Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Orchid Progress!

a post from Debbie Langsam

I'm finally seeing real progress on two of my orchid pieces....

They're photomosaics...one is black and white, the other is color. And both are inspired by this lovely image posted by "geishaboy500/THOR" on Creative Commons.



It's a
terrific close-up showing the center of a typical orchid flower. The "landing platform" is an inviting perch for pollinating insects passing by. A pretty clever evolutionary adaptation.



A little Photoshop magic helped me saturate the colors and emphasize the edges so that they'd be apparent in the finished mosaic.



This is now the "target image," the image that viewers will see when they look at the piece from a distance.



I've now
subdivided the target image into 12 8"x9" rectangular sections and made each of those sections into a "mini-mosaic." The tiles for the mosaic come from a collection of about 100 photos that I've collected of orchids and orchid-related images."


The "mini-mosaic"
on the right is the upper left hand corner of the piece....



And on the left, is a close-up of 4 of the "tiles.Starting on the upper left and moving clockwise:


Antoine Hinain's cross section of an orchid root as seen under the microscope.Steve Conry's orchid closeup; a greenhouse in Curitiba, Brazil by Marcus Guimaraes; and a Jewel orchid by JonBoy Mitchell.




So now I'm at the point of putting the pieces together, row-by-row. Here's a row composed of 3 "mini-mosaics" pieced side by side. This is actually the second of the 4 rows that will eventually make up the piece.








Eventually, if all goes w
ell, the finished piece will look something like the image at the right.


I'll keep you updated....

A happy and a healthy 2010 to all....


Debbie

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