Building your own reference library.
When I go out in nature, I’ve always got my camera ready so I can thoroughly photograph plants, animals or lanscapes that give me inspiration. That way I can refer back to them for detail, or cycle through them just to get some new inspiration. I’ve got a huge file with thousands of photos, but way over half of them would seem uninteresting to most – things like rocks and tree trunks, and dozens of photos of the same bird or animal. I also have a lot of nature books & magazines for reference or just inspiration. As I am a nature enthusiast & enjoy photography, you’ll notice that a lot of my mosaic work is based on my photos – I often feel that my mosaic creations were actually conceived while I was behind a lens
The picture shown is “From the Spit” – it’s a work where I virtually copied my photgraph. It isn’t a particularly great photo, but it gives me enough details to construct the buildings and the wave is perfect – in great perspective with the rest of the landscape. i also chose to make the work as a sunny ( not stormy) day – I was able to use more colour and I like the contrast of the blue against the colours.
