Life After Leaf: An Artistic Celebration of Yellowstone’s Dead Trees

Are you looking to buy a unique Christmas gift for friends or family? Consider my newly published art book: Life After Leaf.

In October 2021 I traveled to Yellowstone National Park twice for the purpose of shooting images of the trees. All the images in my book were shot along high altitude hiking trails

Over the years, I have developed Photoshop artistry techniques for digitally blending my images of trees with texture images of rocks, clouds, water and many other natural objects and vignettes that I captured this year. In total, my book draws upon my collection of more than 2,000 images of trees and textures. I use Photoshop to blend the tree and texture layers. I then use additional Photoshop tools such as adjustment layers, masking, gradients, blurring, and lighting techniques to wrestle these abstract images into final form. These techniques often involve considerable trial-and-error and the end product often consists of dozens of PS layers. While working on these images, they sometimes take on a life of their own.

Life After Leaf contains 72 photos taken at Yellowstone National Park along with more than 160 works of art featuring Yellowstone’s dead trees.  The price is $45 and shipping is free. I invite you to order your copy at my Digicrylics website.

Or feel free to browse my other artwork at my two art websites, Digicrylics.com and Erichvieth.com.

Continue ReadingLife After Leaf: An Artistic Celebration of Yellowstone’s Dead Trees

About Going and Plans

How to reconcile these two quotes?

“If a man knows not which port he sails, no wind is favourable.” Seneca

But then see this:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the [Cheshire] Cat. “I don’t much care where—” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. “—so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation. “Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

—Chapter 6, Pig and Pepper

Continue ReadingAbout Going and Plans

Who Said This: “If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter”

A long time ago, I posted a collection of quotes, all of them expressing the same idea: If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter.

Today, I discovered a detailed article by Quote Investigator concerning those who have expressed this excellent idea.

The conclusion:

[T]he number of different people credited with this comment is so numerous that an explanatory appendix would have been required, and the letter was already too long. Here is a partial list of attributions I have seen: Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw, Voltaire, Blaise Pascal, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Winston Churchill, Pliny the Younger, Cato, Cicero, Bill Clinton, and Benjamin Franklin. Did anybody in this group really say it? . . .

In conclusion, Blaise Pascal wrote a version of this saying in French and it quickly moved into the English language. The notion was very popular and variants of the expression have been employed by other notable figures in history. The saying has also been assigned to some prominent individuals without adequate factual support.

Continue ReadingWho Said This: “If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter”