Morning Shots

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New Look

A new look to my blog.  Can't say whether it will stay this way or not, but I think I eliminated any possibility to going back to what I had before!

Aerial Photo

When my husband saw this picture, he said it looked like an aerial photograph of an inlet.  Actually, I was standing on the ground and took a picture of a puddle that formed as the tide was coming in.  Which do you see when you look at this image?

Aquarium Part II

The aquarium has a super large tank with a replica of a shipwrecked German u-boat, and lots of fish and sharks.  Divers go in the tank several times a day and interact with people outside the tank.  Here, the diver puts his hand on the wall and people can put their hand on the outside - to show how thick the wall is.  It's not glass - some kind of plastic, I think.  I wasn't giving the speaker my full attention.

There were three divers in the tank, one with a special mike so that he could speak with the aquarium visitors, and the other divers could hear him too.

This is a catfish.
 

I was attracted to the bright yellow color of these fishy guys.

In a hurry to get wherever....

A hammerhead shark, cruising over a part of the u-boat replica.

I'm overly fond of frogs, and have several plushie frogs, so I couldn't pass up getting shots of these two handsome fellows.

And that was our day at the aquarium.

Aquarium

Went visiting at the North Carolina Aquarium (at Pine Knoll Shores) a couple days ago.  I loved my digital camera before, but now I love it even more - I found it has a setting for taking pictures at an aquarium!  This first fintastic fellow is a lionfish.

Here are some of my results, after seriously messing with them in Photoshop.

How sharking!!  A shock!  :o)

Embraced by the Light....  The "light" is actually my camera's flash reflected in the glass.  I moved the fish around a bit.  The title is a play on a book of that title.

Jellyfish

Ditto.  I want to return to the Aquarium soon and try more shots with the jellyfish.  Loved the effects I was able to achieve.

Hey!  Wait for me!!

More photos next time.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I saw this at the beach the other day, spelled out in broken shells and beach stones.  Seemed appropriate to the day! 

Till the Cows Come Home

This is a photograph I took in Quebec during our vacation last fall.  I decided that I wanted to recreate this image in fabric. 

I felt I was off to a good start with my first two fabrics - a couple of batiks I had in my stash.  I had a 12"x18" piece of "stiff felt" called Easy Felt, that I'd found at Michael's, and used that for my foundation.  One of the first parts of the picture that I tried to reproduce in fabric was the barn.  I wasn't happy with it and decided that the scene needed a red barn. 

I found a red barn on the Internet and used Photoshop to insert it into the picture.  As you can see, I have issues with "perpsective."  After a considerable amount of work, and some kibbitzing from my husband, I'd progressed to this image:

I was happier with this, but realized that this barn would be just as difficult to reproduce in fabric.  The photo had also gotten cropped more, and part of the middle had been removed.  I was liking it less and less, and finally decided, Who needs a barn anyway? 
This is a common stage in my artwork when I - as  usual - wonder why I ever try to do anything, nothing ever works out, waste of time, etc., etc.  Once I got past some griping in my journal, I decided to just see what would develop if I started free-cutting pieces of fabric to add to my background.

So far so good, but I hit another stopping point because I wasn't sure if I liked it enough to permanently attach the fabrics to the background.  I got out my camera, took this photo, and put it in Photoshop to play with it.  I figured that if I left out the barn, then maybe I should add something else to the picture.  I remembered some cows I'd photographed last year and pulled up two of those photos:

The cows live at a farm about a mile from our home.

Using Photoshop, I isolated the cows and added them to my picture.

Voila!!  And this is where I am now.  It doesn't look much like the original photo, especially since the blue now looks like sky instead of water.  Please note - nothing is glued down yet, and the cows are still in their cyber barn, so the next time I post about this project, it could be a totally different picture.  Anyway, I thought you might enjoy following my process.