Another artist that has graciously left me a treasure-trove of inspiration is Daniel Ridgeway Knight. So many of his works beautifully expressed the light and color of flower gardens, and present me with the kind of challenge I love best! Recreating this one, called "A Field of Flowers" required some extra compositing to make the magic happen. Here's the painting:

This photo session happened on a spur-of-the-moment with my sister, so I didn't have much time to prepare. For the location, we visited the Olmstead Place State Park, one of the loveliest places I've visited in years. There's no lake there though, so we had to leave that part out. And our best efforts on short notice couldn't produce an authentic scythe, so we opted to use flowers instead.

My sister and her husband just happen to own a seed company, and they use old paintings like this one on their seed packets! I took pictures all around the garden of different flowers, and added them to the photo. (The picture was taken with my sister standing under a bower of trees, with not a flower in sight!) Here's the final image:

It reminds me of an old-fashioned postcard! Maybe they'll start using this image on their seed packets. :-)