And finally, my personal favorite, and perhaps the most complicated and expensive work of visual art, is the one that adorns my last "full-length" original studio album. Sometimes referred to as "Self-Portrait in Stardust," this photo is exactly that: a photo of me. Well, I used a photo of me as a template and superimposed galaxies, planets, star clusters and nebulae over all of my features to create a likeness - okay, a vaguely human face - with a background of similar construction. I took my cue from the Renaissance painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo whose trippy work is similarly composed of unusual, but related, elements. The point about this work is that EVERY astronomical image was individually photographed BY ME (not stock images) and compiled in Photoshop as you see here. To be fair, Alec Pettifer was also involved in one of the photo shoots, sitting at the "helm," as it were, of the telescope and computer for a few of the included galaxy and nebula images (I forget which, as we took turns) taken while at New Mexico Skies, even though I managed all of the post-processing of the images (you won't believe how much of that is required in astrophotography!) Many of the images were also taken with my own Canon Digital Rebel camera - some with, some without my Celestron telescope - from various locations throughout the USA, including NJ, PA, NM and I think TX. So, even though it doesn't prominently feature the Omega logo, I still consider it my best.
So what do you think? Do you agree with my choices? Was this nothing more than a pointless exercise? Perhaps. Does it warrant a 25 WORST album covers list? Obviously the majority of them (51) would still lie in the middle. At least I hope you enjoyed perusing these often silly and adolescent images that, for better or worse, complimented my musical creations for three decades....
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