Dew on Plants

Sunday morning I was outside looking at my "gardens" (I hesitate to call them that as it's more like weed areas with a few flowers somehow popping up in between), and I noticed how the dew drops on the leaves were doing really awesome things in the light, so I got my camera and attempted to take some photos. For the most part, because I kept the depth of field so shallow, there's only one shot where droplets are truly in focus, but unless you blow the pictures up, you really can't tell. Anyway, here they are:

Columbine Leaves

 Strawberry Leaves:

 Lambsear:

All photos copyright Katrina Kouba Boles

Etui (Exploding Box) Gift for Mom's Birthday

In January at a Saturday art group, a friend taught us how to make the templates for Etui or Exploding Boxes (the inspiration came from seeing a box made by Janet Ghio). I took my template and decided to use it to create something for my mom. Last week was her birthday. Every night for about a week, I worked on this box. Because she wanted to spend the day at the Sophia M. Sacks butterfly house in St. Louis, especially since March is Blue Morpho month, I wanted a butterfly theme for the box. I went looking for inspiration on the internet and came across this really fun box with bees. I loved how her bees were flying and I wanted to figure out how to do this in my box with the butterflies. I'm so glad I got it to work, although my plastic supports are more visible. I wrote something I love about my mom on each flap. Here are some photos of the final box:

I was surprised the gesso and paint on each layer made it so rubbery, and so I had to add another layer of cardstock to make it thicker. I also would not attach the plastic in two places, rather I'd just have one piece of plastic for each butterfly. It was hard to glue down all the other pieces when they were in the way.

All photos copyright Katrina Kouba Boles

Blue Morpho Mania! (Another Butterfly Birthday)

For her birthday, my mom decided she wanted to "play hooky" and play with the butterflies in St. Louis. She had read that March Morpho Mania meant thousands more beautiful blues would be flashing their beautiful iridescent scales throughout the tropical conservatory. So we went to the Sophia M. Sacks Butterfly House and had a splendid time with these lovely little creatures. As much as I wanted to just sit and enjoy, I knew I couldn't. So here are some of my favorite photos:

A Green Banded Peacock (Papilio palinuris)

 Some longwings attempting to mate:

 Tiger Longwing (Heliconius hecale)

 Malachite (Siproeta stelenes)

 The Green Jay

 Dead Leaf Butterfly

 Owl Butterfly

 Magnificent Owl Butterfly (Caligo atreus)

 Scarlet Mormon

 A young girl in the conservatory was a favorite of the butterflies. Here's one on her fingers. Later she was carrying around a Blue Morpho that also landed on her fingers. Incredible! And she was so good with them too.

And now the beauties you've been waiting for, Blue Morpho (Morpho peleides)

For more of my butterfly photos, visit these previous posts:

Butterflies for my Birthday

In a World of Butterflies

Butterflies Everywhere! (At the Butterfly Pavilion) 

All photos copyright Katrina Kouba Boles

Plant Sciences and Campus Dining

What do Plant Sciences and Campus Dining have in common??

Answer: They had videos produced by us that were finished and mastered on the same day. Oh, and they both relate to food, but that's not really the answer I was going for. Other than the fact that they were finished on the same day, Plant Sciences was a year-long project which was mostly finished about a month ago, whereas I started the graphics and edit for the video for the NACUFS conference less than two weeks before I finished it.

The "NACUFS 2013 Conference Preview" video was shown last weekend at the latest conference. Each year the participants watch a video preview of the next conference. Rather than bore the participants with a traditional video, the idea was to entice them with this short "music video". I did not design the logos or the "tomato bomb box" featured at the end of the video, but I did make them move. For more info and stills, visit the project on my behance portfolio.


For "The Division of Plant Sciences" video, I made the graphics, made adjustments to the video backgrounds of the graphics, and even shot a few clips of the video.


For more examples of the work we've done at the University of Missouri, visit the MizzouVideo YouTube site.