Which planet am I on?

Spaceship orbiting the planet Zog

Monday 22nd June 2015

What has that picture got to do with posting an image a day? Quite a lot. Photography, like art is in the seeing, connecting and making of an image. I was thinking about the horrible rainy weather today and the lack of sunshine, it being the longest day yesterday. With this in mind, I decided to photograph some sort of object in the studio. I had just checked my emails and found I had a red alert for the aurora borealis (northern lights) tonight, meaning it should be a good display, but in Driffield we are having cloud all night. Somewhat annoyed, I selected a metal ball point pen refill to photograph, intending to show the ball in great detail and lit it from one side. The light also reflected off the metal barrel giving an extra white extraneous light. This produced an image bottom right. In my bit box of things, I caught sight of an old foot massage ball. Looking at it, I knew exactly what I was going to do. The ball point pen was going to be a spacecraft, the foot massage ball a planet. Photographing the ball, again with light on one side, I had a direction for a distant sun! Then with a dark sky, I painted some reds around the planet to remind me of the aurora I will be missing tonight. That is the seeing and connecting to produce an image - with the aid of Photoshop!