Tag: abstract photography

#1306 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Drawn to the Valley, Drawn To The Valley Artists1 Comment

I had an accidental art day yesterday. Starting with a surprise print sale. I was already a bit guilty that my creative output had dropped to zero for a month or so and I had to admit that and felt like I was slacking somewhat, while visiting other artists in their studios this week.

The unexpected sale of a print made me get out a watercolour doodle from early July.

Woman with drapes.

I worked onto it with a biro and an ink pencil with no great plans beyond doing some digital tweakery along the way. Maybe it is the slow approach of autumn but my woman with drapes emerged as a woman perching on a pumpkin.

The original drapes had been inspired by Cyril Power, a Modernist artist. Best known for his posters. His use of curves in straight places has always fascinated me.

Which took me to digital tweakery yesterday.

Two photographs superimposed.

Which then led to a full Cyril Power moment

My Cyril Power moment.

And that should really have been the end of it. But the pumpkin was unplanned, so I wondered if I could tweak a bit more and move my serene woman into somewhere with more serenity than a pumpkin patch. A bit more tweaking and by adding a still reflective pool,  the original serenity and calm are restored. The pumpkin is gone.

And now when I visit other artists in their studios I can say I am working on a study of serenity. That makes me feel super serene , and I can still see Cyril Power in this image. Just calmer and less frenetic.

#1159 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Medical imaging, Serendipity4 Comments

The sun got to me yesterday. The shadows on the moss made me think of a lateral skull X-ray. Overnight my silly head kept thinking about it. I even dug out my old Grays Anatomy. The book, not the TV series. Just to satisfy my poor insomniac head that wanted to sleep.

” What keeps you up at night”

“Just random nonsense”

Some of the proportions are a bit wrong and the stick to the back of the neck is rather a lethal look. But a bit of superimposition  shows why it was a hard thought to shift.

Sunshine again today….

Talking Heads

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#1147 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn 26 Days to Boxing Day, Serendipity2 Comments

4 days to Boxing Day.

Dawn was particularly vivid this morning. Chill and still and golden.

Mornings already seem brighter, mine felt particularly bright because I had already accomplished an early morning mundane Christmas shop.

The essentials of the festive season were sitting on my kitchen floor awaiting unpacking  after the sunrise.

And so on to W for 26 Days to Boxing Day. W is for Walls in London.

Flying teacups at Fortnum and Mason.

Sublimely mad.

Glass Brick wall at Battersea Power Station.

Stick them together and something W onderful happens to two walls.

And W hile I am at it W hy not stick a W all to W ater.

#1140 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn 26 Days to Boxing DayLeave a comment

11 Days to Christmas and the last full moon of 2024.

Appropriately named the Cold Moon. A few bobbers went in for a dip at high tide. The water was a balmy 11 degrees. We didn’t stay in long but were rewarded, regardless, by warmed Mince Pies, coffee, and sparkling conversation.

Our Coach keeps a watchful eye.

And so on to P for 26 Days to Boxing Day.

P for photoshopping and painting. The moon didn’t really put in quite such a perfectly composed image, the clouds were too dense. On this occasion moon and bobbers were brought together by the power of photoshop.

While I was hunting for a moon to use this painting popped out of the archive.

In real life it recently popped out of storage. I’ve  never been quite sure if it is finalised.

I played around with the randomised digital manipulation. It rarely works well on photos of paintings but this one seemed to get a new breath of life.

Curiously it is almost the same composition as the photo of Coach gazing out to sea. The randomised manipulation uses the most recent settings that I have used in the photo editor. I wonder if this is why it worked better on this occasion. Serendipity has shown me how to finish this painting off. Its only been 15 years!

Just one more little experiment.

Coach on a Cornish hillside, overlooking blue horses.

Enough of this full-moon madness.

#1095 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn ponderingLeave a comment

Monday fakery, this picture did not make it into the autumn leaf blog yesterday. My  Google Pixel phone generated it from one of my photos in the ‘stylised’ setting in picture editing. Stylised uses my favourite settings and gives me a picture I might create for myself. Mostly the image is an epic fail, in my opinion, but sometimes the result is gloriously accurate, as it has been for this picture.

  If I suffered from ‘Monday Morning Malaise’ this is a picture that could encourage me to ‘ get a wiggle on’.

My long term career was a seven day a week job so Mondays were not quite as significant to me, but commuting into work in London using public transport it was easy to feel that ‘Monday’ feeling emanating, if not dripping from my fellow commuters. And from the 9-5ers who arrived at 9 on a Monday and worked alongside those of us who worked shifts and On-Call rotas. I was also spared the ‘Sunday Night Dread’. Although the ‘on-call’ dread was very real any day of the week.

Now, I live a self-directed week; my Monday mornings are a little more significant than they have ever been. Monday morning is like unpacking an Amazon parcel. I don’t quite remember what is planned this week. (I can never remember what I ordered) My first job is to check my diary and I am good to go. This picture rather joyfully sums up the optimism of most of my Mondays. I realise I am lucky.

