Here is my submission for this months Monday Project theme, treasure.
As you can tell, the image doesn’t actually yell out ‘treasure’, but stick with me and I’ll explain how I got here.
When I read the theme, I put up a post with my initial ideas mentioning I wouldn’t mind breaking out the camera. I did play around with a drawing.. for about five minutes. My heart really wasn’t in it.
A good part of this was the knowledge that I was going to Tasmania to visit my parents and mock my brother for turning 40 (I’m the youngest). I’m sitting at my parents kitchen table right now typing away on my laptop. I was sure, one way or another, photograph or drawing, I was going to be inspired by returning to the place that I spent my teenage years.
‘Surely’ I thought ‘between seeing my family and my old home I would find something that I treasured.’ I only come down once a year and this year, where I’m spending a whole 6 days (including the day I fly in and out on, and I leave at 9am to get back to Melbourne) is one of the longest trips I’ve made in years.
I’ve discovered that we have a family secret and/or scandal… maybe… something to do with my great-great (and maybe ‘–great’ again, I can’t keep track) grandparents, but I’ll post about that later. It was exciting, but nothing I could treasure.
So it’s with no small embarrassment what actually struck me as a treasure had nothing to do with my family at all. Sorry guys.
My mother is at work. My Dad and my brother have gone out to watch some of the Targa Tasmania race. Which for those of you who don’t know, is a kind of car rally race. Pretty much anything that is considered a ‘race’ doesn’t interest me. So I opted out. Since I couldn’t work out if it was going to rain or not, I decided to just spend the afternoon here and just relax.
After watching a DVD I was wandering around thinking what to do next. My parents place is next to a national park and as much as I love the quiet, it does take a little getting use to. However, since it was so quiet, I thought I could just sit down and read my book.
It was such a great feeling. Total peace, a warm fire on a chilly day. I’m on holidays with nothing to do. I could sit down with a cup of coffee, read my book and look up every now and then and look at the view.
It was one of those times where I was so full of guilt-free pleasure, I felt a warm glow and almost shivered. It’s moments like those that need to be treasured*.
So I did a little ‘staging’ of the lounge room (moving all the remotes my parents seem to have collected) and I took a photo of the chair I was planning to sit in.
I did only a little adjusting in photoshop, the flames in the heater are actually from another shot I took trying to frame it right. I put a little extra colour in the trees, because between the angle of the sun and the dirt on the window, the view was pretty faded out. Yes that is their view. The outside boarder was added, simply because I like that sort of thing!
So long story short, this is a personal image, inspired by those moments that are fleeting, but are treasured.
*Rather ironically, I spent so much time getting the photo, playing around in photoshop and writing this up, I never did around to sitting down and reading my book. Curse these mind games! Monday Project, you win again!
Mr Sketchy 