Patrick's musings about recent photos and images
NAUTILUS A new entry in the Metamorphosis series. After 6 years of gestation, the Nautilus photo shoot in Amsterdam is the latest addition to my Metamorphosis series portfolio. Sometimes the gestation period for a picture runs from months into years. I met Silvia, a dusky Portuguese beauty, in Holland in 2013 at the first public... Continue Reading →
Seeking Grace On the old Roman road on the hill leading towards Orvieto from which Turner painted his celebrated painting in 1828, stands a crumbling de-consecrated church that belongs to an old friend of mine Lucio, this is where he and his friends restore old cars and where they keep their pristine... Continue Reading →
The shot of The Three Graces was on my list of projects for over six years, but I could never get three friends together at the same time. Two beautiful Canadians, Kelsey and Renè walked into my Orvieto Gallery in mid October and looked attentively at the pictures both on the walls and in the... Continue Reading →
Location: St Patrick's Well Orvieto and Danae The Umbrian city of Orvieto and its environs in Latium and Tuscany have provided me with most of my locations for the Belle. Sometimes I realise the image on location, but occasionally this is physically impossible as was the case with Danae (2009) for which I wished to... Continue Reading →
Rusalka, a Slavic folk tale set to music by Dvořák Rusalka was suggested to me by a professional opera singer who had herself performed the role in Dvořák’s eponymous opera. A folk tale found in the slavic world akin to Andersen’s Little Mermaid and equally tragic. Rusalka is a beautiful water sprite living in a... Continue Reading →
Unusual connections sometimes can spark art photography inspiration and creativity. Baudelaire’s poem “Invitation du Voyage” and a news item about Choco Pie are behind the making of this image. Luxe, Calme et Volupté comes from a line taken from Baudelaire’s poem Invitation du Voyage, but it was a news item about a chocolate confection popular in communist North Korea that inspired this image, the coveted Choco Pie.
Poetry, music and painting, all converge in this photo-shoot, setting the mood for the final image. This picture had its origins in the sight of a freshly painted blue boat on the shores of Lake Bolsena which reminded me of a painting by Carl Moll, a mysterious, unsettling picture of a blue boat in a flooded... Continue Reading →
We set off to take a photo on the beach in mid October despite the awful weather because this was the last opportunity of the year. We had planned to take the picture back in 2007 when I met her shortly after opening my gallery in Orvieto, though something had always conspired to postpone time... Continue Reading →
A Whiter Shade of Pale, one of the all time great song titles, and in effect a one line poem. The Procol Harum song, came into my mind as I arranged this picture on the basalt rocks in the gorge near the ruins of the Etruscan city of Vulci on the Tuscan-Latium border. And so... Continue Reading →
Sometimes I come back to a picture with a new idea, usually to add something - such are the wonders of Photoshop - despised I know by many purists but manna from heaven to someone like me who never knows when to stop. In this case I have tinkered with a 2006 picture called Correspondent... Continue Reading →
In early spring 2009 I took the picture above of a weeping willow on Lake Bolsena. A fortnight later a high wind ripped off the upper bough and for at least a couple of years it lay semi-submerged, rotting in the shallow water below. I grew up with Willow Pattern. As a child I was... Continue Reading →
Please lock me away...... Danae was sent to the tower to protect her virtue; in an ivory tower intellectuals are supposed to argue over how many angels one can fit on the head of a pin; and those searching for a bit of unworldly peace to write that novel, scan their slides, write a song... Continue Reading →
Patrick Nicholas Photography 