Everything but Pink Eye

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, this was just the perfect month for Pink.

I could have taken a picture of blooms every day this month. That I didn't have to was incredible. My off the top of my head list of pink things I saw but didn't get a chance to shoot this month includes peonies, rhododendrons, the Vintage Pink building and fabrics at Cool Cottons (where the bolts are organized by color). There is just so much pink out there.


The other day Chris told me that Dorothea Lange said: "The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera." This is so right on. Each of the past four months, my eyes have been trained to find color coded subjects, and this exercise has helped me to see things that might normally escape my notice. I'm not saying that my photographs are making the mundane beautiful (sometimes my efforts seem to have the opposite effect) but by looking at the world in a new way, I am seeing more than I usually do. It is really inspiring.

Speaking of inspiration, pink is the first color month that has inspired people to send me their own Pink pictures. Karen sent me this stunner from just north of The Middle Of Nowhere, Ohio:

Photo by Karen

My friends Mike and Ann sent me photos of themselves with a couple of the pink-blooming trees in their Chicagoland area yard. In a separate email, Ann told me that it had been 70 degrees there. I am pretty sure that never happened in April when I lived in Chicago.  

Mike and a blooming magnolia (photo by Ann)

Ann and a blooming crabapple (photo by Mike)

Mike also sent me some jealousy-inducing photos of the work he's done on his back yard. He has some really impressive vegetable beds. Then again, I should not be surprised, since he is a master gardener who runs his own garden design business. If you live in the Chicago area and are looking for a good landscape garden designer, let me know.

April is the first month in which the end of the month did not find me ready to leave a color behind. I am finding it hard to move on from pink, but spring is a pretty colorful time around here, so focusing on purple in May should be great.