\u2019s photos of the greener, fresher plants instead of the dusty, more interesting, older ones I\u2019d just shot. Why is it we can\u2019t appreciate the natural maturing of living things as they approach the ends of their lifetimes?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the beginning of summer I photographed fresh hostas and dahlias in my garden, well before the ravages of time, heat, rabbits and slugs, too much rain, and not enough rain. Early September’s photo-shoot of the same patch of plants showed brown-tipped, yellowed and nibbled leaves with dusty spider webs between them. For my contrived […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2254],"tags":[2304,2259,705,2303,2271,976,2302,2301,2300,2297,2285,2270],"class_list":["post-3127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-h","tag-altered-horizons-17","tag-coping-with-change","tag-dealing-with-depression","tag-embracing-aging","tag-fabricated-landscapes","tag-grief-and-loss","tag-growing-old","tag-loss-of-beauty","tag-loss-of-former-life","tag-photoshop-for-healing","tag-phototherapy","tag-upended-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t