Recently my cousin Neville emailed me
asking if I could make a picture for his wife Margaret from the
header on my blog. As some of you may know, the elegant lady sitting on the
couch is Neville´s mother, my Aunt Lucas. I have many photos of her,
mostly studio portraits from the 1930s in which she´s immaculately
groomed and stylishly dressed. You´re probably thinking that the
photo on the above header is one of them. Not at all!
As you can see, the photo was actually
just a snapshot. According to the writing on the back, it was taken
in March 1932 in the small Scottish town of Balloch on – to quote
our national poet, Robert Burns - “the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch
Lomond” - and shows that Lucas didn´t only dress in her best for
her many studio photos but also for a day trip to the country. You
could say that she looks just as immaculate sitting on a rock as
sitting on the sofa in my header.
Anyway, that´s just the history of the
photo. Back to Margaret´s request...I was wondering how I could
possibly transform my blog header into a picture for her to frame
when I suddenly remembered that I already had one. Years ago long
before I started this blog I´d created a series of fantasy rooms one
of which had been the inspiration for my header. I dug around in my
folders and finally unearthed it.
It included the table, the vase of
roses, the oval picture and Lucas seated on the sofa which are all in the header too. And if you look
directly to your left, you´ll even see the china ornament which I´d
placed on the table. I was tremendously relieved to think I´d found
the perfect picture and wouldn´t have to start from scratch. That is
until Neville sent me a photo of the frame...
...and I realised with dismay that 30.5
cm x 30.5 cm into 19 cm x 24 cm won´t go. I tried cutting the image
down to size but that resulted in chopping the large oval picture on
the wall right down the middle. It looked as if I might have to start
from scratch after all. Then I had a thought that sent me scurrying
back to the folder where I´d found the jpg and there, amazingly, was
the original layout in psd format with all its layers intact! With
some resizing and a little manipulation I finally ended up with this.
I was about to send it off when the
thought occurred to me that since Margaret and Neville live in far
distant South Africa the chances are I´d never get to see my work
framed and hanging on the wall. On the other hand, since I´d already extracted the frame, there was no reason
why I couldn´t have a preview of the finished picture on my computer
screen.
Maybe I should have called this post
“Spot The Difference”.
Can you?
Will Margaret...
...and which one will she choose?
