Sand Sculpture

Posted on February 24, 2012 by orples

Along around 1998, a friend of mine went to the beach, and came home sporting some photographs of an incredible sand sculpture he’d seen while he was on vacation. I finally talked Roger out of one of his many pictures, and have had it framed ever since.

Horse in the sand.

I used to have people come into my office, asking me why I had a photo of a dead horse on the wall. Then, upon a closer look, they became aware of the awesome talent some artist had wasted using such a temporary media to work with. I also thought it was ashamed that this horse could not have been cast into something more permanent. Then again, I guess just laying around in the sun does get rather boring. It is a good thing Roger took these pictures so this horse could live on via the magic of photography.

Playing Peek a Boo

Posted on February 21, 2012 by orples

When I first got my Corel program and had not a clue as how to use it, I started by experimenting with some of the features. For practice, I made this little game sheet for my grandchildren to either cut out and paste, or to draw the squares into the squares. These types of puzzles were (and maybe still are popular) in the activities sections of some newspapers. Of course, you can draw the picture, then cut out the blocks and paste over your drawing too if you are really bored. Please feel free to print off and cut out these squares for your own use if you would like. Hopefully this will be big enough to work with. The original sheet I gave to my grandchildren to cut out is 8 1/2″ x 11″. I used card stock to print it on for better results.

Magi playing Peek a boo . game cutout sheet

Below is the actual photo I used as my ‘test’ subject. First, I obviously cropped the photo, then bit-mapped it. Corel has some cool features to distort the original photograph for an artsy look.

Magi playing peek a boo with me before our ride

Stop . . . and smell the flowers

Posted on February 1, 2012 by orples

Thumbing through my photos in my efforts to find something to share for today’s post, I thought the following shot would capture ‘the take time to smell the ‘flowers’ mood I am in this morning. I’ve been trying to arrange my priorities this morning and blog posting has been one priority I though I’d satisfy early. There are so many things that require attention. Sometimes, things work out better by taking a minute to regroup and try again.

Stopping to smell the flowers.

This photo was taken on one of my little trail rendezvous on a hot summer day. Magi in his fly mask, always enjoyed grabbing a little bite of the many delicacies offered along the way. He looks like he is smelling the flowers. Wrong! Chomp,chomp.