Jun 12, 2015 |
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My world becomes a blur of yellow and green as I jog past the forsythia flowers blooming alongside the road. Every ounce of my willpower is pushing each foot forward as it pounds against the pavement.
On earlier, chillier days I focused my attention on breathing. Every few strides, I’d inhale deeply through my nose and exhale through my mouth. I’d sort of get into a meditative state, as much as was possible while fighting the constant urge to stop, the rhythmic whoosh of breath and thumping feet lulling me into a state of submission.
Now the sun is starting to cook the earth. When I breathe in I might be filled with the sweet scent of flowers, but more often I get a stinky surprise like burning charcoal, exhaust fumes, or fresh dog shit. I stop using my nose to breathe, and I’m panting like a dog.
I miss the desensitized nose I had when I used to smoke and I wonder how Gracie’s doggie nose can deal with it all.
What are these numbered posts all about? Read the introduction to my Photo & 100 Words project and find out!
Jun 5, 2015
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When that first rain falls, after a winter of silence, the pattering awakens my senses. While snow is sneaky like death, silently killing the world it coats, rain announces it’s presence like a cheering crowd… and then brings the world back to life.
Droplets spread sensations randomly across my skin. I become more aware of my body in a way that’s like I’ve been seeing in black and white and, suddenly, I’m swept into a world of color.
Just like success can’t be be fully appreciated without failure, and friendship can’t be fully felt without first knowing loneliness, spring could never taste so sweet without the bitter taste of winter.
What are these numbered posts all about? Read the introduction to my Photo & 100 Words project and find out!
Jun 2, 2015
About Life’s a Blur: A photography series that experiments with long exposures and motion blur. Every photo is a combination of movement mixed with a still subject. I’d like to think of each photo like a meditation: stillness in a sea of chaos.
These photos are also part of my Photo and 100 Words project. Since January 2014, I’ve been creating a new photo and writing about it every week. If you’re interested in finding out what prompted me to begin you can read the introduction over here.
(If you’re new to this photography series you might want to read how it all began in Part 1)
Is There a Plan B?
When I set out to photograph these flowers my initial ideas weren’t anything like the photos you’ll see below. I had visions of waterfalls and soft streams of water in my head, but the execution was not working. I bought a water filter for a fish tank as a way to recycle the water in my sink, but that’s as far as the good ideas got. I needed a way to spread the water out, and after building a strange-looking contraption made of plexi-glass, hot glue, and plastic straws, and then fiddling with it for far too long, I decided the waterfall idea might best be suited to photographing actual waterfalls.
I had two bouquets of flowers, a sink full of water, very little time, a bombed idea, and no inspiration. I wandered around my apartment, opening drawers of knick-knacks, and scanning my surroundings for other ideas. Eventually I ended up back in the kitchen, staring down into the sink. That’s when I realized I was staring natural water movement right in the face. All I had to do was unplug the drain and the water would swirl!
Love Spell
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Making these photos was a bit like Casting a Spell.
The Setup
There were a few challenges I faced while making this batch of photos. The first was the covering up of the puke yellow drain in the center of my clean white sink. The bottom side of a white plate was an obvious choice, but it took a bit of tweaking to level it out so it didn’t wobble. A mix of folded up wads of paper towels, and a silly-putty-like substance I call blue goo, did the trick… eventually.
After all that, there was no way I was draining anything. Not only would it be wasteful, it would be far too time consuming, and I couldn’t risk clogging my sink with flower petals. My solution was a rubber spatula to carefully swirl the water around each flower. Even after all my attempts to steady the plate, the vase with the flower in it might still rock a bit if I mixed the water too hard. I had to be careful or risk getting blurry flowers along with my blurry background!
A behind the scenes look at the basic setup for these photos.
Ariel Rose
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I get a little weird in this post about Desperation, I mean weirder than usual =).
Adding a Bit of Magic
The first photo I shot was lit very simply. Just a single hot light bounced off the white ceiling shown directly onto the sink scene. I love that first rose shot (Love Spell), don’t get me wrong, but it was just a little on the boring side, and it was time to make things interesting!
