Beauty in the Details - Three Winks Studio

Once upon a time, I took a stroll through the open house at Poor Yorick Studios in Salt Lake City. While there, I purchased a print from my friend Stacy Young, a fantastic photographer and head of Three Winks Studio. Stacy's a brilliant photographer, who has taken a lot of absolutely beautiful pictures. I've seen a lot of her work over the last couple of years and consider myself to be a pretty big fan, which is kind of a weird thing to say about a person I used to see every Sunday at church.

Here's the picture, for those who are curious:


I LOVE this close-up on the blueberries but my reasoning here's a little strange. Bear with me.

The crowns on these berries are spiked and aggravated, almost as if the berries were violently torn open. Also, the skin on the berry is dusty and a bit discolored. In short, these are NOT an advertiser's blueberries. However, I find I love looking at these berries, which I have a tough time describing as anything other than "honest."

I purchased this photograph in part because it reminded me of a photograph I once saw on Stacy's blog - a portrait of a woman*. Stacy used a lens which captured a lot of the fine details of the woman's face - crow's feet on the woman's eyes and the slight hairs growing out of her cheeks. The woman looked straight at the camera. with a slight smile on her face, and, frankly, she looked stunning.

When I hear phrases like "spikey berries" and "hairy-faced women," I'm not immediately drawn to exclaim, "What a beautiful world we live in!" Yet that's exactly how I feel when I look at the sublime details Stacy captures in her pictures - despite perceived "imperfections," everything is full of inherent beauty that we can see if we only learn to look at things a little differently.

I'm grateful for fantastic photographers who see the world as beautiful and are able to capture that beauty with their art. I keep the picture of the blueberries in my apartment as a reminder that, sometimes, it's our flaws that make us beautiful - a lesson a lot of us would do well to remember (myself included). If you find you need that kind of reminder yourself, I recommend checking out Stacy's blog.

* and it's not like I could really justify purchasing someone ELSE'S portrait - that'd be a bit creepsville.