Collages

Occasionally, when I'm not swamped with pictures to edit and sort through, I take a few moments to, you know, be creative while I'm....being creative.

I've always liked the opportunities diptychs/triptychs/etc have for storytelling and/or juxtaposition of themes. In all humility, I have not really explored the extent of these possibilities.

I have made a couple that I liked. As always click on the small image for a larger size, (detail is much better at larger sizes) and more examples are located at My Flickr Collages set

This was an experiment with patterns of all scales

(from top left clockwise, developing area from the air, ferns, Duck feathers, holly leaves, sandstone "waves" at Zion, lichens on rock, sandstone forms at Antelope Canyon, plant leaves in Austin, more leaves, thorn bush)


Probably my favorite, two different exposures of a sunset through wetland trees. Put together with a black border, the heavy silhouette of the trees and vibrant colors give a nice stained glass effect



A collection of different earth shots from above



Different treatments of a closeup of figured old wood ("Comes the Winter"). Nothing really deep here, I was playing around in Lightroom with different treatments, and found these three reminded me of a life cycle, so to speak. The old wood, the winter chill, the dead wood.



This one is heavily dependant on seeing the larger version. I am the only one who seems to have found this one funny. The bee approaches, the bee digs into the horsemint nectar, the bee backs up off it with a WHOA expression. I can only assume that was some REALLY good nectar. This is a bit of the storytelling potential of a triptych.



This collage is a set of found objects left over after a flood. An odd mix of the natural and artificial, all abandoned and bleached in the sun. This one isn't supposed to be deep and meaninggul, it was more an exercise in B&W tone and texture



This one was just kinda fun. This sanderling came up to me while I was shooting with a downcast, bashful expression, then quickly scurried away as if embarrased. Anthropmophizing, of course, but it was a funny moment. IN the style of overused internet memes, "Bashful sanderling is bashful", or "I IZ EMBARAZZED". ahem.



Old Wood, series III - I went through a lot of iterations of this one, and still am not satisfied. I need more old wood shots to mix and match. An exercise in textures.


Same things, slightly different format



Just an example, trying to put together some indicative shots of native wildlife..this one for the Little Blue Heron. This was an experiment in graphic design (see interior color/border/labeling). The shots themselves were just placeholders.



Another detail-dependant one. I was getting a closeup (well, 300mm lens with crop closeup, not CLOSE, per se:) ) of this sleeping gator, when all of a sudden his eye popped open and stared directly at me. It popped into my head the Yamamoto quote re: "waking a sleeping giant and filling him with a terrible resolve"