Mary Bedy Photography

Boardwalk Companions 4 102120 It’s hard to put into words what the isolation of the pandemic has done to us. I’m sure it’s different for everyone. Obviously it’s harder on those who have been impacted financially and hardest of all on those who have lost loved ones or who have long-term health issues after contracting the virus themselves. My heart goes out to every one of them. Leaves on Ice 121618   That said, I don’t want to write a downer blog post when people are already not feeling like themselves and just want to get back to normal. So this post is about my attempt to make art or shoot photographs specifically to relieve the urge to make art when mostly in isolation. One of my favorite art subjects is the still life. Some of my favorite artists are the Dutch and Flemish still-life painters of the 1600s-1800s. Fruit, flowers, tables set with pottery and meats and vegetables, old books and lanterns, I enjoy all of it. I have drawn a few still lifes in graphite or colored pencil, b

I live in Michigan in an area where most freighters and tankers and a few cruise ships sailing on the Great Lakes regularly pass by. A few years ago, I was sitting on a park bench along the boardwalk watching one of these mammoth ships silently glide by not more than 200 feet from where I was sitting, and I said to myself, “Self, you’re a photographer. Why are you not photographing these graceful and majestic vessels?” My self didn’t have an answer. So I started photographing them if I happened to have my camera with me while at the boardwalk, but I didn’t really make a concerted effort to shoot as many as possible. After about a year of this haphazard approach, and generally concentrating on other subject matter such as the local hiking trail, architecture and the National Parks, somehow a switch was flipped in my brain, and I found myself obsessed with collecting images of as many of these giants as I could, as well as looking up the basic information about each ship, learning what t