Spirals, a Photoshop Tip, and M81 Galaxy

The serpent bones spoke to me of the ancient cycles of living, dying and being reborn...the serpent bones, with skin long since shed, whispered that the spiraling inward towards our center or spiraling outward towards the cosmic, it is the same.Spirals and a Photoshop Tip
Today I'm playing with photographs and Photoshop (PS). I was choosing a picture to send in for the latest photoartjournals Yahoo group exchange on Spirals. The top picture is taken at a Reptile Garden in South Dakota on a road trip a couple of years ago. I was captivated with not only the skeleton but the dramatic spiral shape. I used PS to remove the display frame and signs around the skeleton. The second photo I used PS to produce a negative image. You can do this by selecting Image>adjustments>invert... very easy.

Spirals are such a wonderful natural design, and as a design has been found in all cultures since ancient times, often associated with the sun or the snake. Here is another quote I like about them, don't know who wrote it: "Our earth describes a spiral course. We move in circles, but we never come back to the same point. The circle is not closed. We only pass the same neighbourhood many times. It is characteristic of a spiral that it seems to be a circle but is not closed."

A Lunatia lewisii, aka, Moon Snail, a vacated shell found at Mutiny Bay, Whidbey Island, WA (lovely, these can grow up to 7 inches!)...
The interior of the Westport, WA lighthouse...A Chongololo or giant African millipede (grows up to 11 inches) at the Victoria BC, Canada Bug Zoo (creepy, but a fascinating place)...The Spiral Galaxy M81
The M81 Galaxy is a spiral-shaped system of stars, dust, and gas clouds, the galaxy's arms wind all the way down into the nucleus. The Hubble Space Telescope gathered the data needed for the photos in this You-Tube video between 2004-2006, and produced the sharpest image ever taken of deep space and this "grand design spiral" galaxy which is located 11.6 million light-years away. The Hubble Space Telescope's view is so sharp that it can resolve individual stars, along with open star clusters, globular star clusters, and even glowing regions of fluorescent gas. This color composite was assembled from images taken in blue, visible, and infrared light. The music is Creation du Monde by Vangelis. Copyright by the artists... Enjoy and contemplate your spiral journey.