Mother's Day may be past but the mother to us all, and in fact all life, gets little mention on that holiday. The Ocean is a universal inspiration not just to man but all living things. I was in Atlantic City visiting my grandmother over the weekend where I swam in the shockingly cold water. It was both invigorating and cleansing. Despite its frigid touch I was hard pressed to leave the water for the comfort of the sand and towel. I feel a deep connection to the ocean and water in general. And though the ocean's surface is a simple blue pattern stretching to the horizon, something about it is undeniably inspiring.

Matt Wisniewski communicates his love of the ocean, and many other aspects of nature, in his series of beautiful photo manipulations and double exposures. Part of the magic of his work is the way he blurs the line between the digital and physical. However due to the precise composition of each piece, I can't imagine how he would manage such meticulous works with one-off double exposures. I love the way he creates a symbiotic relationship between model and landscape, the water becoming part of the figure but the figure also extending the ocean. Lastly, his combination of modeled and found photography leads to truly riveting temporal mash-ups.

The nature of the ocean is undeniably minimalist. The ocean is in fact a force of simplification and minimalism. Place any object in the tides and soon it will be smoothed--even later it will be nothing but sand. Swellca.st reproduces this reduction in web form with a delightful site that combines landscape photography and infographic. The sharp design, clear interface and quick response of the site are a true pleasure, not to mention a very useful tool for beach goers...if you're in Australia.

However not all oceans are resplendent in their green and blue. Some are only mirages where the seemingly endless reveals itself to be a desert. The Salton Sea (not quite an ocean but large nonetheless) was one such false promise. It's life is a truly interesting parable on boom and bust, the death spasms of which left behind a strange setting you may have seen in some music videos. Yet the following short documentary by Ransom Riggs tells the whole story in an incredibly moving way.

The Sketching Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Mondays, containing the artistic musings of Mobile Designer/Developer Ben Chirlin during our Monday morning meeting at the NY Creative Bunker as well as his inspiring artistic finds of the week.