iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

So this week I learned that there are TWO sea otters in the Salish Sea!!! This one is Dexter and I got to watch him roll around in the kelp and fluff his fur. (With major thanks to the Salish Sea School, a wonderful nonprofit that conducts wildlife boat trips and lots of community programs.)

a sea otter peeking up from a patch of floating bull kelp, with gulls and a distant mountain in the background

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

A piece created from this summer’s efforts at photographing dragonflies in flight. King of the Lilies, cyanotype on translucent gampi over raindrop paper, gilded and painted details on front and reverse.

Blue and silver artwork of a dragonfly flying over water lilies

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

An intertidal piece, with some new techniques: Inverse Satellite, crystal jellyfish originally photographed beneath the ferry dock. Cyanotype on translucent gampi, with gilded details on the front and reverse, over embossing and watercolor on cotton paper. (In a vintage silverplate frame.) 🐡

Blue and silver artwork of a delicate jellyfish from beneath, with the sun shining through its bell.

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

it happened to me: my cough was giving me a headache, so I used my inhaler, and my inhaler kicked off a wee migraine

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

can YOU spot the secret shrimp?

white-lined dirona nudibranch underwater on a creature-covered dock piling

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

when you have sea lettuce in your bell and nobody tells you

egg yolk jellyfish adrift in turbulent water

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

me, this summer: “i would really like to photograph one of those beautiful sculpins” 🐡 one of those beautiful sculpins:

a sculpin (fish) sitting atop my underwater shoe, glaring at me

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

feeling well enough for boredom but not enough to do very much; hello, internet

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

i once laughed when my husband told me that tim curry in muppet treasure island could get it. then i watched muppet treasure island and had to issue a formal apology.

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

why is so much video installation art filmed as though it’s a youtube how-to video about assembling an ikea dresser

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

we need to reschedule what feels like our entire lives because of the flu, but it is difficult to do that with…the flu.

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

If this strain of the flu is what will be around during proper flu season, fyi, it is BAD. We both got tamiflu and are still in ROUGH shape. Worth masking in high-traffic spaces to avoid it. The only good thing I can say about the past few days is that I’ve been unconscious for much of them.

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

fyi, influenza A is circulating in AUGUST, which I found out by getting the flu. Things! Keep! Happening!

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

mom got me some gorgeous handmade mulberry paper as a gift, and I’m trying to figure out what it’s sized with. The surface has this almost sparkling quality that’s clearly due to a brushed-on size. Whatever it is, it works really well to keep pigment right on the surface despite the thick paper.

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

The Dreaming Fisher series, heron and school of freshwater fish, double-sided photographic cyanotype on silk charmeuse, hand-sewn in an abstract flowing shape. I’ve taken so many heron photos, but I keep coming back to these simple silhouetted shots. 🪶

A long silk scarf with a rippled flowing edge, with brushstrokes and images of herons and fish in blue

The same scarf draped over a pine bough in front of a stream

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

An older work I’d meant to post: Gull splashing down in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, cyanotype on gampi paper, hand-tinted by gilding the reverse with metal leaf and overpainting with watercolor. 🪶

Blue and gold art piece depicting a gull splashing down into water, its wings upraised

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Respite, 2026. Diptych of a sandpiper resting and preening as the tide rises, originally photographed on the Oregon coast. Cyanotype on translucent gampi paper, hand-colored by gilding with metal leaf on the reverse and painting little details over the image with a tiiiiny brush. 🪶

two blue-toned mixed media artworks of a sandpiper preening its feathers and sleeping

blue and gold image of a sandpiper preening its feathers

blue and gold image of a sleeping sandpiper

another view of the same two sandpiper images, this one in direct sunlight

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

I’m despair-inducingly behind on everything as usual and not able to make much of a dent, but I did manage to finish and frame a piece I started a couple of weeks ago.

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

please enjoy these dragonflies making more dragonflies. (calico pennants, I think?)

a mating pair of red and orange dragonflies reflected in still water

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

also hello, life has been a lot but I got to sing happy birthday to my two-year-old niece in person which was pretty great, and now I’m back at home being gay with Micah which is great even when we’re the most exhausted

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Frost and Vapor. Swans flying over the Skagit Valley, originally photographed this winter. Mixed media cyanotype on gampi paper, gilded and hand-painted in aqua bronze.

