How do I love thee? On Valentine's Day.

Valentine's day.

OH and I don't do it in a big way.

He gives me a card.

I give him one.

Never rude. Never funny.

That's it.

No roses.

Definately no chocolates.

No meal deal from M&S.

No fine dining in a posh restaurant.

We can happily claim to have avoided the commercial aspects of this annual event.

I might yet get to the supermarket and get some food in. The washing is on. And we have googled "can mice eat lawnmowers?"

It seems that they can, and have. We have a neat serrated edge on the bottom of the machine. Rather that than a chopped power cable.

This week, in anticipation of  V Day, I kept thinking of the Raymond Carver poem 'Late Fragment'

written before he died at the age of 50.

What do I want from this life?

Deep question.

I can only come up with irreverent answers today.

one of these would be good

one of these would be even better

and one of these would be the icing on the cake........

But of course, looks are not all, and George Clooney is no longer available.


So...........OH............


I'll settle with this;

birds in flight - compositing on the ipad - on art and photography

Murmuration by Fiona Watson - etching

I went to the London Art Fair 2 weeks ago.

OH ( my other half) came too.


And there I found birds. Soaring and free.

OH found free whisky, and kept himself happily amused while I drooled over the birdies.


'Murmurations' by Fiona Watson and birds in flight from 'Mirando al cielo' by Rosa Basurto were the most memorable images of the day from my perspective.

works by Rosa Basurto

I found the images uplifting. Something to do with the birds.

I have a thing about murmurations.


This one is fairly extraordinary. Amoebic. Visceral.

Anyway, you get the picture.

I started wanting birds in my images.

And as I don't have any photos of flocks of birds I realised that I might need to starting cutting and sticking some in. Compositing, as it is otherwise known.

So I started playing around with my ipad using tools for cutting and sticking.

These are some that I use on my ipad.

I started with a stone.

flint stone

I added a photographic landscape

Then some texture, some lightening and finished with an imagined landscape.


Complete with birds.

flint stone composite- imagined lands 

There will be more stone images. I have a lot of stones from around the world.

But first I need to photograph lots more birds.

And teach them how to fly.............


Not to mention refining my cutting out skills.




You can keep up with my 'stone of the day' experiment here


Some of the apps that  I use are listed below;


Snapseed for a variety of lens and texture effects

Juxtaposer for superimposing images

DistressedFx   for textures

There are many out there, and many are free.

Just like the birds.

And apparently the whisky.....