…but I was having coffee with a friend and somehow the idea came up of photographing my enormous collection of vintage glass Christmas balls. I was so excited by the idea I just about abandoned her in the cafe to run home to my studio! Finally I did get a chance to pull out the ornaments and begin experimenting, and my lord it’s a whole new can of worms and frustrations. I should’ve known reflective objects wouldn’t be easy. You can see the whole photo booth and camera reflected in the balls, so I need to re-think the setup. I also need to find some small rings to balance the balls on, because I like seeing the caps and of course they roll out of sight, and you can’t see the designs on some of the balls. So the first flush of excitement has worn off, and the grind of “how the hell do I make this work” is setting in. I can still see the vision in my head, but need to find out how other people do this.
But while I was digging out my ornaments I pulled out a bunch of other Christmas things I have hanging around the studio (I like sparkly things, and Christmas is good for that!) and photographed those as well to keep my spirits up. I’ll show you the others another day, but here’s one for good luck:
More ‘refurbished’ old photos, this time with machine embroidery as well as hand-coloring. The embroidery is a lot of fun, if you are patient and don’t try to rush it. There were a few (well, more than a few) photos that I ruined using too small a stitch, since essentially you are creating perforated lines in your paper and if the holes are too close together it just falls apart. Then you sigh or curse, depending on the time of the month, and fumble around for another photo to ruin.
The zigzag stitch stayed in place pretty well. I just glued down the ends of the thread (on the back) to keep it from unraveling, but for the straight stitch I ended up brushing glue over the entire back (and then layering the photo in wax paper with heavy books on top so it would dry flat.) I used Elmer’s, of course. I use Elmer’s for pretty much everything. If Elmer’s isn’t strong enough I use Super Glue. I hate using epoxy, so if Super Glue won’t hold it I usually re-think my strategy.
One last nugget of wisdom from this experiment: glossy photo paper is almost impossible to photograph! Note to self: further experiments must be on matte paper.
A few years ago I sorted out the enormous stash of old photos from the days before I went digital. Some went in the trash, some I liked just as they were, and others became raw material. I liked the composition of this one, a waterfall near Charlottesville, Virgina, and hand-colored it to highlight the dark pool and the bright leaves. I use Lyra Cellucolor pencils, which are formulated for use on slick surfaces like plastic and china. I discovered them while hunting for something that would work on playing cards (which have a plastic coating), and found they also work beautifully on photo paper. They are hard to find, and the link is to the only US source I know.
This is a scan of the finished photo-drawing. The original is in my etsy shop. (Clicking on the photo will take you to the listing.)
I rarely go to the Shore Path in the summer because it’s so crowded. But Treasure Beach was sort of under construction, and the Bar was full of people, and I go there all winter anyway, but I never beachcomb the Shore Path. So I gave it a shot. And yes, it was very crowded, but not so many people down on the rocks. And it was blissfully cool down near the waves.
What did I find? More cigarette butts than I’ve ever seen on a beach. Hello smokers? The world is not your ashtray. I try to pick up trash when I comb, but cigarette butts, bandaids, stuff like that grosses me out and I won’t touch it. Plenty of non-personal trash, like soda bottles, plastic food wrappers, bits of rope. Lots of crab shells, some periwinkle shells, a whole lot of seaweed. And an unusual amount of coralline.
Let me tell you about coralline, because I’m just learning about it myself. See that delicate white frondy thing in the second row from the top, far left? Here it is a little closer:
And a little closer:
So I’m a little obsessed with my macro setting! Anyway, Common Coralline (Corallina officinalis) is an algae impregnated with calcium carbonate (the building block of limestone), which is why it feels like stone, or coral. Around here it is bright (and I do mean bright) pink underwater, but when it dries out it slowly turns white. You can see hints of pink in the photos above. That is not bad photo editing!
There are two kinds of coralline that I see on my local beachs. Most often it is a thick crust on crab shells and rocks. This is the more plant-like form. Don’t those segmented stems look like spinal columns? I find I look at it differently now that I know what it is.
Two very useful guides that taught me about coralline:
Hausman, Leon, The Beginner’s Guide to Seashore Life
Shumway, Scott W., The Naturalist’s Guide to the Atlantic Seashore
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| Dirty Glass, September 2010 |
Every now and then I lose my temper with my house. It’s a nice house with a little bit of garden, not too big and not too small. It’s pretty old for an American, though, and we use it hard.
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| Partially-Scraped and then Abandoned Kitchen Floor, September 2010 |
See, this is the hang-out house, where all the neighborhood kids end up after school and on weekends. Which is a good thing, but can be hard on the walls. And floors. And ceilings.
