SEASCAPES AND FANTASIES

There is something about the sea that makes my mind prone to daydreaming.

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It feels like standing in front of an inspiring backdrop made to hold whatever one's fantasy can produce. Especially in cloudy weather when there's no one around, fantasy seems to make much more sense than reality.
I don't know where exactly this opening photograph was taken. The year was
2006, that's for sure. Another thing that's for sure, is that most of what follows in today's post won't look anything like that.

You'll see the coastal scenery around my hometown changed and distorted to fit my fantasies. Sometimes, like in this shot, for example, only the colors will be a bit stronger than they really were when the photograph was taken back in the winter of 2006. If this can qualify as fantasy, then most of the travel-related real stuff one can see on Instagram is more imaginative and less crapy than I thought.

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On the 8th of October 2006, I not only saw a ghost on the coast, but I also caught that otherworldly presence on camera. You can take a good look at it if you enlarge the picture and focus on its center.

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Sometimes the sky looks just like the sea and I feel trapped in a big fish tank.

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The only fantasy aspect of this shot is the absence of colors ... and the distant moon, which always looks kinda otherworldly to me.

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Sometimes the oversized plankton starts floating right before my eyes. That's the sign that is time to go back home.

I didn't know much about Photoshop and other digital photography stuff back in 2006.

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These simple drawings were made in Microsoft Paint.

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These are my first attempts to merge a photograph with something hand-drawn. I just opened a photograph in Paint and started scribbling lines with the mouse. I usually did that at work whenever I needed a bit of distraction from all the boring, shallow, ephemeral mass tourism-related stuff that I still despise from the depths of my rotten heart.

Today I decided to animate some of that clumsy old crap I was never, not even closely, satisfied with.

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Now, almost two decades later, I kinda like to explore these weird digital artifacts of my personal history.

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Seascapes, memories, and fantasies - that's all this post is about.

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Memories and fantasies are often more or less the same in my mind.

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Sometimes the coastal scenery looks slightly otherworldly without any Photoshop intervention.

Especially early in the morning.

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On Christmas of 2006, I photographed a UFO on its way to an underwater base. Does that mean that Santa Claus is an alien? I don't know, that's only one of the possible implications of what I witnessed that day.

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The lovely clouds shown in this photograph vaguely resemble some kind of UFO thing.

Some days everything up in the sky looks like UFO to me. Not only that, but I feel a bit like a visitor from outer space on those occasions.

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Each and every one of us is a sea filled with weird stuff that comes to the surface from time to time.

If you ask me, we are at our best when that happens.

AND THAT'S IT. I HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO SAY, AND NO MORE PICTURES TO SHOW, SO THE POST MUST END HERE. AS ALWAYS ON HIFE, THE PHOTOGRAPHS, THE DRAWINGS, THE EDITS, AND THE GIFs, ARE MY WORK.

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