Snow and rain...

No bikes in this weather...

Do we really need to go out today?

'Moi' in the rain in Zevenaar (Holland) this morning

Wishing you all

a wonderful time,

together with family and friends,

wherever you may be

from a very snowful and wintery Holland:

Merry X-mas!

On cruiseships and inspiration

Today was the second time the Oasis of the Seas docked on our island.

Last week I was too late to take pictures, but here it is, seen from our boardwalk in Philipsburg. If you click you can get an idea of the size, the cruiseship to its left is already a big one...

Lots of tourists walking in Philipsburg's streets and alleys, so I quickly left after having made the picture

this is one of my favorite photographs, taken from a book on safari!

Everytime I come across it in my digital archive I feel happy and inspired, so I thought why not share it with you today?

This afternoon we leave for a trip to Curacao and we will travel on to Holland from there in the weekend. Though I hate to leave my studio behind, I am sure there will be some eyecandy and maybe art for me in the winter over there!

Thanks for visiting.

From the coffeeshop (1)

Coffeeshop collage 1

During last year's USA-trip we frequented the S-coffeeshops,

you know, not the Dutch/Amsterdam kind of coffee shops, but the ones where one might get

addicted to Frappucino! Just saying S should be enough for most of you to know what I am talking about, without adding to their PR.

What I love in all these places, beside the coffee of course, are the wallpapers, the little pieces of art that are always there, and are always different. I never saw the same thing twice!

So wherever we drank our morning coffee I shot pictures, lots of pictures.

I was so happy to finally find some art( sy expressions)!

It is fun to combine these pictures with whatever I have on photographs in my archive.

Today's digital collage is one of the results of this new series.

Sunday collage

Today a digital collage that I have not posted yet, though it has been sitting in my archive for a while

Pictures made in Washington last summer on July 4. If you click you can see the decoration on the veranda of a tourist office building somewhere on the Olympic Peninsula, combined with a license plate and a field of Canola

Washington 09

Working on this (4)

Detail of my experiment of earlier this week,

right as it is now, after some layers of acrylic paint

Oh boy!

I told you it would totally change and

it is not finished yet

By the way: I almost missed the Oasis of the Seas, due to an extended visit to the hairdresser. Was able to photograph it when the ship left the harbour and as the sun had already set, the results are bad. Next week Wednesday there will be another chance, but of course there is only one maiden trip, alas! For what I could see in the pinkish dusk the ship looked ugly, and of course huge

But I like my highlights :) !

Excitement on SXM

Because today world's biggest cruiseship, Oasis of the Seas,

will visit our island on its maiden trip

A huge jetty has been built to accomodate it, you can see the spot on the

first picture. If you click you also can see Fort Amsterdam about which

I've written some posts ago (the green 'peninsula' to the centre right)

Great Bay at sunset yesterday.

From this lovely place I will have a toast tonight at sunset on this floating city.

Though personnaly not a lover of things so huge, I do hope that lots of people enjoy their trip and that our island will profit from its weekly visits...