Serendipity!
Believe it or not, this is a photograph. It is made of several photographs blended together through the magic of Photoshop and Nik Filters.
I have told you on other blogs about my ‘prism’ library. These are photographs of textures such as peeling paint, patterns in mud, sand, leaves, etc. Anything and everything that attracts your eye. I have a book which is nothing but photographs of rumpled sheets: they emphasize the shadows and highlights and believe it or not, they are interesting.
This photo is primarily of a cowrie belt that I bought from a Dogon man. I thought it might be a fashion statement and it might be, but it didn’t work for someone my age. I had it displayed for a while in my home. Then got the idea to photograph it and put the photo in my prisms library.
I have another photo that is at least 15 years old. It is of four Moroccan men wearing djellabas and cheches. I’ve always liked that photo, but felt it was lacking. I combined the cowrie shell prism and the Moroccan men and things seemed to happen. I knew where to go, or my computer did. It’s amazing what you can make using Photoshop and Nik Filters. It took me maybe an hour to be satisfied. It says “Africa” to me.
I used Blow Up 3 from Alien Skin to enlarge the image to poster size in seconds.