Thursday, October 02, 2008


I have written before of Cynara cardunculus. My procupation in recent weeks has been the preparation of my Friday history of photography classes where I use no textbook and I must rely on reasearch, my memory and scanning photographs from my large collection of photo books. Many of the photographs are not to be found in the internet. The idea people have is that if it isn't in Google it doesn't exist. But when I find a photo from my memory I know to the contrary.



Today I have been at my computer and scanner all day and my eyes feel rectangular. Yesterday as I prepared for today's scanning agony I decided to scan (!) one of my drying thistles and try to see how I could make the images look 19th century.



The result upper left started with a straight scan (but with a sheet of letterhead paper on top of the thistle. That's the second image seen here. From there I reversed it so that it became an unearthly blue. I desaturated it (took the colour away) and then made it yellow/red again. The bonus image is an "antiqued" Anemone x hibrida.