Category: abstract photography

#1173 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography, art2 Comments
Drakes Island on a dull day.

Cold water swimming and creativity. Where or what is the buzz?

Cold water swimming is repetitive and challenging in my chosen location. No matter what I am stuck with, a cold water dip brings clarity. Since this is about creativity I can share a very recent light-bulb moment.

I was away in Penzance with a number of people for whom the physics of medical imaging is something they could natter about endlessly.

Some of us went swimming in Mounts Bay on a dull, cold, grey day.  After dipping in the sea I found a naturally occurring rock  pool that was big enough and deep enough to hold a whole human .

I could gaze out to St Michaels Mount and appreciate the beauty and bleakness of a winter day. Knowing that my photographs would be lacking a little interest. My light bulb moment arrived as my core temperature dropped.

I could manipulate the image just as I would an ultrasound, X-ray, C.T or M.R.I image. And then stick the images together using a reference point. In this case the island of St Michaels mount.

Taking to the Sky, Mounts Bay.

My own home cold water swimming spot has its own island that I can use as a reference point.

Drakes Island on a dull Day

The buzz this morning was applying my Mounts Bay, medical imaging ideas to Drakes Island.

Poof!! I hear you say this is just photography. Where is the art in that?

But what is to stop me doing a water colour or many watercolours with a registering point and then photographing them and suprimposing.

An experiment for the next few days.

And that is what cold water swimming brings to creativity. A clear mind where new ideas flourish.

Drakes Island on a dull day.

#1171 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography1 Comment
All detail stripped out. My start point image.

The Penzance days are done for January 2025. There has been a lot of actual pondering while my eyes and mind could settle on a distant horizon with St Michaels Mount a geograhical and visual reminder of reality.

The trip was always about pleasure and work. There has been much talk of how to make medical images the very best they can be. Often that is about optimising many shades of grey without creating artifact and false detail.

Cornwall in winter is often a study of 50,000 shades of greige. A colour that swoops and dips between grey and beige.

I have spent a little time applying medical image physics to my photographs . Altering them to suit my needs to create a false image of a real place using real images.

I won’t bore you with the details because it really would be very boring. These three pictures were taken in the space of 5 days. The registration point was that St Michaels Mount could be seen as I took all three pictures.

By double exposing 3 times using the horizon as my common point I have created a magical realism image where murmerating starlings join two kite surfers in the skies near St Michaels Mount. Banishing the greige.

Swoops and dips. ©theoldmortuary

Here is another one still a work in progress.

#1156 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography, art1 Comment

The last day of twixtmas.  I thought I would have a little jog through my creative notes from this year when there was a lot of experimentation behind the scenes and there will be more in 2025.

January 2024

Tasting, feeling, painting synesthesia. Eating a frozen rhubarb crumble. The taste of high summer in the middle of winter.

February 2024

Another sensation painting/print. I needed to be ready for a print exhibition. This reflects my own experience of being a year round sea swimmer using an outdoor shower.

March 2024.

Singing rehearsals for a Green Man Festival. I wanted to create a contemporary Green Man.

April 2024

Green Man backlash. The awkward story of Green Woman birthing a fully grown, in-leaf tree.

May 2024

An old painting. The Nearly Home Trees on the A30. The original was lost for ages .It turned up in May.

June 2024.

Still a work in progress

I started experimenting with combining quick sketches and a location photograph. A book group on a quiet Greek beach.

July 2024

Another work in progress. Redesigning and reconfiguring my studio has caused some sketch notes to be found and others to be lost.

This one is currently missing in action.

August 2024

A photoshopped sketch note. Who knows where this one is going.

September 2024

Gilding apples.Finally the apples in a string bag are finished.

October 2024

Learning a new (old) skill. Printing a daffodil using the potato printing technique.

November 2024

Just using up, by weaving, scraps of watercolour and typewritten quotes.

December 2024.

Photoshop combination of two photographs of a December weekend. Firestone Bay at dawn and Glass Bricks at Battersea Power Station.

I always think my sketches are a bit random but this annual review makes me think that they are all linked in some way.

#1120 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography, art, blogging1 Comment

Does my blog affect my art. I wonder if it does? The map above is the map of a very regular walk.  Today I am not so sure if my art and my walk are in some way linked. I have never noticed this map before. It could be new. I was rather charmed by the little footsteps as they reflect my regular circular walk.

The walk this morning was fabulously colourful.

Domestic admin/yardening followed the walk, planting roses and garlic, but later I put some finishing touches to an ongoing painting.

I can’t help feeling that the centres of my final fantasy flowers look a little like footsteps.

And my choice of colours are pretty similar to the boats I chose to photograph.