I pulled the petals out of the sink and threw in a little bling. I have these little styrofoam balls that are covered in sequins, and they’ve become a go-to background element I’ve used in many of my images. In this case, it was the fact that these babies float in water that attracted me to them in the first place, but the bling was certainly a nice bonus.
As usual, though, the images never really start off how I envision they will. I wasn’t getting any sparkle at first. It just looked like a slightly shimmery, white background – super boring. Even after I added a couple of flashes for some extra pop, it wasn’t turning out quite right. I added colored gels to the flashes and that’s when the magic started to happen. There’s just something about pink and purple that makes me happy, what can I say?
The last problem I dealt with was directing the flashes at the water’s surface without getting the funky color all over the flowers. I made a snoot out of aluminum foil to give the direction of my light more control with as little power loss as possible. It was still a continuous challenge to get the positioning of these lights right when I moved on to a new flower or composition. Sometimes I’d get a hot spot or splotchy color that didn’t spread across the entire frame. It took a lot of experimentation to get things just right, but that’s just an expected part of my process by now.
Glitter Rose
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Meditating in a Tornado was the post I wrote when I figured out exactly what this series had to teach me.
Trading Order for Chaos
Once I started getting consistent results it was time to break out of the rut. I threw everything into the sink. Sparkly balls mixed with petals, petals from various flowers got thrown together, and I started to change up the movements too. Instead of swirling, I plunged the spatula from the surface to the bottom of the sink to create a bobbing motion on the surface. I had to move forcefully enough to create a few seconds of movement, but gently enough to avoid rocking the vase. There were quite a few blurry flowers.
It was during this controlled chaos stage that I think many of the best photos came out. I felt like the big bang and these were my galaxies! Magic.
Rose to the Stars
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Sparkling Sea in My Sink… sometimes you gotta think outside the sink.
Rose Galaxy
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How do you see the world? How do you see yourself? It’s All About Perspective.
Red Roses in a Diamond Glaze
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A story about yours truly, the Control Freak, and how I’m trying to let go.
Dew Splattered Rose
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This photo got posted closest to my 1-year Blogiversary, so I did what all nerds do: I totaled up all kinds of nerdy numbers for the whole year of creating I completed. Woot!
Pink Daisy Cyclone
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I get a little cynical in Down the Drain… it slips out of me sometimes, can’t help it.
Pink Pom Twister
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How I Embraced the Chaos, a story about meditation.
Pink Pom on Fire
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I admit it… I’m a whore… a Passion Whore.
Daisy Tie Dye
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Painting with Motion is a story about a moment that gave me a little boost of artistic confidence.
Fire Flower Flow
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What would you think if I told you that photography is a mixed media? That was the point of Unveiling Photography’s Hidden Layers.
What’s next?
If you get my newsletter, you already know that a batch of super close up snowflake photos came next. Just like the windswept leaf photos I showed you in Part 2, the snowflakes are inserted into a real snow scene that I blurred in the camera. I’ll show you the scenes behind the art in Part 4 in a few weeks! If you sign up below I’ll make sure you don’t miss it! (Plus you’ll get the chance to win my art EVERY MONTH and a digital download of my artsy fartsy calendar… how can you say no to an artsy fartsy calendar?)
Update: Part 4 is now available, so now you can learn how to photograph snowflakes and get a glimpse of the snow scenes I used to create abstract, windswept backgrounds.
May 29, 2015
Three petals seem to reach out from this pink spider mum to touch the blue rain falling down.
It’s 3 am and I force my heavy eyelids open, trying to focus on the words on the screen… where I left off… but it’s like trying to read an eye chart through fog. I glance at the clock and, in a blink, an hour’s gone!
My arm starts to tingle with the dull sensation of renewed blood flow, and the pins and needles strike like a charging mob is trying to break out of me with tiny pitchforks. That’s the real clue that it’s time to give in, I’ve already lost the battle.
This flower seems thirsty, its petals stretched out like fingers reaching for the rain. In the same way, I’d like to believe I’m reaching for my dreams as I struggle to stay awake… doesn’t that seem so poetic? Behind the scenes, though, my body is drooping like a flower without water, and it’s thirsty for sleep, so I finally give in and slip away.
