What have you been up to, Elena?

You mean besides creating funky images? ;-)

Right... Well, you know, the usual.

Work: finishing up the analyses for a paper, addressing the ever-discontented reviewer number three (why is it always reviewer number three?) for another paper, submitting an abstract for a meeting in the fall.

Writing: almost done with my new story, woo-hoo! Planning on shipping off to beta readers by the end of September and have it on Lovely Agent's desk by November.

Photography: getting ready for my first personal show in Santa Fe in the fall! Very excited. :-) Though I should start an inventory pretty soon, before the basement gets completely filled up by prints and frames.

So, that's basically it. What have you guys been up to? :-)

Dreams I have

"If you could make a wish, one wish only..."
"I want to travel to outer space inside a guitar."
"A guitar? Why a guitar?"
(Smiling). "Because I can."

Also, in case you never noticed, guitars float, too. :-)

On a happy note, my four submissions for the Trickster exhibit (the first four in the post) have been accepted. Yay!

Hope everybody's having a great summer. The science posts will resume next month.

Milky Way Galore!

I swapped an old lens for a fish-eye (the Sigma 15mm f2.8) so I could finally get some decent Milky Way shots. I got the lens last month, actually, but first I had to wait for the moon to wane, then when the moon started rising late enough, monsoon started (which is a beautiful thing, not complaining!) and the sky was always cloudy at night. Finally, last night it cleared enough to show a glimpse of the Milky Way...

The first two were shot at f2.8, ISO 800 and 30 seconds of exposure, the last one at 25 seconds. The lights you see in the distance are from Santa Fe, and the clouds are the remnants of a spectacular thunderstorm.

Print available here.
Check-out my upcoming thriller CHIMERAS, coming April 2014. 

Fourth of July Fireworks

Turns out, it's not so hard to take good firework shots! :-)

Our flag was lowered because of the tragic loss of 19 young firefighters in Arizona, last Saturday. I found out last night that they had been part of the thousands of heroes that had come out here two years ago to save our town from Las Conchas Fire. These shots are dedicated to them and their families. There are no words to express how saddened I am by this loss.

Playing tricks with images

Hope you're having a great summer if you're in the northern hemisphere, winter if you're in the southern one.

Last Friday was the opening reception of Wallflowers, the current exhibit at the Fuller Lodge Art Center, where I got to enjoy amazing artwork and meet other artists -- it was great fun! While I was there I also read the call for their next exhibit. The title, "Trickster," got me thinking... Magritte, Dali', Escher... so many great minds in the past played visual tricks with their images! What does the word "Trickster" make you think of?

I'm just catching up on the science, so in the meantime, I thought I'd leave you with a few images I recently created. Hope you'll enjoy them!

Peacock by EEG

Escher's Glass by EEG

Forever by EEG

Ceci n'est pas une fraise by EEG

 Thelxiepeia by EEG