Two days away=a world away! We spent two nights on the Columbia River at the beginning of this week. Our digs were deluxe, thanks to a gift from Eli and Amy to stay at the beautiful and hospitable  Cannery Pier Hotel (NOT the place shown above!!) in Astoria, Oregon. Our perfect room overlooking the mighty river included a wine and cheese reception each afternoon, breakfast each morning, and 24 hour beverages and fruit bowl. We braved the late winter snow and hail storms to explore the steep streets of this historic salmon fishing and river port city where the remains of the old cannery piers rise from the river's edge like decayed totem poles. On our walk I took a photo of one stately but decrepit Victorian home belonging to Harry and Mary Louise Flavel, brother and sister, great-grandchildren of the bar pilot and entrepreneur, Capt. George Flavel, whose house is the most famous one in town:

http://www.cumtux.org/default.asp?pageid=35&deptid=1

A hearty thank you goes to Elleda Wilson, an Astoria photographer (www.astoria-photografpix.com) and history buff, for finding my original blog post and writing to tell me who owns the old, empty house and for sending the full story of the legendary Flavel family! And thanks to inquisitive friend Marilyn for her full search for details on the house and its famous residents.

The abandoned house is in striking contrast to the beautifully restored Flavel House museum. The photo of the abandoned house inspired me to create a PhotoShop-facilitated collage. Above you see the layered image, and below, the original images I used to create it.

The house image was used twice, once as the straight photo, and once as a filtered photo. I placed the layers, adjusted the opacity of each, used a couple of filters on one of the house image layers (ink lines and poster edges). I erased parts of the map layer so that the house had some brighter white areas coming through on its siding. The center image above was taken of an ivy-etched concrete wall up the street from the old Victorian. After the images were manipulated, I added some handwritten notes for texture on the dominant house layer using my Wacom Tablet. The map image was scanned from an 1895 atlas page.

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