Ivy's Stuff

It was more than two weeks ago that I posted of our attempts to photograph the deceased Ivy's smock. You may recall that to put it in context, Sue surrounded the smock with some of her own paintings and supplies. But she wanted a photo that included Ivy's Stuff.

Ivy gave most of her art away over the years, some to the local cat rescue lady for her auctions, but her son still had two pieces on hand that Sue could borrow. Before she passed away, she donated her other supplies to a local group that offers art opportunities for handicapped children. Sue contacted the lady who runs the program to see if we could set up a time to come in and use some of these in photos. 

That is what we did. It was not a studio setting you understand, and we worked in very cramped quarters with a wide angle lens. As I have recently posted, wide angle lenses can easily cause distortion. To avoid distortion as much as possible, you must hold the camera very level, but you will still tend to get some wonkyness, as I did, below.

The two featured paintings ↑ are Ivy's, and so are the easel, table and chair. The smock you already know about, of course.

From there, we moved to a very tight spot where I had to tilt the camera, and this, of course, resulted in distortion that I didn't really want. I was able to correct some of it in post, but I could not avoid making the nearest objects loom disproportionately large.

We took quite a few photos with Sue making subtle adjustments of the various props, but those two ↑ should suffice.

As a wrap, we put the clown photo on the table, eliminated everything else and took a photo.

Photographically, it is often best to simplify the scene and eliminate distractions, but the earlier photos tell the story that Sue wanted told.

Her son lives in Florida but does much of his work and business in Toronto. He got marooned here in Canada when the pandemic struck. Then he stayed with his mother as her health declined. Once Ivy's affairs have been wrapped up, he will return home and take these final two paintings with him. For her part, Sue was able to capture these photos and Stuff as part of her personal memorial and tribute.