The Orton Effect is a simple technique of creating and adjusting layers in Photoshop to create an ethereal quality, which I love. Hopefully these images will add beauty to your life today.
ON A DROP OF DEW.
SEE, how the orient dew,
Shed from the bosom of the morn
Into the blowing roses,
(Yet careless of its mansion new,
For the clear region where ’twas born,)
Round in itself incloses ;
And, in its little globe’s extent,
Frames, as it can, its native element.
How it the purple flower does slight,
Scarce touching where it lies ;
But gazing back upon the skies,
Shines with a mournful light,
Like its own tear,
Because so long divided from the sphere.
Restless it rolls, and unsecure,
Trembling, lest it grow impure ;
Till the warm sun pity its pain,
And to the skies exhale it back again.
So the soul, that drop, that ray
Of the clear fountain of eternal day,
(Could it within the human flower be seen,)
Remembering still its former height,
Shuns the sweet leaves, and blossoms green,
And, recollecting its own light,
Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, express
The greater heaven in an heaven less.
In how coy a figure wound,
Every way it turns away ;
So the world-excluding round,
Yet receiving in the day ;
Dark beneath, but bright above,
Here disdaining, there in love.
How loose and easy hence to go ;
How girt and ready to ascend ;
Moving but on a point below,
It all about does upwards bend.
Such did the manna’s sacred dew distil ;
White and entire, though congealed and chill ;
Congealed on earth ; but does, dissolving, run
Into the glories of the almighty sun.
The Poems of Andrew Marvell.
G. A. Aitken, Ed. London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1892. 96-97.
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And it really is that blue. Himalayan Poppy. . . Meconopsis grandis. I only have one, but have collected seeds and dream of a whole field of them! O Night! most beautiful and rare! Thou givest the heavens their holiest hue, And through the azure fields of air Bring’st down the gentle dew. – Thomas Buchanan Read
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The last breath of Summer fails to stem the tide of Winter’s creeping chill.
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Love-in-a-mist, Nigella damascena: The Fair Singer by Andrew Marvell To make a final conquest of all me, Love did compose so sweet an Enemy, In whom both Beauties to my death agree, Joyning themselves in fatal Harmony; That while she with her Eyes my Heart does bind, She with her Voice might captivate my Mind. I could have fled from One but singly fair: My dis-intangled Soul it self might save, Breaking the curled trammels of her hair. But how should I avoid to be her Slave, Whose subtile Art invisibly can wreath My Fetters of the very Air I breath? It had been easie fighting in some plain, Where Victory might hang in equal choice. But all resistance against her is vain, Who has th’ advantage both of Eyes and Voice. And all my Forces needs must be undone, She having gained both the Wind and Sun.
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“Little drops of water, little grains of sand, Make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land. So the little minutes, humble though they be, Make the mighty ages of eternity.” – Julia A. Fletcher Carney
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“When one that holds communion with the skies Has fill’d his urn where these pure waters rise, And once more mingles with us meaner things, ’T is e’en as if an angel shook his wings.” – William Cowper
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“Fall on me like a silent dew, Or like those maiden showers Which, by the peep of day, do strew A baptism o’er the flowers. – Robert Herrick
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You try holding the camera in one hand and a wiggly baby chick in the other, and see what you can get in focus!
Jadegardens 