Stairs, Arches, Holiday Musing and the Answer

Since this week seems to have turned into "Architecture Week" on my blog, I thought I'd finish with two more of my favorite photographs in this category.  These stairs (leading down from the tower of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris) have shown up in a lot of my artwork, and they always draw a very strong response.  I also really like and have used this set of arches which I found in the courtyard of the glass museum in Murano, Italy.  I think they both work well in my artwork because, like the window photograph posted here, they are both strong photographs.  On the other hand, I have found it very difficult to use this picture of the gate in my art work because, while the gate is very interesting, it's not a really well composed photograph that can stand on its own as a piece of art.  Where is the gate?  Deb's come the closest to guessing.  If you click on the "jump" at the end of this post, I'll give you the answer.  (By the way, isn't the "jump feature" really cool. I may be overusing it, but it's like a new toy that I just discovered!)

In other musings, I just sorted through all my Christmas cards from this year. I take out the pictures which people send along inside them to scrap.  Including a family photo has become quite a common practice in the States, not sure so much abroad. Anyway, I've been scrapping these pictures in their own album since 1990 - some of the kids who were babies then are off to college now!  I also take the nice handmade cards I get and cannibalize them as embellishments in my Christmas Pictures album.  Finally, if there's some card fronts which catch my eye (often religious paintings of the Madonna or angels), I rip those off and put them in my ephemera collection.  What do you do with your holiday cards?

Next up - Valentine's Day.  I've started to see hearts and Valentine projects showing up on blogs.  It's not a favorite holiday of mine, and I'm certainly not in the V.D. spirit yet.  Are you?

Last (but not least), all these photo posts have made me think about how I use my photography in my art (besides scrapbooking).  I'm working on a nice two-part post for this weekend on that topic. So, watch for it. Not sure if Scrapbook Sunday will happen this weekend, but I am keen to show you some nice, new fresh art next week.  Can you tell I'm feeling a bit better?

And now for the Answer . . .

The gate is at The Budapest Castle in Budapest, Hungary.  If you look closely in the family picture, you can see the Chain Bridge in the background.