La Vie En Rose, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

If you look at this Photoshop composite, the building blocks I used to create it may not be immediately apparent. Some viewers have thought apple peels, others have suggested a shell, combined with an ornate column.

Astute readers of this blog will recognize Straight Shot (in a color version) combined with the variegated rose in Curves (turned on its side). Creating a complex composite like this one in Photoshop reminds me of nothing so much as doodling—perhaps proving that those painful years in graduate school were not entirely wasted!