Once Upon a Time...

I was in a South African city. I can't remember which one. I was out with Sheree looking for (what else...?) an Internet Cafe.

Our course took us into a seedy part of town, lots of people standing idly on the stoops of worn out looking shops, talking and sitting and watching us.

We found two Internet Cafes. One was closed and the clerk in the other looked up and said "Not working," with a sad shake of her head. Many things don't work in Africa.

We were walking along the seafront and saw a fascinating old building: broken down with shattered windows that looked like broken bones to me.

I tried to photograph it from different angles, but nothing was working.

An old man came by and I stopped him.

"Are you from around here?" I asked.

He nodded. "All my life," he said.

"Do you know what this building is...was?" I asked.

He nodded, and stood looking at me.

I raised my eyebrows in the universal "Ummm...well?" gesture.

"I was born there," he said finally, looking at the broken windows, the peeling paint and the graffiti.

"It was a hospital?" I asked, seizing on the obvious.

"Yes. A hospital only for children. It's been closed for years. The government can't decide what to do with it." He looked at the building for a long moment. "Very sad to me."

The desertion of things, people and places in Africa make a strange kind of sense after a while. So many beautiful things are ignored and forgotten...so many lovely things are treated casually or allowed to stand and rot away...but then there are SO many wonderful things there you can sort of understand it. Most of these people are just trying to live through the day, to get enough to eat. Buildings fall low priority lists.

Still it was such a lovely old place: with a grand edifice and superb old world touches...

I played around with this image for a while. But nothing was working until I took a child's face and put it into the corner. This child was a student in a remote school not far from the seriously wild areas of Africa.

I loved Africa. There is something utterly mystical there. Maybe it's a vibrant quality in the air or the exotic nature of the people. Maybe it's the way you can turn a corner on a dusty road and see something amazing...or stand mere feet from an elephant or lion going about their business.

I loved Africa. I loved being there. Part of me still is.

Undead Bloodsucking Orchids from Outer Space

My wife looked at me and asked me if I wanted to go with her to an orchid show.

"Do I want to?" I asked.

Sheree (my much better half) sighed and waited patiently. A hundred excuses came to mind, but when I looked into those clear blue eyes, I realized that an orchid show with her would be much better than sitting at home. So I went.

I hated it.

I don't like flowers and I have seem SO many freaking flower shots on flickr that I could cough up a petalball. But I decided to make the most of it. I took out my camera, sucked on my teeth (a thing I do when I am asking myself what the hell I am doing where ever I happen to be while I am sucking my teeth) and looked around for something that poked the creative muse.

Nothing.

I decided to settle for something...anything...even distantly interesting.

Nothing.

So I sighed and started shooting.

I didn't even cut the images off my card for three weeks. When I did, it was to get at some other pictures I had taken that I WANTED to work on.

Then one afternoon, I started poking at the stupid flower pictures. Have you ever done that? No idea what you were going to create...just...well poking at the things. I took a LOT of orchid images that night. I started thinking about orchids. I started thinking in terms of opposites.

How about vampire orchids? Hmmm...the idea made me smile.

I have been having a wonderful time ever since then playing with these pictures.

The one at the top of the blog is a composite, built inside Photoshop, and was built almost entirely out of plug-ins. The planet is done with Flaming Pear's Lunar Cell, the stem is a photo I took of a flower my wife had hanging around the house. Linking it to the planet is a simple star.

The motion was added using Alien Skin's Motion Trail. The only actual photo is of the orchid. The entire process took me about thirty minutes.

This one was even faster: I shot a close up of one of the fricking orchids and turned it upside down. The trail of dust was done FINALLY using Alien Skin's Fairy Dust plug-in from one of the all time BEST plug-in sets: Mystical Lighting. (This one is difficult to use...but well worth the investment of time.)

I am currently doing a series on my flickr site featuring these images, coupled with shots we took on the trip to Brazil. It's written as a Sherlock Holmes story with a twist toward the absurd. Here's the link if you want to know more: http://www.flickr.com/photos/41659872@N00/

So what's the point of this blog?

Three things, I think.

1) There's always something to photograph, even in places that otherwise really suck.

2) Plug-ins can do very cool stuff very quickly. It doesn't negate the skill of the user. I am all in favor of plug-ins...as long as I can get the exact effect I am looking for. It's true that sometimes you need to spend as much time learning plug-is as you did learning some aspects of Photoshop.

3) You can get wonderful results if you try HARD to look at something from a completely new viewpoint.

I really appreciate the emails, folks. Don't sweat it, okay? Sheree and I are about two weeks away from the next trip (this one goes to England, Ireland and many places in-between) and we are in the process of moving our company from one place to another.

We're very busy.

But I still think about all you folks. Often.