The River

The River – Joni Mitchell
Model – Danielle Schumacher

We had a beautiful, early snowfall this year. The temperatures dropped way down and everything turned to an icy wonderland.  I’m a warm weather person and love the sun, but sometimes winter seems like a safe, healing rest; a quiet blanket of solace that covers the landscape.  I know it can also be unforgiving, but this is how I look at it when it first snows and is clean and new, so I jumped at the opportunity to take advantage of it at this time of year and do a holiday song.  What better Christmas song than Joni Mitchell’s The River?  I wanted to make the image look the way the song makes me feel when I listen to it.  Since the woman in the song lives in a warm climate, I picture her imagining herself in the snow with her skates, ready to skate away.  I think we all sometimes just wish we had a river to skate away on.

There are so many good covers of Joni’s song, and since I love covers, I had a hard time deciding on which link to post for this one.  Herbie Hancock performs with Joni singing, while one of his band members plays a gorgeous clarinet solo.  Tori Amos also does an awesome cover recorded live in Paris.  The list goes on…but in the end, I decided to post the original.  It is Joni in 1970.  She sounds so young and the song is so new – like winter snow.  Thanks Joni, for such a beautiful song!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VV6j_mFR9c

Sowing the Seeds of Love

Sowing the Seeds of Love – Tears for Fears
Model: Danielle Schumacher

After finishing this week’s shot, I started thinking about song intros (because this one has a great one), and how they can be a separate thing altogether from the song.  There are so many good intros.  I bet if you think about it, you can think of at least one.  Just a few of my favorites are Roxy Music’s Love is the Drug, Soundgarden’s Fell on Black Days , and this week’s image, Tears for Fears’ Sowing the Seeds of Love.  Not to mention those intros all lead into awesome songs!

I had to shoot this image twice because the first session ended up with the best shots being a bit too dark (and we couldn’t go to the same place the 2^nd time around since after we had broken into a community garden, they built a large wooden fence to keep us out).   Unfortunately, the first session had excellent light (the hour right before sunset) where the light is just orange and  pink and glowing.  The second time we went out it was in the middle of a very cloudy gray day.  Cloudy days are also excellent times to shoot, but you can’t pull out those magical colors that I love.  In the end, it isn’t exactly the image that appears in my head when I hear the song, but  pretty close.

Thanks to Tears for Fears!  I think I will have to make another one of their songs into an image.  Great Britain has given us so many unbelievable musical artists, it’s just incredible!!  Here is the link.  Turn it UP and listen to the intro.  Isn’t it great?