From : http://katsmack.blogspot.com
By Kat Barrow-Horth
Bigger is Better: Feet, Photos & Other Things That Start With “F”
”How big ARE your feet?” I was asked by another designer the other day when we stopped talking shop and started talking shoes.
Gulp… Red face.
You know that scene in “The Wizard of Oz” when the Dorothy’s house falls on the Wicked Witch of the East and her feet shrivel and roll up, turning into stumps with striped socks? Well, I was kind of wishing at that moment that my feet would do the same, you know, without the help of a falling house.
I mean my feet are admittedly big, but as my 3rd grade teacher Mrs.Gram told me after she read my letter to Santa requesting smaller feet, I need big feet to keep my even bigger body from toppling over itself. While I’m certain a half a size smaller wouldn’t cause me to do a face plant, Mrs. Gram was very wise in the ways of the force and she Jedi-Mind-Tricked me that day. I still wonder if she may have shed a little tear after reading that while the other kids wanted Cabbage Patch Kid dolls and He-Man figurines for Christmas, all I wanted was smaller cloppers.
Let’s all take a moment sob a little, shall we?
So I understand and appreciate BIG, it’s simply the way I live. That’s one of the many reasons I am seriously digging Sharon Raoli’s photography. A childhood friend who also got hit by the tall stick, I saw her work originally on Facebook when she was posting shots of her various vacations. Sharon was not only going to amazing places but she was documenting them well…. REALLY well. I mean, these were not the blurry, close-up shots with a finger in front of the lens that I was taking on weekend trips. They were gorgeous, artsy photos.
Whoa man! Raoli’s got some serious talent!
She went to the Everglades and found my future favorite purse…
How you make a vulture look beautiful I’ll never know but Sharon captures it here, in an ominously foreboding and morbidly sinister I’m-going-to-have-nightmares-about-this-forever kind of way.
She took this shot in Africa and I just loooooove the muted colors of this giraffe
A door somewhere in Tuscany….Where I am not presently.
Rome. Also, where I also am not.
An iguana eye taken in her backyard.
I mean, you don’t take pictures like this in your backyard, do you? Me neither.
Pink, fuzzy, grassy stuff…
Her dog
Sharon obviously specializes in nature photography but I strong-armed her into taking our engagement shots. She obviously rocks at that too….
I like to rest on comfortable rock walls while Reed examines my teeth
This one I LOVE, it’s THE RING and my horse Barbary (not “Barbara” like the kids at the barn like to call him).
This is the only recorded photo of us where we are not making horribly deformed faces
And the grand finale, this is actually the picture that captures us the best. I love how absolutely dorky it is:
OK, no more about me for once…
Then we had this photo of hers called “Mother’s Eye” blown up and mounted under frameless plexiglass and gave to to a client as a gift. It was gorgeous in the modern frame, blown up large.
The clients loved it so much they hung it next to an Andy Warhol.
Booo-yaaaa!
Which brings me to my point…. As a designer, oftentimes I find it hard to locate a large piece of artwork that hits as many points as Sharon’s work does: scale, texture, color and theme. They can be blown up BIG (even bigger than my feet if you can imagine that). Can’t you just imagine her photos in a mucho posh restaurant or hip hotel? I’m thinking something like this… Here is a photo of Katsuya at LA LIVE (Los Angeles) which was designed by Philippe Starck. Notice the uber-large photo of a geisha.
Me Love You for a Seriously Long Time
Clearly I’m a biased fan; I think that Sharon is the mastermind of photography and that her work should be plastered everywhere. So to wow you with my (not so) amazing Photoshop skillzzz, here is some of her work superimposed in situ:
See what I mean? You need so few things in a room when you have such awesome LARGE art. And pretty please don’t let anyone else fool you, size certainly does matter (says the woman who has spent her life wearing Ronald McDonald shoes.)
*Want to see more of her images or find out about pricing contact info@robinrile.com or go to www.robinrile.com
