Thursday, September 10, 2009

More photographs processed


It seems that the holiday in Norfolk is my most productive holiday photograph wise! I took so many (different) photographs and still have not all images processed! I shoot always in RAW, a digital format which you could see as a digital negative that has to be processed (adjust colour, colour balance, contrast etc.) before you have the final picture that can be shown on the web or be printed out.
Creake Abbey was a wonderful place to be. I liked the tranquility of the place, these old crumbled down buildings, still standing as a testament for the people who lived here and tried to make life easier for the older people.
The abbey was built in as a home for several old men who needed care. The building was extended over 300 years till a plague killed all the inhabitants except the abbot, who was the only survivor.
How devasting this must have been. The abbey was abandent and left to fall apart.
This goes not so quick with these old buildings with those thick walls.
Lucky for us that they are still there - to enjoy them.

Since there were hardly any people visiting here, I had loads of opportunities to take pictures from all angles. This one was taken with me lying on the freshly mowed grass, a lovely experiece!
A perfect afternoon: feeling the spirit of time, beautiful structures with such a beauty, ever changing weather with gloomy skies and rays of sunlight spreading out.
How do you capture the essence of such a wonderful place?

Well, this is one of my efforts!

Thursday, September 03, 2009

Altered Book: Artistic Expression


This was the last book of the Altered Books Round Robin from our ABEurope (Yahoo) group that I received to work in.
Serena had chosen the theme: "Artistic Expression under Pressure"

I did not manage to get all the text into one spread, so I added another spread to finish the sentence:
Expres your inner vision - no fear - without limitations.
I just hope that the English words that I used these way were correct! Anyway, Serena is an Italian artist, so with a bit of luck she will not notice any problems with the grammar! :-)

For these spreads I tried to use much layering and different techniques, trying to get rid of some old habits and developing new ways of communicating ideas.
I have been using acrylic inks, paint, paintsticks, stencils, alphabeth stamps, spraying, hand made stamps and embellishements and drawings in pencil!
The book will be send to the US, since Serena recently moved away from Germany. (Normally we keep the Round Robins limited to Europe because of the cost and time of snail mail).

My own book "Truth, Secrets and Lies" came back homely. I thought there would be loads of pages to work in, but the book is filled with artwork from our members. Quite a treasure!