poppies

If you think Saint John is calm and quiet on a Sunday, you should see it on November 11th … Remembrance Day. Then everything comes to a grinding halt and everything is closed … just the way it should be. For about two weeks now, everyone here has worn a poppy on the left side of their coats.

So, tomorrow on 11:11AM 11-11-11, we’ll gather in Harbour Station for the annual Remembrance Day tribute — two minutes of silence, to reflect. This will be my fourth time … the first time, we had just moved in here. It’s a very moving celebration, and it warms my heart to see Harbour Station filled to the last seat with Saint Johners who want to pay their respect.

Coming from Sweden, that hasn’t participated in a war for two hundred years or so, this perhaps feels even more important. We have so much to be thankful for!  The build-up to this day on TV — History Channel in particular — is immense, and it saddens me to no end, to think about us … the human race. Why can’t we just get along….

This particular poppy, I shot in Skåne, Sweden, during my trip. There were a few, still blooming, even though it was late September.

 

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the return of the poppy

Some time ago, I downloaded GIMP. It’s an open-source photo editor, and it’s free.

Have had it before, but it’s been a long time and I found it too confusing back then. Thought I’d give it a try again since it’s constantly being updated and I like to see what’s going on.

It was like a whole different world opened up and most of it I didn’t understand. Thought I’d make an attempt at creating my usual, blue orb at least…. just to see what I could do with it.

There would be a lot to learn to take full advantage of it, and I don’t know that I’ll even start, but I’ve seen amazing work being created with it.

I have another photo editor, for whatever little editing I do. While Gerry was in France, I tried once again, to get back into creating graphics, but it just didn’t work. It can’t be forced.

I love the idea of GIMP, though … the fact that it’s free for everyone to download. You don’t have to be «filthy rich» to create graphics, when you’re so inclined! There are others too … paint.net, aviary, pixlr just to mention a few…

I’ve never picked up a paintbrush in my whole life … I’ve done some pencil drawing … but I did do some «virtual» painting for a while. It was a lot of fun, but also difficult, using just the mouse. Sometimes rewarding. This poppy, and the lilies too, I made totally from scratch. If I’d been into painting in ‘real life’, so to speak, Georgia O’Keefe would have been my inspiration. Now, when I’ve been searching for my own images for this post, I can still remember how much fun I had making these… I didn’t know about Georgia O’Keefe when I made these. Found out about her in some graphics challenge we had back in Yahoo 360. What a revelation that was to me! A person who had already painted what I wanted to do.