#1118 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photographyLeave a comment

Colour is my thing. Sometimes when I frame a picture the snippets from the chopped off edges are so jewel-like and precious that I can’t bear to throw them out.  We are in the midst of a slow, deep tidy and reorganise of the studio space that trebbles up as a snug/play room and exercise area. A practical person would throw these inconsequential bits of scrap into a bin. And I may still do so but two of the strips had the words Hearts and Minds typed on them. The typed strips ran in two directions which made me think about warp and weft and set me off weaving paper for absolutely no reason.

The first weave, above,  was entirely random. But the second gave the words more prominence.

Typing and watercolour work well together. The watercolours are easily accessible in the new storage but the typewriter is put away until we get some more storage. But maybe weaving words and colours could be a new project. But will I be diligent enough to throw the scraps in the bin?

Who knows where this will take me?

#1114 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography1 Comment

Pools of light, an observation in 3(4) pictures.

Yesterdays morning dog walk was full of visual texture. The picture above is two photos superimposed as the early morning weather went from cold and bright to foreboding in the blink of an eye. If blinking an eye took five minutes.

Similarly this vertically cut tree stump bathes in the sunshine while showing off its toxic fungus growth.

Then one last pool of light, with a hidden menace.

All taken within about 15 minutes and  half a mile between them.

I was going to write a blog about the joy of morning pools of light in the late autumn sun, when I realised that each one hides a threat of sorts.

Thursday thinking.

Cover picture is all 3 pictures Superimposed. I love it. Yet it hides. Bad weather, poisonous fungi and a trained lethal killer. All in 15 minutes of a dog walk.

#1068 theoldmortuary ponders

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In September I was a little obsessed by the colours created by daylight and artificial light falling on crumpled white bedlinen.

The October obsession may well become light falling on and through two new light fittings.

Yesterday we replaced two of our chandeliers with crumpled paper light shades.

We’ve gone down from 7 old chandeliers to just one old, but simple one,and a new contemporary one.

The grime that revealed itself when the last three old chandeliers came down yesterday was a very serious lesson in housekeeping. I have flitted about on the chandeliers with my feather duster  infrequently for the three years we have lived here.

It is my humble opinion that chandeliers are a really bad idea in a house without the numbers of domestic staff that Victorians were used to. The grime visible on the upper parts of the chandeliers as they came down to ground level was grim. Appalling. Off to the tip with them!

So now I can be thrilled with light playing on crumpled paper rather than looking up in horror at dusty chandeliers, and I didn’t even know quite how dusty they really were.

#1027 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography1 Comment

Every picture does not tell the story. This calm section of water was at the bottom of a huge waterslide. I was there to catch images of family members hurtling their way towards me having an exhilarating splashy ride to the bottom. This is evidence that I missed my moving targets. This image, though, feels very calm.

Another calm,watery  image occurred yesterday.

Still water in the harbour as I walked to the bakery. Both accidental really. The greyness of the sky makes this image a little dull. But overlaying one over the other makes the combined image more vivid but there is still a sense of calm.

Isn’t life like that though? Something unplanned enhances the planned or expected outcome of an action or escapade. I am glad I didn’t just dump the first image because it was not what I wanted. It may become a very useful perker upper of photos that are not quite colourful enough. Just one tiny tweak and the whole image becomes a very believable sunset.

#746 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography, dog walksLeave a comment

Just as I was beginning to despair of the ever shortening days made shorter by bad weather, the sun came up. Not only that, my long dog walk of the day took in quite a bit of rust.

So sunshine and rust immediately altered my frame of mind.

My absolute favourite colour combination occurred on a resting gig.

Rust and the colours of Greece

Unfortunately the public toilets were not open on my arrival. A little disappointing if I am honest.

But as luck would have it I still have a thirty year old Radar key which gives access to disability toilets so I never quite got to the rather desperate tone of this message. So I was able to deploy another message on a block.

I have no idea what the point of these boulder messages are, quick research has garnered no explanation. But here is one that expresses my need to get out of the car and actually walk the dogs.

Using all the ones bathed in sunlight is a small blogging victory.

And finally a question.

And an answer.

#738 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography, SerendipityLeave a comment

Day 2 of #Celebrating Serendipity.

This morning as I wrote on the first day of December, I was warmly snuggled under my duvet feeling like bobbing was not the best idea when the temperature was 0 degrees C. How wrong could I be. Tranquility Bay was as tranquil as a summers day.

All the attending bobbers made it to the buoy at least once and still managed an enormous amount of nattering.

As usual the subjects were broad and wild. It’s amazing how vivid conversations can be after twenty or so minutes of really chilly swimming. As vivid as the tidal pool was on our departure.

And I have created two baubles for the #Celebrating Serendipity Chart. This morning I had no idea how December blogging was going to go and now I have a bauble chart. Days really do take the strangest paths sometimes.