Unfinished business . . .

The other day I posted a photomontage I made after having taken a walk around my block at twilight. Looking at it a day later, I decided it was unfinished, so I tweaked it.

Here you see first the finished version and then the original. You can see that I took away some of the "stars" up top but left the lower "stars" in place at the bottom. I like how the bottom "stars" echo the top ones, just in a more subtle manner.

I then photographed an old, rusty, scratched watch face and used that image as a "moon." In the higher-resolution version you can see the tick marks here and there on the watch face that represent numbers.

I added that same watch face along the bottom of the image to create five (five!) more moons, one of them encased in a square.

Notice, too, that the squiggles I drew are more pronounced in the final version than in the original. I also softened the overall look in the final version.

So there you have it: Basically a background created using various textured papers, a few dots, a few squiggles, and a watch face. Hope you enjoyed seeing the process and the alterations I made.

©Carol Leigh

Twilight Walk

Yesterday was an astonishingly hot day here on the Oregon coast. Our little weather station showed that at one point it was 93 degrees outside and 82 degrees inside. Now for us, accustomed to highs of around 59 degrees outside, this was amazingly hot! Humidity was way down, too, down to around 20%, so no, this wasn’t like Louisiana hot and humid, more like Palm Springs hot.

Just after sunset I took a slow, contemplative walk around our block. No camera. The robins — seemingly the first birds up in the morning and the last to bed in the evening — were making their loud, final squawks.

There was no wind, so it was easy to hear all the frogs, frogs I never think about except on quiet evenings like this. And it’s somehow reassuring — hearing frogs at twilight — figuring as long as we can hear frogs, everything’s going to be all right.

And then, as I rounded a bend, I stopped to watch a hummingbird moth, looking eerily like a small hummer, working the bright blue lithodora flowers. Wings a total blur, a slightly spread “tail” like a hummingbird. How can an insect and a bird appear so similar? Be so similarly designed to effectively accomplish the same goal: sip nectar from flowers? Amazing. So amazing I simply stood and watched until it finally noticed I was there and moved on.

I moved on as well. A thoroughly delightful walk filled with beauty, quiet, and wonder.

Yes, it was hot here on the coast yesterday. But oh, what a lovely twilight!

©Carol Leigh