The Red Umbrella - Anything But Ordinary, by Nikki Heyde
Nicole Heyde
Last year, The Empress Hotel asked Aaron to outfit their conference rooms with two very large murals, each 20ft by 8ft to liven up those rooms since there are no windows. Now the Empress hotel is already pleasantly outfitted head to toe in Aaron Goulding Photography, so they knew his work and had a very specific area in mind for him to shoot. So off Aaron went to do his thing at Blacks Beach, La Jolla.
Now in order to get the large panoramic image that the Empress wanted, Aaron explained to me that using one image and blowing it up, would get distorted. So he shot a sequence of photos that he would then stitch together. I, a total photography newbie, had of course no idea that if you stitch the 20 photos together and blow it up...this is the way to not lose the integrity of the photo. So what he did for the Empress Hotel was a stitched panoramic.
I digress though, because above is just the background to what I really want to talk about. After Aaron shot at Blacks Beach, he and his wife Misty, over a bottle of cabernet, perused through his work from that shoot. Just as they flipped through Misty noticed a little red dot in one of the frames. So they blew it up to find that this little red dot was in fact a woman, nude, holding a red umbrella. Imagine! Shot from 2 to 3 miles away. They both fell in love with this image, and so came to life Aaron's new release - The Red Umbrella.
I look at this image and I am in awe. It's strange, and mysterious. You just can't help but wonder and come up with hundreds of different stories. Who is she? Where did she come from? Why is she standing all alone? Is she sad? Is she happy? What secrets does she bear? Her solitary presence is mystifying. This is the kind of piece you can stare at for endless hours, the kind of piece that will have a different meaning to everyone who owns it.
The Red Umbrella is now available at Aaron Goulding's Gallery.