by Marja-Leena 
Here’s my latest contribution to the self-portrait marathon.
In case you missed the earlier ones in my series, here is the the first self-portrait, the second, the third, the fourth.
View the fantastic slide-show of the participants’ portraits, for which we must give Sparky a huge thank you! And, the marathon is still going strong until July 8th so it’s not too late to join in the fun!
by Marja-Leena 
A long and mighty battle between these two insects outside a window next to our front door had us transfixed with fascination, as well as some horror and pity for the winged creature. We could not identify this winged insect with orange legs and a very long tail appendage with what looks like a very long stinger at the end. It seems to have a body rather like a carpenter ant with large lacy transparent wings.
Husband took lots of great photos of the drama, as winged creature struggled to free himself, flipping over and around the sticky strands that held two of his feet. Here he is upside down with the small spider tentatively approaching, then receding from this kickboxer and his wings in rapid motion.
Here’s another photo, sharpened and turned over to show his appendages and wings more clearly. Anybody know what this winged creature is?
by Marja-Leena 
Recently I happily leafed through some of my favourite photographs taken over a decade ago on Hornby Island, BC. The ocean weathered rocks and the petroglyphs were of endless fascination to me, and I eagerly captured these on film. This particular one was a special one that I named Fetus Rock, and which I later used to create Meta-morphosis IV (Primo).
In fact quite a few of my Hornby Island photographs were used in the Meta-morphosis series, combined sometimes with photos taken in Italy (a story for another day).
Here is a photo of one of the petroglyphs on Hornby.
ADDENDUM: on March 3, 2011 I wrote I am thrilled and honoured to have one of my very favourite and special-to-me photographs on the cover of Mercy Island, a collection of new and selected poetry by Ren Powell and just published by Phoenicia.
by Marja-Leena 
My, have I been busy, either gardening in this gorgeous weather (almost too hot) or indoors tidying up digital files. We are giving away our old Apple G3 computer because we no longer need it, and that’s a bit of a long story.
We’d been using it just to operate our old scanners with their scsi ports. Recently I upgraded to Tiger (on this G5) and discovered that I also had to upgrade Remote Desktop, which allowed me to view the G3 window from this machine. Well, dang it, but this would not work with the particular video card on the G3 – do you think they’d tell you this beforehand? And the G3 crashed! Husband spent hours and days getting it running again. Grrr, this is my pet peeve about the constant and expensive upgrades we are subjected to! And then what to do with the old equipment. We are trying to find homes for them and NOT take things to the dump, but BC is very slow in getting their technical equipment recycling program going! In the meantime, we have a room full of dinosaurs. (The old scanner will work with daughter’s boyfriend’s PC at least!)
Anyway, we ended up buying a new scanner, a lovely beastie indeed. So now, I’m taking off old image and text files from about a dozen Zip disks that I used in those days. Handy, I loved them but they were getting small at 100 MB as my image files became bigger. Then Zip drives became obsolete, replaced by CD and DVD burners. Sigh. Now I have a huge desktop folder here that I must sort through and burn to CDs. What will be next?
But I had to have a bit of fun, too. I’ve been going through some of my photographs (from pre-digital days) especially of some very interestingly weathered rocks and petroglyphs on Hornby Island, one of the northern Gulf Islands here on the west coast of BC. I scanned a few while getting acquainted with this new equipment. One of them is above… your reward, dear readers, for patiently reading through my boring complaints!
By the way, this image was used in several of my prints: Paths XIII (Nexus), Paths X, and Paths XII.
by Marja-Leena 
I’ve come down with a cold, so I’m not mentally up to clear thinking and writing. Instead here’s a visual treat for the day, another one of some objects that I scanned for fun a while ago. Right now this brings back happy memories of beachcombing and warm sunshine – it’s unseasonably cool, windy and wet here!
If you missed seeing the other scans, have a look here and here.
by Marja-Leena 
Much of my art practice since the later 1980’s has been photo-based. I have often expressed in these pages my desire and need to go on photo expeditions to build up my image library, and the more exotic and archaeologically interesting the better.
In the meantime, it’s amazing what one can find around the places we live and work. For years I’ve eyed the concrete floor in the printmaking studio with its rough textures such as embedded metal rings, cracks from former wall joints, and general rough patches left behind as traces from its previous life as an industrial shop of some kind.
A couple of months ago when I had our older digital camera with me in the studio, on impulse I took a number of photos of the floor markings. I wasn’t entirely happy with the results, though the idea still attracted me. Today, I took in our new camera which I’m still learning to use, and took lots of shots. Hey, most of them are really great, like abstract paintings with textures, some even show the patches of colour from various accidents. These images may well appear in some new prints in the future. It was a good day.
Later: I’ve been doing some housecleaning in the older entries, eliminating a strange diamond shaped icon with a question mark inside it that has peppered itself here and there. I was intrigued to reread this one on creativity, centred on a wonderful post by Beth of Cassandra Pages. It seems to fit in with what I was doing with the camera today, don’t you agree?
by Marja-Leena 
Hope you enjoy this, another of my scans, including these flowers.
Meanwhile I am looking forward to a busy happy day tomorrow celebrating my birthday.
by Marja-Leena 
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Psalm of Life (1838)
I was looking through some older photo images, and came across this one that I really like. My husband took it for me a few years ago when we were walking along a seaside park. Numerous walkers, joggers, and cyclists travelled along the path and I was captivated by their tracks on the sand. The photo above has been manipulated a bit in PhotoShop and was even more manipulated for Nexus/Sandfrieze.
Looking at this made me recall the well-known phrase “footprints in the sand” so I went to my Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and learned that it comes from Longfellow!! On the same page is another great one for artists:
Emigravit is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies;
Dead he is not, but departed, – for the artist never dies.
(on Albrecht Dürer) – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nuremberg (1844)
Strange thoughts on a Sunday morning… Gotta go make some footprints now, it’s sunny out!
by Marja-Leena 
Yesterday I had the urge for some creative play so I gathered several small objects – a piece of ammonite, a dried piece of root or lichen, curled bark, shells, dried flowers, and dried pomegranates. I placed an object on my scanner and covered it with either a black or cream cloth, selected a high resolution and magnification and scanned away. The results were very exciting with good depth of field and great detail. The ones with dark cloth remind me of old Dutch paintings.
Above is one with a piece of root or lichen, a bit smaller than the palm of my hand that I’d picked off a beach long ago. Isn’t it amazing? Of course you can’t see it here very well in this low resolution and small size, but when I looked at it full screen size, guess what I discovered there – a tiny dead but fully intact insect with its wings spread out. I’ve cut out that portion and blown it up some more – can you see it in the image below?
I had fun and felt a surge of creative energy and even learned some new scanning tricks. Sometime I may post some more of these scans. I may never use these images in my art work, but you never know. The mind processes these experiences and images over a long time and out they may appear much later, perhaps incorporated in a new way in new work. What was that saying by Picasso about being open to everything one sees and feels and that may become a painting… or something like that?
That reminds me, recently there was some discussion of whether scans are photographs. What do you think – are these not essentially photographs?
by Marja-Leena 
snowlace (rain on snow on skylight)
Our first snow at near sea level and I love it! I keep gazing out the window at the falling thick fat flakes, being hypnotized into a dreamlike state, instead of working. Ah well, it never lasts long here.