Happy Summer Solstice!

It must be summer -- Mary and I have finally put in our order for hurricane shutters....

Four photos went into this collage, two of which I've already posted here: the "post office pond" from "Magic Pond #1" and the flower from "St. Augustine". To those I've added the statue:



I photographed her on Monday as I walked through the neighborhood, finding a position where she held her hands before her face and was looking at the camera. Actually, she's holding a bird. And clouds:



This one dates from May 25, taken from outside the art league.

Except for final cropping and conversion from Bitmap to JPEG (done in MS Photo Editor), I did all the manipulations here in MS Paint. Clicking on the collage image and scrolling down to the comment box at Flickr will access more of the "recipe" of how I put the piece together.

I couldn't resist doing this next one --



The street sign actually reads, "MELISSA DR." When I saw this mockingbird perched on it I had to take a shot and do some creative cropping.

The shot was a bit blurred, so I watercolorized it in MS Photo Editor to give it some "artistic license." Then I brought it into MS Paint, where I masked the "DR" with copied bits of green. Finally I added the speech bubble in MS PowerPoint.

I found a (for me) new denizen of the "post office pond" -- several of these little guys were zipping around, just above the water. I was finally able to get a shot of one holding still.



Male Eastern Amberwing, Perithemis tenera, Family Libellulidae (Common Skimmers). According to Bugguide.Net, "Except along the U.S.-Mexican border, this is the only tiny dragonfly with amber wings on the male." By tiny they mean about a one-inch wingspan. The range of this dragonfly is the eastern two-thirds of the United States and south into Mexico. "Primarily a summer species; active all year in the far southern U.S."

Two days after I'd gotten a rear-view shot of the Blue Dasher (also shown in "Magic Pond #1"), I was afforded a front view.


More detail is in the large view (click the magnifying glass).

I also spotted my first Orange Bluet Damselfly, but haven't yet gotten a clear shot of it.

Tomorrow I'll be e-mailing the printer my first issue of the art league's newsletter, the Palette. The summer issue is my apprenticeship, as the task passes from its outgoing editor to me. I'll be taking over the editorship fully in the fall. Meanwhile, sets of tapes from two clients are headed this way.

The hurricane shutters won't get here for at least another 8 weeks, which is to be expected. Mary's been insulating the house and our thermostat's been reflecting the difference. Cool. (Literally.)

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