Queen for a day!

button courtesy and design by Shin

Welcome everybody! Iedereen hartelijk welkom!
(een vertaling van deze blogpost staat helemaal onderaan)

Welcome to this surprise blogparty in honor of the very talented Susanna Gordon.
If you know Susanna because of her great photography and her winged messenger guerilla art, please continue to read. For those of you who know her but just cannot think of what at this moment: just look here and here. For those of you who are too lazy to follow a link; I will shortly explain what it's all about.


Me holding a winged messenger

Susanna Gordon is a very talented artist. I especially know her from her winged messenger project, so I will stick to that in this post. Susanna makes these beautiful pieces of art; paper winged envelopes with hopeful lines written on them, to leave them somewhere for somebody to be found, hoping that the message is an unexpected, but very welcome surprise.


My line 'You really are a friend' on top, Susanna's line 'Share your dreams with someone' on the bottom

Soon after she started, those little pieces of art were sent around the world to be spread by others. Now that is where I come to this stage; I was so lucky to be one of the people who were given one envelope ready to be spread by Susanna, the other given to me was blank and I could think of a line myself.
I made dozens of photos, in my hometown Dordrecht as well as in Rotterdam, finally leaving the messages in Rotterdam, you can read all about it here.

A little while ago, I was contacted through email by Angie Byers, who had the fab idea gathering the women, who were involved in Susanna's winged messengers project, to do something back for Susanna, as we all had so much enjoyed being part of this project. We decided to have a blogparty in honor of Susanna Gordon, Shin designed a blog button and while Susanna was sleeping I was writing this post for her.

In this post I'll show you some more photos I have taken for this project but which somehow didn't make it to the selection, which of course were not that many photos. It also reveals some of my thoughts of why these photos shouldn't be in that selection. Hope you will have fun!



This was the very first photo I made for this project: The winged messenger on a 19th century fountain, which wasn't working at that moment.
In this country we almost always have to deal with wind, so the wings were moving and making it harder to have photos without unwanted shades. I already knew that I don't like these kind of photos of a detail, it's not my style. For this project I wanted the message to be clear too:



In Rotterdam I started with this photo. Message clear, but again what are we looking at?



Next shot ^; I think it is just too bad that you don't see this:



But now^ you cannot read the messages anymore...:-(, actually you hardly see them.
There is always something wrong!



This would be better, you even see the famous dice houses from architect Blom in the background, as well as his 'pencil' building.



Here a shot in the courtyard of the dice houses. My lovely assistant had to go upstairs to put the winged messenger against the gate, then run out of site and hope that the envelope wouldn't be blown away by the wind, which happened, she had to run down, up again and that several times. while I was trying to make a photo. Thanks to my assistant too! These photo sessions wouldn't have been possible without them and a lot of chewing gum holding the wings in their place (credit chewing gum idea:the assistants!)



On other photos there was so much to see that I doubted whether the messengers would get enough attention.



I thought that the winged messengers were best in my photos of small things. But boy did I have fun trying things and walking and enjoying all comments of passers, who were all surprised by the messengers!






Maybe this^ one for Christmas?






I spent two days having so much fun, enjoying every minute of it, thanks to Susanna!
Thank you for letting me take part in this wonderful experience. And I love this blogparty in honor of you. I hope Susanna likes to have this little addition to the photos she already has, as well as an explanation of why I choose the photographs the way I did. These photos as well of all other participants should be in our Flickr group, the URL follows, sorry for that.
Do you want to visit the other participants just look at my blogroll to see whether their posts are up yet. Thanks to Angie and all participants for making this happen.
Thanks for visiting me, and a very special thank you for doing that to that lovely artist:

Susanna Gordon!

Even een korte vertaling voor de Nederlandstalige lezers;
Welkom op de blogparty ter ere van fotografe en kunstenares Susanna Gordon.
Ik schreef al eerder over dit project, waar ik ook bij betrokken was.
Enige tijd geleden werd ik benaderd door Angie Byers om gezamenlijk met alle vrouwen die bij dit project betrokken waren 'iets' terug te doen voor Susanna, omdat we allemaal zo van dit project genoten hadden en om haar te bedanken. Uiteindelijk is dat een blogevent geworden. Aan de rechterkant van mijn blog heb ik een speciale lijst gemaakt van deelnemers aan dit blogevenement.
Ik heb nog eens een greep gedaan in de foto's die ik nog had voor dit project, het project van de gevleugelde boodschappers. Kijk en oordeel zelf of het terecht was dat deze foto's de selectie niet doorstonden, ik vond het ook een zeer leerzaam project! Wij hebben als groep ook een Flickr album gemaakt, misschien ook leuk om eens een kijkje te nemen, veel plezier!
Bedankt voor je bezoek!