More Marble Madness

Got caught playing with marbles again tonight. I guess that sort of goes a long with bright and shiny things. Here a few samples. God's love and blessings to all, chris

Losing My Marbles

I'm going crazy. Actually I'm stuck in a rut and I need to take a vacation. We had planned a Tahoe ski trip but that fell through due to a considerable lack of snow. As a consequence I'm feeling a little trapped right now. The only thing that has got me feeling creative right now is marbles and I feel that I have reached the end of those for awhile.

This morning I did some fog and Redwood images and the I moved onto mounds of marbles. Hopefully this will be the last of those until I move onto ornaments.Something to spark my creative spirit.

God's love and blessings to all on this Merry Christmas,

chris

More Marble Madness

I have found that marbles are almost as addicting as water drops. Though marbles are a bit more predictable as to the outcome. This morning I arose before the sunrise and made quite a few images of "Sherwood Castle". Sherwood Castle is my name for the flat topped redwood tree on the Sherwood Ranch. Later on I played with the marbles for awhile. The bright colors are so captivating and interesting.

Merry christmas,

chris

A Few Marbles

Playing with a few marbles this evening. I can't resist how they look.

God bless, chris

Marble Meteor (View Large)

Blowtorch. Check. Safety goggles. Check. Area cleared of flammables . Check. Fire Extinguisher. Check. It sure doesn't sound like your normal photo session. Last night while lying in bed I came up with an idea for an image. I wanted to create a marble meteor using a marble and a blow torch.

This morning after dropping Jay and Annika at school I set to work. Using a boom I hung a marble on black wire in front of a black back drop. Lighting the torch I then applied the flame slowly to the marble to keep it from exploding from thermal shock. After that it was just a matter of finding the correct exposure to properly illuminate the marble being fired up by the blow torch.
Following that I combined the image with several other images of marbles that I have created. I had a lot of fun creating this image. It is beautiful and it has some whimsy to it.

Please let me know that you think of the image in the comment section below.

God's blessings to all,

chris

An Image in Mind

I have been feeling sick for the last week. Hence I have I done very little photography. This morning I lay in bed and read a book that Annika wanted me to read called “A Mango Shaped Space” about a thirteen year old girl that could see the colors of sound. The book was fictional but apparently there really are a few people that are born with this condition. Wow, that must be an amazing experience to be able to see colors from sound. The condition is called synesthesia.

After reading the book I started looking through some old photography magazines. In one of them was an image of a woman cutting through a power line with a pair of shears. Something in the description of how the image was created caught my eye. The sparks around the shears were created from separate images from a metal grinder. Immediately light bulbs went off in my mind as I visualized an image in my mind that I wanted to create. So I jumped out of bed and set to work on it.

I went out to the garage and grabbed my shop grinder and carried it into the kitchen and set it up next to the sink. Then I grabbed some black backdrop material and set it up behind the sink. I closed off the outside light from the window with another piece of black backdrop. Following that I grabbed a metal wood screw, some safety glasses and my camera which I set to manual mode.

Holding the camera in one hand to compose and the metal screw in the other hand against the grinder to create sparks was pretty challenging. I was able to get some excellent images of sparks coming off of the grinder after a few dozen tries. The effect was very cool.

The next part in the creation of this image was to combine several of the spark images into a circular pattern by layering all of them into one image. With a little bit of clean up it looked awesome. After that I looked through some of my marble images. I chose one to place in the very center of the final image I had in mind.

Please let me know what you think of it in the comment section below.

God’s blessings to all,

chris

Magic of Marbles

Marbles have always fascinated me. They come in such an incredible palette of colors, clarity and designs. As a child I was part of a group of kids that played each other for marbles at lunch. We played “mano a mano” and you lost your marble to the opposing player when you lost. So it got to be very competitive. Needless to say I had quite a collection of my competitors marbles. It was always a good idea to only play with your run of the mill marbles if you didn’t want to lose them to another player. The fancy ones you left at home.





About ten years ago there was a minor resurgence of marbles in our area and both of my kids were a part of it. So they amassed a small collection of some really cool ones. Yesterday Jay dug out the collection for me and I had a great time photographing them last night and this afternoon. Marbles when exposed to light take on a magic all their own. They are magically delightful as well as beautiful.



God’s blessings to all,

chris