I spent a week at the beach (Emerald Isle, NC) a week ago. One day was stormy and the ocean rough. That evening my sister-in-law Cathy and I went shelling and we hit the jackpot! I’ve never seen so many seashells.

I’ve been scanning and photographing and thinking of new series for these images (and those hundreds of photos from yosemite). My usual process is to pick a dozen or so favorite shells to work with right away. I’ll scan or photograph the shell, then spend a good bit of time isolating the image from the background– careful work at this stage really pays off in the long run. My favorite book on image selecting, isolating, compositing techniques in photoshop is Katrin Eismann’s _Photoshop Masking & Compositing_.