SEPIA...

Aah, sepia...  It's my favorite color.  Or should I call it a non-color...   It captivates me and makes my heart sing.  It embraces me.  And I embrace it.  It's like a blanket made of alpaca.  It just doesn't get any better than that.

Let me explain.  I am, or at least was, a photographer.  Black and white was my forte.  Black and white was magical.  It was honest and true.  No gimmicks or distractions.  Just an image.  Frozen in time.  Forever.  Just the facts.  Flowers don't need color to be beautiful.  Landscapes don't need it either.  Just give me some contrast filters and I could rival Ansel Adams.  And that is NOT an easy exit to take.  All you have to do is make it magnificent in it's purest form.  Let the viewer's  mind fill in the details.  Just whittle it down to its basics and you have something that can be "interpreted" as whatever moves your soul.  Or makes you gasp.  Or cry.  Or dance with joy.  And it was "caught" on film.  Yes, film.  Most of you don't remember that "medium".  It was joyous.  FILM!!!

Sepia.  Again, I explain...  Sepia is a word from the ancient Latin.  It literally means cuttlefish.  Which are brown.  Sepia is a tone of color.  Think "yellowed".  Like an old newspaper from the attic.  Or one of those VERY old, "yellowed" black and white Kodak photos you found in  your grandmothers desk as you cleaned out her house after the funeral.  That moment is frozen in time forever.  More than likely of people you don't have a clue of who they are.  But that does not matter.  They are frozen in sepia.  A wonderful place to be and left for us to try to figure out.

I remember my youth (dare I say, my childhood) in sepia.  A wonderfully, joyous time in black and white, soaked in tea to give it that color.  Grandma's yard was awash in color.  Hollyhocks.  Petunias.  Morning Glories of an amazing palette of colors.  And green.  But now, decades later, I remember it in sepia.  Yellowed but rich in it's vibrancy.  But still, sepia.  A different place, a different time and a different "space". 

I remember myself, bursting out of her house, naked and running through the neighborhood.  Nipples to the wind.  A four-year old.  With her chasing behind me, through the strawberries and the tomatoes.  Desperately trying to keep me out of the neighbors yard.  To no avail.  What can I say...  I'm just me.

Sepia, I salute you...

You have made me the crazy I am today...