There is something about withering flowers I can't resist - what is it, though?...
The colours? Yes! Absolutely, but there is something else...
A melancholy about another summer gone by, perhaps?
But also the beauty of the cycle of life.
Maybe you can tell me?
The last few glimpses of my mothers summer garden, before autumn seriously sets in.
So, I cheated a bit - these are samples from the butterfly photo - but also from the previous photo. Chance had the last layer peeping through and I liked it that way.
Bee good!
I am a proud observer of nature. Proud as in I often notice little things and point them out to my fellow observers...
Well, so much for pride... this time nature tricked me!
I thought I was taking a photo of spiders web in a cracked stone wall.
Imagine my surprise, when I viewed my photos on the PC, and discovered the black and white camouflaged moth!
See it? In the right hand side of the photo. I was thrilled, it felt like a gift!
[I have a request to point out the moth - apparently, I am not the only one it was hiding for! ;) ]
And I was somewhat humbled and thought: There is always more to see, more to learn, more to embrace. I appreciate that lesson!
I love to take a walk along the wine on our local sunny hill. There is a small wineyard, making the most exquisite white wine. I am sure the wineberg snail would taste delicious with the Durlacher wine, if that is the kind of thing you like to eat! I prefer to admire their beautiful colours.
[OK - this is not the kind of wineberg snail you would normally eat, it is really tiny, probably not worth the trouble!]
This picture was taken with the Panasonic DMC FZ18 , which can go up very close ... Sometimes I nudge the very thing I want to make a photo of with the lense, before I am happy. Hurrah for modern technology, it enables me to see things I would not percieve otherwise... especially after I started carrying a pair of reading glasses in my purse... which I occasionally need, but often refuse to use...
The most simple picture might hold a million colours... at least if you sample it in Photoshop ;)
[Do check out my other posts on the subject, I am doing a series of "Colours of Nature" posts]
Can you believe these colours?
We may not percieve all the colours of nature when we look. They merge to a harmonious whole.
These are the colours of a simple lettuce - or should I say a sample of colours, there are more.
I am training myself to become a better (amateur) photographer.
I got myself a little Panasonic Digitalkamera DMC-TZ 7 which I carry everywhere. It's a point and shoot, but a nice one. It is small and light enough, that I WILL take it with me. No more thinking: "OH, I wish I had a camera right now!" - I have! It also enables me to train my eye on a daily basis.
To learn more about photography, I signed up for a class in october. I will be carrying our trusty Panasonic DMC FZ18 , and learn to use more of it's many features, and get the grips properly on the manual functions.
For inspiration, I like to visit a couple of great photo blogs:
shuttersisters and thepioneerwoman
but there are lots of fantastic photography out there, just look at flickr!
[Do check out my other posts on the subject, I am doing a series of "Colours of Nature" posts]
So many thoughts of change are coming up in this house, that I have started a journal to keep track of them. Untill now, I only kept a studio log. The more personal journals I kept years ago, were mostly in written form. I found it difficult to keep an artists journal, where I explored my feelings and thoughts visually. But it seems to be working for me now!
I like to cut words from a newspaper as the occasional prompt for my journaling.
And as you can see, I love layering.
My techniques vary from monoprint, to nature print, to stamping, to drawing, and collaging and mostly in combination.
Seth of the Altered Page has now listed links to the final results of the collaboration Disintegration.
Go here to visit!
My scrap of paper has been long in the making! I hung it out on the clothes line in april, it stormed, rained and snowed in march, and the sun bleached almost all of the colour to off white in may.
What I got left on the braille paper was some dirt from when the wind tore my bundle off the line and chased it around in the yard. And a set of very nice marks from the clothes pins.
I used the small scrap with marks on together with rice paper that I dyed and aged by hand. In the pale blue paper I burnt little holes with a heat tool.
The button with "x" on it ( I decided it should be an x instead of a cross) is really from a nurses costume, or maybe it was a pin. It is old, made of porcelain and I found it at a flee market.
This is a very special collaboration hosted by Jeriann and Julie. They also enlisted Lisa as secret agent.
For many month's people all over the world have been creating and thinking how to best express our gratitude towards Michelle Ward for her generousity, and show her our love at a difficult time (she lost her sister Shannon a year ago).
These pages are my contribution.
Gates of Perception
Michelle has opened the "Gates of Perception" for us, in her challenges at the Street Team Crusade.
She has shown a lot of possible directions for creativity.
Opening the back door you discover a mirror, and a mirrored text. It is my letter of gratitude to Michelle.
HCIMW? How Cool Is Michelle Ward!
Go here to see the whole book!
Three and a half week in Denmark.
Not so long, when you are visiting loved ones.
And a lifetime, when you look at the garden.
I really get my Mom, who spends most of summer "bottoms up", weeding and planting in her garden.
It is such a joy and a calming experience to hear the bird song and see the little ones come out of their nests and learn to fly.
One day I may get a garden of my own... Just a little one?!
