Archive for the ‘dreams’ Category
Santa Monica Pier on a Cold and Lonely Night
The view from our budget hotel on Redondo Beach Drive was a bit surreal. The beach was many miles away and there was no shopping or nearby attractions, making me wonder what might have possessed anyone to build a hotel in such a place…
But having settled in, we decided to go to Santa Monica Pier for dinner in the evening. And that’s when things got really strange…
It seemed a bit ghost-y, all candy coloured, but somehow toxic… and if this was an amusement park – where are all the people???
There were a few stragglers and lost souls wandering around, including a little girl looking for some answers wherever she could find them…
But she couldn’t tell me what it was all about either since I have forgotten how to speak Threeish.
Even the beach has gone mad,
Yeah… I know… first Big and then Forrest Gump… it is LA we’re talking about here… I felt a wee bit of relief when we left… I mean, it was cool, but kinda creepy… like everyone was out of town……….
Shooting steampunks again
Well, I’ve been shooting a lot of things to be honest – film premieres, streetscapes, my super-giant baby cat and… yes, more steampunks… the love affair continues. What can I say? I think I’ve reached some new ground though – it’s not the same-old, same-old… Here are a few of my favourites. They were taken At the Auckland AetherCon – some are vendors, others are friends I dragged out to the hallway for a little different lighting and less jangly backgrounds…
Poor Garnet – Getting dumped on her coffee break…
The Inquisitor, there can be only one
Lovely and lost
Tinkerbelle and Digitalis Ellulose travelled from the Other Side via a Coromandel Gold Mine – steam-powered, illuminated by Firefly light!
Desperate street urchins, hawking their wares…
Truly the most fabulous of all!
The lazy day adventure of Little Bo Peep
Had another steampunk adventure this past weekend with north island steampunks, having a picnic at beautiful Shakespear Regional Park on the Whangaparoa Peninsula. It was a perfect day in a perfect location. Perfect for all sorts of mischief, and more than a wee bit of mayhem…
Little Bo Peep seems a bit under the weather, but the doc seems to have the cure for what ails her in his bag of tricks. 
Our Miss Peep is feeling so much better and enjoying herself as she takes in the invigorating sea air.
I wonder what will happen next?
The Rakowskis’ House
Before love showed up and ruined everything, the Rakowskis had nineteen dogs and an eight-foot high chain link fence to hold those mutts back. Anyone walked by and they were all jumping up against it, barking and snarling, those steel links threatening to burst, so you feared one day they were going to give and the pack was going to light on whatever soul happened to be standing there, thinking were brave instead of ass backwards brain dead.
I include myself in that number, having lost the tippy end of my little finger when I was nine. Lilly Dollinger dared me to touch one of their noses. He promised me five whole dollars. Dog gulped it down before I knew what happened. He just laughed and never paid me a cent. Said it didn’t count as touching if the touching part got bit off.
Let’s go!
Not sure which part of my imagination this one came from – but I was out for dinner with my daughters and on the ride home it came to me – pretty much just like this, although I thought of a night sky, but once I started working on it, this was obviously the right thing…
Back again for more…
Some things I learned in the last week:
- I am used to/addicted to creating an image and words to match every day.
- Giving oneself more time to do the things one wants to do can backfire – and you end up doing less
- After 10 months of doing Photopo every day – to stop is like losing a job, even if I was the one who quit.
- It was oddly depressing
Fortunately it’s not one of those life altering decisions that one has when one leaves the corporate world or helps a child pack as they take off for the world – nothing like that. This one was easy. I just looked for a picture and had a bit of a play. And I feel so much more… normal.
Hmmm…
Rosebud
I never appreciate them enough when they are here, but I sure do miss them when my feet are cold and my fingers feel just a wee bit numb with cold…
Of course all my lovely friends in the northern hemisphere are sweltering in the heat right now and might like to swap places…
Welcoming Committee
I went to a wedding show with my daughter a couple of months ago, looking for ideas for her upcoming wedding. Of course I brought my camera and took photos of all sorts of bits and pieces, cos I never know when I will need a photo of anything at all and I much prefer to use my own photos rather than borrow other people’s.
So we came upon this amazing, over the top floral arrangement. It looks rather like the creature from the black lagoon but for the white roses. Definitely made me smile. So I took a photo. And this is what it looked like. Not much you can really do with that – cluttered, poor dynamic range, confusing lighting. Almost a wonder I noticed it at all.
So why not have fun with it? Playing in Photoshop is rather a bit like Colorforms when you were a kid. You find all the bits and pieces you want and then you put them together to create your own scene. This one went through a few iterations before I settled on this. The first was in space – I love outer space – I always want to put things there. Unfortunately, they usually look dumb – which this flower arrangement did. Then on a grassy hill with a glorious sky… Better, but as long as I was playing…
I know this formal arrangement in a standard ‘room’ is not exactly unusual – but I enjoyed experimenting with perspectives (the carpet was a rectangle at the start, the doily under the vase was a circle and that table is actually low and squat to the floor.) Colours, lighting, not to mention separating the arrangement from the background clutter! All up this little exercise took more than 5 hours over 2 days! Hmmm – not really a good investment, but I am rather fond of the result. Hope you like it, too!