A blue framed art piece depicting swans flying over misty marsh and mountains. Their wings are silver, and the image is painted over in serpentine gold brushstrokes.

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

shimmer slug glamming up the intertidal zone #invertebrates

opalescent nudibranch inching across kelp, with ripples made by sunlight

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

When the Chase the Light weekend coincides with some of the year’s best low tides #chasethelight2026 #photographiccenternw #invertebrates

egg yolk jellyfish drifting through shadowy water under the ferry dock

Opalescent (thick-horned) nudibranch on kelp

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

My mom is getting into birds, and while visiting family back east, I talked her into setting up a bluebird house. (Her yard is great habitat.) I was a little worried I’d convinced her to spend time and money fruitlessly…for two days. It took those little blue go-getters TWO DAYS to move in.

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

On the other hand, Seattle, the best daytime low tides of the year are coming up. It starts getting below -3 on June 13th (10am), and peaks at -4.3 on June 15th.

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Corporeal kvetch: My other knee is also on the fritz now, which is a problem because even during production days at home, I’m basically walking in a small circle for 8-12 hours. And I’m limited in the seated work I can do, because my left wrist hurts quite a bit.

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

grace, majesty, i give you…the great egret 🪶

great egret standing in still water, swallowing a fish

closeup of great egret in the middle of tossing a small fish down its throat

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

btw, I’m running a small-group family cyanotype workshop on June 6th! Parents and kids, all ages welcome. We’ll play with shadows, then create cool prints together on watercolor paper and a cotton canvas pencil case. studiopianonobile.com/shop/the-cyanotype-workshop-family-edition-6626

toy rays and starfish, lichens, moss, and beads arranged on a pencil case under UV light

the resulting printed pencil case, an undersea scene in blue

a pencil case printed in blue with silhouettes of swimming sharks

an array of cyanotype prints featuring plants, toy animals, beads, string, feathers, and other cool objects

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

favorite recent black and white photo: a crystal jelly drifting past the sun, beneath the ferry dock

the sun shining through a clear, delicate jellyfish; above it, through the water’s surface, is the ferry dock

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

I like to note when I share photos that look a little surreal: My photographs contain only the details captured when the light hit my camera’s sensor. I will never use the technology that’s currently causing a water crisis (you know the one) to fabricate details my camera didn’t see.

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

tiny jelly adrift in the cosmos 🪼

small jellyfish in dark, sediment-filled water. the jelly is clear with tangerine-colored squiggly ribs running down the inside of its bell.

the same jelly near the surface, reflected in the underside of the water’s surface

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

comb jelly bringing back the age of disco

purple shimmering comb jelly drifting near the water’s surface

shimmering comb jelly looming over a blade of eel grass

comb jelly partially in shadow, so you can see what appears to be vasculature(?) across its translucent membranes

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

I did not know that fried egg jellyfish got this big. At least a foot across. Absolutely magnificent, undulating in the eel grass.

another view of the enormous fried egg jellyfish

fried egg jellyfish, ruffled like a petticoat

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

o danny boy…the pipe(fish), the pipe(fish) are spawning 🐟

several long, thin pipefish on their way to deposit eggs on floating sargassum

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Puget Sound intertidal zone mystery!

something that looks very much like a turtle carapace?

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Immersing my bad knee in frigid Puget Sound for three hours felt amazing; 1000/10, would recommend

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Reposted by Ollie Fern

Get To Know Nature @gettoknownature.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Me too, towhee friend. Hang in there #birds 🌿

Close up photo of a black, white and orange bird in the leaves, head up, beak open, eyes wide as he calls loudly.

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Ollie Fern @whalefern.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

My Creature Portraiture mixed-media photographic series is on display this month at Walnut Street Coffee in Edmonds, WA. I think it looks pretty cool, especially in person. (My secret favorite piece is the festive tritona nudibranch in the silver frame with the ribbon motif.)