It was a very hot summer day when I was walking around by myself with my heavy camera in Aranjuez, a beautiful touristic city 45 minutes by train from the Spanish capital Madrid. As a photographer, I like traveling around with my camera and that summer day I felt like visiting the Royal Palace of Aranjuez and get indulged in the rich history and romantic atmosphere of the palace. I especially like the Spanish summer since most cities are very empty since people go for summer vacation outside the country, so there are only tourists around. In smaller towns, it looks like the city is all yours.
So on that day, I spent around two hours inside the quiet palace staring at the different beautiful frescos on the ceilings and at beautiful paintings and furniture and trying to memorize every single detail and decoration. After that I stepped outside to the royal garden. The royal palace of Aranjuez is blessed with a wonderful green garden that stretches over a river inside and mountains from afar. I was taken aback by the beauty of the lake, many parts of which were fully covered in green moss and the pink flowers that fell from countless trees on top of the lake, creating an incredible romantic and picturesque view. The scene was like nothing I´d seen in my life, imagine, the surface of the lake was completely covered by different layers of moss, leaves, flowers, creating a magnificent painting of nature. As if nature had woven a beautiful autumn coat over the lake. My creativity was mesmerized and my curiosity was awakened by such colorful and unique view of nature and I couldn´t resist from taking hundreds of pictures of the surface of the lake over a couple of hours. That evening I got home and started working on this series Ecosystem non-stop for the whole weekend.
Myself being a fan of Impressionism art, I adore Renoir, Pisarro, Manet... and Claude Monet´s Water Lilies Series Paintings always take my breath away. These raw materials from Ecosystem immediately remind me of Impressionism paintings that I see very frequently at the Thyssen Museum in Madrid (being a huge fan of classic paintings, I visit museums in Madrid every weekend), and immediately the voice inside me said that I could try creating something so rich and powerful in color. When I was getting lost in the wonder world of colors, a flashback of the Impressionism and abstract paintings I saw at the different museums in the world was hovering my mind.
As a result, “Ecosystem” is a feast of colors and resembles paintings of Impressionism. However, they are not paintings, they are real photographs taken of the surface of the lake inside the Royal Palace. The Royal Palace of Aranjuez is a residence of the King of Spain and was built in the XVI century.
More info: viethatranphotography.com