#912 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Dartmoor, Devon, Serendipity1 Comment

Yesterday was one of those days when our lives exactly matched a meme on Facebook.

A day of replanting pot bound trees and plants rewarded us with aching bones and a need for sleep. While all around us something magical was happening in the sky.

Predicted to be happening again last night we headed for Dartmoor.

We were not the only ones and the phenomena was not obvious to us or the hundreds of others who took to the dark skies of West Devon.

Our Northern Lights.

The dogs got a very late walk in Yelverton and with some digital tweakery I can repurpose the image of brake lights and headlights into something we were hoping to see.

And I can cut and paste and superimpose it on a very nice tree from our journey, to give an utterly false but funky memory of the night we were stuck in a traffic jam on Dartmoor.

#255 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Firestone BayLeave a comment
Firestone Bay

Crazy early morning walk, this morning, the sun almost too hot for two dogs, who are a little too furry for this time of year. By the time we returned home we had walked through a rain power shower. I was on my quest for abstract colours and shapes in bright sunlight and found a couple. Both doors this time.

Ever a magpie for images of rust. I also wasted 5 minutes on a neighbours pile of old metal put out for the recycling team.

The pile was much bigger yesterday.

The recycling team failed to take any of it but local people have taken more than just photos of the assemblage. Five minutes or so may also have been spent by me, yesterday, with someone elses garbage. Yesterday my favourite bit of rust were these two birds

Overnight I had a brainwave about what I could do with the bed springs, those in the garbage pile not the ones in my actual bed! Too late some other urban forager had taken them before I could. How will my sweet peas cope …

Before the rain set in me and the dogs cut quite the abstract image on our walk.

After our drenching our silhouettes were nothing like as sharp. Fortunately for you ,there was no bright sunlight to do an after shot. We squelched home, fur and skirts clinging tightly to our legs. Even the rust pile on the corner of our street failed to hold our waterlogged attention. The dogs also love the scrap metal for reasons of creative peeing, almost as much as I love to photograph it. Bigger dogs leave messages much higher up, cats, mice and hedgehogs leave their fragrance lower down, the whole thing is a multi story message board to them. Five minutes well spent for all of us on a dry walk.

#126 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Devon1 Comment

Complicated image of the day. Last night we went to Exeter Cathedral to see The Museum of the Moon.

A seven metre representation of the moon by Artist Luke Jerram.

About

A quote from the website.

The moon has always inspired humanity, acting as a ‘cultural mirror’ to society, reflecting the ideas
and beliefs of all people around the world. Over the centuries, the moon has been interpreted as a god and as a planet. It has been used as a timekeeper, calendar and been a source of light to aid nighttime navigation. Throughout history the moon has inspired artists, poets, scientists, writers and musicians the world over. The ethereal blue light cast by a full moon, the delicate crescent following the setting sun, or the mysterious dark side of the moon has evoked passion and exploration. Different cultures around the world have their own historical, cultural, scientific and religious relationships to the moon. And yet somehow, despite these differences, the moon connects us all.

Museum of the Moon allows us to observe and contemplate cultural similarities and differences around the world, and consider the latest moon science. Depending on where the artwork is presented, its meaning and interpretation will shift. Read more in Research. Through local research at each location of the artwork, new stories and meanings will be collected and compared from one presentation to the next.

#MuseumofTheMoon

My complicated image at the top of this blog was a happy accident. Whilst standing in the queue for coffee I found one of those mirror trolleys that tour guides use to point out architectural features in the ceiling to avoid their visitors fainting due to overstretching their necks.

What better way to view a ‘cultural mirror’ than through an actual mirror. There was a very stern message not to move the trolleys.They were in a dark corner. So I just contorted myself a bit and got the best shot I could without breaking any rules.

An indoor moon and Mediaeval Cathedral looking like the best roller coaster in the world.

#32 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn PhotographsLeave a comment

I have a fascination for empty staircases, this one caught my eye, not particularly because it was empty on this occasion but because some tiny reflected lights appeared to be moving up the stairs. Like small invisible creatures climbing the stairs with hand torches.

Empty staircases often tell a story, this quietly grubby staircase resonated with Dance Music most recently as the unused back staircase of a fabulously glamorous night club housed in a building that has been a pleasure dome since the 1930’s

I love everything about it apart from the smell of old wee. But my imagination of the historic encounters that would have occured on this staircase just a few steps from the dancefloor give it a mingled,musky, secretive vestigia that spans almost a century of pleasure.

Not so these steps to a now unpermitted destination.

Which are the exact opposite of the steps below.

So many permutations of places and directions for the mind to travel. This particular photo is a real life encounter with a scene from one of my recurring dreams. A fine place to end a blog. I have stuff that needs to be done upstairs.