“Summer’s lease hath all too short a date,” Shakespeare wrote in Sonnet 18. Yet fine-art photographer Diane Allison manages to stop summertime with her camera. In a salute to the Summer season, Allison's photos capture quintessential macro moments and digital enhancements add a bit of photographic fairy dust.
A Denver native, the artist shoots 30 to 100 images almost daily and favors the Colorado outdoors. "I am compelled to get out every single day, even if [it's] overcast because the light is always incredible—even today with [wildfire] smoke in the air, there is a different quality of blue.”
The images selected for this series are vivid and magical, infused with light that feels typical of summer’s long days of dazzling sunshine. There are ripe fruits and sparkling fireworks, luminous rainbows in pewter skies and sunshine spangling lake water. And yet, the artist’s keen eye and digital touch also make the familiar seem foreign. A bee’s wing resembles black lace and the dreamy gleam of a gilded carousel horse captures summer’s lightheartedness.