Admiring bouquets

A few weeks ago my mother-in-law celebrated her 70th birthday and invited us to come and join a party thrown on that occasion. She has known that both her son and I like taking photos and asked us to take a camera with us to preserve some memories of the party for her. We promised, how could we not to?

When the date came, we sat into our car and went 500 kilometres to spend the following three days with her and to meet other more or less close relatives. Some of them are really nice people and we don’t see them very often (not even once a year) so this was a good opportunity for a family reunion. Moreover, I really like my mother-in-law and admire her vigour and a practical outlook on life. We don’t share similar opinions, that’s undeniable, but she is a person I’m grateful for a lot and also I know that she has a truly kind and warm heart.

I didn’t want to be the one taking pictures at the party so my husband took the responsibility and his camera and was documenting all those guests and their congratulations. But you know, while watching him, I regretted I hadn’t taken my camera either… No surprise for him I guess, so eventually I was borrowing his camera from time to time and took quite a few shots myself.

I have to admit that although I took some photos of the present guests, what I felt most attracted to were those beautiful bouquets of flowers piled on a table together with presents.

Roses and orchids of many colours, orchids both cut and potted, lilies, gerberas, anthurium… One more beautiful than the other.

I like the way bouquets are made. From flowers on the one hand and various leaves and accessories on the other hand. Pieces of art, aren’t they?

A few years ago we compiled photos we had taken during our visits at my mother-in-law’s and arranged them into a photo book sized A4, which we ordered via the Internet. We gave her the book on some occasion – I don’t remember any more whether it was for Christmas or as a birthday present but that doesn’t matter – and she was so pleased and liked it very much. We’ve agreed on preparing such a book from the photos taken at the party, so I spent quite a few hours (and days) processing the photos, selecting the best of them and creating the book. I sent the order yesterday evening and now I’m quite curious how the actual book will look when I hold it in my hands.

The thing is, you can always do it better. You can prepare embellishments and background papers, don’t use just the ones offered in the software. You can arrange photos differently, more imaginatively, open gates to your creativity. But there is just certain amount of time you can devote to making such a book and that’s it. I already see things I could have done better but hopefully the result will be good enough.

I’ve chosen the photo above for the cover of the photo book. If you draw a line vertically in the middle, you can approximately see the front and the back part of the cover. Furthermore, there will be short white text in the right upper corner embellished by a translucent light green oval bellow it. It looked great in the draft.

Well, the party’s over, the book is ordered. I’m ready for another little “adventure”.

By the way, can you smell the fragrance of the lilies? It was so strong that it must have penetrated the picture too!