What Do You Take Photos Of When You Are Out And About?

          When you are walking around in local areas where you live or on vacation do take photos of big landscapes or do you focus on smaller details? When I'm on vacation, I leave the photography of the big picture up to my husband. I'm always attracted to patterns and close-up shots. Some of them get used in my art pieces and some get filed away for possible future use. But a crack in a sidewalk can show me a great use of line or a wall that has peeling paint can hint at an interesting pattern to stitch.
     We recently traveled to Morocco and I was enraptured with the use of color and pattern almost everywhere I looked. Of course, there were rugs galore and I found out from a weaver that she creates the patterns intuitively as she works.

local weavers with rug in process

rugs placed out to show several styles

reminded me of the mountain landscape there

reminiscent of some quilt blocks

     And then there were the mosaics; some ancient Roman ones and some more modern.

looking down

looking up

another quilt block?

even the layout of rocks on the road had patterns

And the clothes blew me away.

two men at one of our hotels

It was one of the most exotic places I've been. I'm still analyzing my photos to see how to use the feel of Morocco in my future art pieces.

     More locally, this week I visited another exotic place; an orchid farm. I was surprised how large it was and how many different types of plants they have. I took many photos and hope to be able to process the patterns of the roots and flowers into thermofax screens. 

at the entrance

love the roots

amazing designs

      I'm going to be teaching a 3-day class at a local fabric shop, Fabrications,  in March. The first day I'll teach how to take a photo and turn it into an image suitable for making a thermofax screen and 

participants will make their images into screens (the shop has a thermofax machine). On the second day, we'll print onto fabrics using our screens. And on the third day, we'll construct small collages from the printed fabrics. Everyone should be able to go home with at least one completed collage.  If you are interested in signing up, click the link above and phone the shop for details.

collages

Many of the images above are from photos I took from my yard and around the house with my iPhone. Between now and March, I hope to use some of the images from the orchid farm in some collages.
     I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art blogs. Please make comments on the artists' posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.