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

There are two kinds of photographs I love — very complex photos and very minimal photos. I also like everything in between, but I love very complex and very simple. Looking at a tangle of branches, vines, plants, or enjoying the complex moving patterns of sun on water are two examples of complex. You will notice with my photograph of snowy branches, your eyes move around and take in the entire image as a cohesive whole. The point here is the pattern, not necessarily the subject itself. There is no one element fighting for dominance. The spaces not occupied by a branch or a tree trunk are pretty uniform in size and evenly spaced throughout the entire image. On the complete opposite end of the scale, we have the image where, indeed, the main subject is immediately very obvious and it’s the unused blank areas (the negative space), that lend emphasis to the subject itself because the subject is what you immediately see. As in my image of thorns in snow, your eyes follow the subject f