Working With Photos

Look! You can see the plant beginning to die. The leaves are brown. I just noticed it this morning when I was coming across the patio after talking to the Spanish Village President. I really need to look this plant up and find out what its blooms really look like, if this is the most they bloom before they die or whether this poor plant is not surviving for some other reason. As I mentioned yesterday, there are aphids. Jon pointed them out. But the aphids are on the plant on the left and the one that seems to be dying is the one on the right. Anyway, I'm not sure aphids can do that much damage right away. Hummm . . . another subject for research.

I spent the day working on Spanish Village paperwork. But I'm getting close to the end of all of it. I still have two more sets of minutes to do, but both meetings were relatively short, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

While I'm working, I've put two copper plates in the etching solution. One belongs to a member of the Enamel Guild. He teaches enameling, and I promised I would etch it for him. He's coming to sit in the Guild tomorrow. And he said that he would give me an enamel lesson after closing. I put one of my plates in the etching solution, too, but I don't think I'm going to enamel on it. I might consider creating something this evening so that I could work on it tomorrow evening.

I originally got into enameling, or rather cloisonne, so that I could use it on my jewelry. The thing I learned about cloisonne jewelry is that you really have to set the cloisonne into a pin or other piece of jewelry in order to wear it. So based on that, I started taking metalsmithing. I need learn cold connections, but I really didn't learn to solder very well. I know I need to learn that to progress further than I am already. It's on my list of things to do, but I haven't gotten there yet. There are lots of things on my list that may never make it to the top. It seems like life is so busy nowadays. I just have to keep working away at everything.

It occured to me today that I need to move forward with my next etching project for school. I've done two photoetchings now. I printed an edition of the one. Now I'll do the other. I'd like to do several more that are just about the same size, so that I have a series. Or at least I want to work some more on photo etching as a way to create a combination of text with image. I thought of a series of photos of Spanish Village, and that might work, but I'd also like to do something that's a little more creative.

I did spend several hours today working on some of my photos, manipulating them in PhotoShop. The problem, as I've mentioned, is that you can be seduced into spend the whole day manipulating the photos this way and that, trying all the different color combinations and filters. It goes on forever. Then in no time, you fill up your harddrive and move onto CD's.