Mardi Gras Rex

During February, my husband and I went to New Orleans for his nephew’s wedding. We were there for part of Mardi Gras, the world’s biggest party. It was amazing how obsessed we were about catching the bead necklaces thrown from the various parade floats. During Mardi Gras going to musical venue,  parades, catching beads, eating and drinking consumes the entire population. In fact these are so much more important than wars, politics, murder and mayhem to the partying population during Mardi Gras - I have a feeling they are also more important to the citizens of New Orleans all year long -  that I am recommending the entire world be put on a New Orleans Mardi Gras schedule 24/7. If that could be accomplished we would have the beauty pageant coveted ideal "world peace."

While attending the parades, we took many photos with our iPhones. Looking through those photos I decided to make a photomontage, something I haven’t done in quite a while. I isolated about 15 photos that I liked best, most of them from Bacchus, Proteus and Orpheus parades. I used parts of each image, sometimes reversing the image left to right, occasionally taking just one small item that I wanted in the finished montage. Some layers were made transparent so that you can see through to parts of the images below. I played with these images and layers for 2 hours using Adobe Photoshop to adjust the image until completely satisfied that the Mardi Gras party spirit was captured. The final result is Mardi Gras Rex. The actual preferred printed image is 12 inches wide by 10 inches high, though it can be printed in other sizes. This is a smaller jpeg image, but it carries the Mardi Gras party excitement  just as much as does the larger Mardi Gras Rex.