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| Hole in Authentic Horsehair Plaster Wall, September 2010 |
I’m also a lousy housekeeper. I try, though. Really, I do. Every Sunday I wash and sweep and vacuum and polish.
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| Electric Stove, September 2010 |
But every now and then I get really tired of trying to clean things that are permanently stained, scratched, gouged, or just plain worn out. And then I lose my temper with my house.
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| Sloppy Paint Job, September 2010 |
Usually I stomp around and whine to my husband about the god-awful-bathroom-floor or the gouges in the-stairs-that-I had-personally-refinished-on-my-hands-and-knees-only-7-years-ago.
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| Abused Baseboard, September 2010 |
This week when I lost my temper I took out my camera and gave the macro setting a work out on everything that pissed me off, from the chunks taken out of the plaster
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| What the Hell did you do to the Wall, September 2010 |
to the dust bunnies in the corners of the steps
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| Dirt on the Stairs, September 2010 |
to the dirty dishes piled in the sink.
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| Aubade, September 2010 |
I really like a couple of the photos although it’s kind of depressing to review them.
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| Window Insulation, September 2010 |
My husband thinks it was absolutely hysterical, and has told everybody about this thing his wife did, and how I’m never going to clean again because I’ll be too busy photographing the mold and dust.
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| Linoleum is not Childproof, September 2010 |
Hmph.
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| Spoon, Bowl and Coffee Grounds, September 2010 |
Maybe he should scrub the bathroom floor this week.
These were a gift from a friend who lives in Florida. They are tiny; some are only a 1/4 of an inch tall! But I love the way this photo came out. I think it is one of my favorites so far, along with the Sea Urchins and Clark Cove.
My husband wanted hen clams for chowder, so we packed up the family and headed to Clark Cove for the evening’s low tide. My husband and son got their snorkel gear on and started hunting, the girls splashed around and shrieked a lot, and I wandered around with my fancy beachcombing kit (a plastic grocery bag.) I forgot my camera in all the bustle of swimsuits and flippers, so no beach pictures, sorry.
The slope of the beach is incredibly gentle in this cove, and the water stays shallow for a long way out. Forty feet from shore the water is still less than 2 feet deep. It is very clear water and a very mucky bottom, and as you walk you can watch the little mud cyclones each footstep pulls up. There were hermit crabs everywhere, dozens of them, all in similar inch-long shells covered in hairy reddish-pink threads, like fuzzy ping pong balls. (I did some reading and found out that although it looks like algae, it is a hydroid colony, and the common name is – surprise – Snail Fur. Hydroids are animals related to jellyfish and sea anemones. They grow only on hermit crab shells, not on live snails, which I find equally miraculous and mysterious. They also have tiny stinging tentacles, so I’m glad I didn’t pick one up! Although I don’t think they would have much effect on humans.)
There were big pale crabs, too, rock crabs or Jonah crabs, I’m not sure, just scuttling along the bottom. One got scared by a seagull and tried to hide between my feet. It was like walking through a saltwater aquarium! And of course as the sun started to go down there were no-see-ums and gnats, and it was time to go home for dinner.
In this photo: sea glass, clam shells, crab shells, mussel shells, sea brick, barnacles, driftwood, sea china, rockweed.
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| Seal Harbor Beach, August 6, 2010 |
With the kids home from camp and the town filling up with all the wonderful friends we see only once a year, my beachcombing has been unusually social for the last month. Earlier this month I spent an afternoon at Seal Harbor Beach with my daughter, who is 9, an old friend (who is my age) and her daughter, who is 2. It had been sticky hot for days, and here in Maine we don’t tolerate that well, but there was a soft breeze off the ocean that felt lovely. My friend had brought the most amazing beach umbrella – it had more joints than I do and could block the sun from any direction. It even had a sort of screw on the bottom end of the pole so it went into the sand very quickly. I must have one! Although truth be told I don’t hold still on the beach for very long…
Seal Harbor Beach is relatively shallow for at least twenty feet from the low tide line, so the water is often warmer than other ocean beaches. (‘Warmer’ is a relative term – the Atlantic Ocean is numbingly cold and hypothermia is a possibility year-round.) Because it is sheltered in a cove there is very little surf so it is a good place to bring smaller children. The shoreline is naturally rocky, covered with pebbles and larger rounded stones we call cobbles. The town “replenishes” the sand yearly, which is environmentally questionable, but practically a god-send since there is only one real sand beach on the island and it is usually packed with tourists. Over the course of the summer, the sand wears away and the stones work their way back up, so water shoes are a must.
The beach portrait:
