Saturday, October 18, 2014

Cee’s Black & White Challenge: Reflections and Shadows

I just started following Cee's blog and wanted to participate in the challenge. This shot was taken behind the old Ford place in my hometown. It will soon exist only in memories and photographs.


I want to add this one as well. It is too hard for me to choose.


Taith lwc ffotograff

Names have a special meaning to me so I wanted the name for my photography to be unique and unusual. I had an idea a while ago to use Jesse James Photography as a counter part to Elizabeth Rose Creations. I nixed that for reasons that I can't really remember now.

Then I was going to do something combining the first letter of lots of my ancestors' names and was making great progress, but I forgot to write it all down, so now I have nothing to go with that idea.

Finally, I decided to just go with Photography by TLF. Of course, it couldn't be that simple so I wanted to play off of my initials like I used to when I was younger, like "True Love Forever". Then I had a different problem, it always annoys me when people use phonetic spelling because it makes something easier so I knew that I couldn't just use fotograph for the F. Instead, I used my story making skills to create a title which may or may not be grammatically correct. I am not really sure because I don't really speak Welsh.

I started out with Google Translate to see which languages used the f instead of the ph for photograph. I was excited to see that Romanian used the f, and almost used that language because I love the history of the Roma and actually created an honors course for myself to study them. As I thought a bit more, I remembered that the Roma are a true minority and would probably not appreciate the connection between the two. Since Google Translate doesn't work with Romani, I continued on my search.

Since my grandmother's maiden name is Welch, I have also been a tad obsessed with all things Welsh. I was excited to see that the word for photograph (in Welsh) is ffotograff. After a quick (and probably faulty) crash course in the structure of the Welsh language, I discovered that "photograph luck tour" would translate as taith lwc ffotograff. I wanted the words to follow the sequence of my actual initials--not just include them.

Therefore, I present Photography by TLF. It could represent Tia Lyn Foster, or it could represent taith lwc ffotograff--because my photography is truly a taith--tour (a journey for pleasure in which several different places are visited), definitely lwc--luck (success of failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions), and ffotograff--photograph (a picture made using a camera, in which an image is focused onto film or other light-sensitive material and then made visible and permanent by chemical treatment, or stored digitally). The definitions in parenthesis are from Google Translate translating between English and Welsh.

Come along with me...The journey is what matters.