What are these numbered posts all about? Read the introduction to my Photo & 100 Words project and find out!
May 22, 2015 |
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I remember the exact moment when I discovered the creative flower photographer in me.
I had just gotten back from my annual ohmygoditsspringletsgoforawalk tradition with overflowing handfuls of periwinkles. This was also the first time I brought the flowers to the camera, probably to spare Nick from the inevitable lag time of dating a photographer.
I had had my “strobist” lighting kit (recommended by David Hobby) for awhile by then, but I had never experimented with the color effects gels in the kit. Since I was working with white tulle for my background, I decided to try it. I chose a hot pink gel to tint my flash and, when the image popped up, I oooohhhed and aaaahhhed like the audience of a magic show. I couldn’t believe that the photo I was looking at was mine!
I’ve never been a huge fan of green, but it’s only since that day I began to avoid the ubiquitous green background, ever-present in traditional nature photography, altogether. It’s the flowers that intrigue me, not the grass they grow in!
Could you imagine how these cute green flowers would drown in a sea of grass? A purple sky is much more fitting!
What are these numbered posts all about? Read the introduction to my Photo & 100 Words project and find out!
May 15, 2015 |
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It was only a few years ago that my camera spent more time in the corner of my closet than in my hands… but spring always inspired me to dig it out again.
I’d go out for a walk, always intrigued by the first daffodil of the season. The burst of yellow like a beam of hope, cutting through the chilly air, and warming up my mood in an instant.
The resulting photos are just snapshots, though – beautiful to the sentimental me, but ugly to the critic I’ve turned into. So many snapshots with busy green backgrounds and unflattering midday sunlight.
My photos never stood out back then… back then I took photos, but now I make them. I used to go searching for pre-made scenes, but now I only search for the ingredients to cook up my own.
Spring still inspires me, but I no longer let my level of inspiration determine whether or not I will work. After 68 weeks of photos, and a bit of retrospect, I can see that my inspired work is never as good, nor as satisfying, as the work I have to push myself through. Inspiration is for lazy artists.
What are these numbered posts all about? Read the introduction to my Photo & 100 Words project and find out!
May 8, 2015
Two siberian squill flowers on a single stalk against an abstract background of surreal pastel rain.
I’ve wandered, awe-struck, through five springs since I began taking flower art seriously, and every year I’m amazed to find flowers I’ve never seen before.
Initially, I’m hip-hopping all the way to my camera with a handful of freshly plucked specimens. I can’t wait to see them up close, make a beautiful photo, and share it with you.
Before posting it, I eagerly flip through my wildflower field guide. Twenty minutes later, groaning, I head to Google. You’d think it’d be a simple search, but it’s more like solving a crime.
First, I have to find an image of the flower I’m trying to identify without having a clue of it’s name. I search combinations of characteristics until I finally find my flower with an accurate name listed. I always do one more Google search with the name to verify it. You’d be surprised how many people just tag photos with whatever flower name they think sounds good, and sometimes I have to start all over again!
Two hours of research makes me proud to present the Wood Squill, AKA Siberian Squill and Scilla Siberica. Mission accomplished!
P.S. Anyone looking for a very part-time job as a wildflower identifier?
What are these numbered posts all about? Read the introduction to my Photo & 100 Words project and find out!
May 1, 2015 |
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Dreams are like fireworks; the light, the bang… so grand. Then, in seconds, the beauty fizzles out. Nothing but a drifting smoke cloud remains, and soon it’s only a memory.
When I finally see the firework I’m imagining, how quickly will it turn into a puff of smoke drifting into the past? How long will it take for my grand dream about life to turn into everyday monotony? Will it?
When I first dreamt of becoming a photographer, I thought that making a living with a camera was my key to happiness. By the time that dream became a reality, I already had my head in another cloud. My camera isn’t going anywhere – but I’ve become picky about what I want to point it at. So when I blast out of the product photography world as a full-time artist, and the excitement fizzles out… what else will I be chasing?
When my feet are stuck in reality’s mud I gotta keep my head in the clouds. I will dream on, even if I know the euphoria of dreams come true may be as brief as a flash of light in the night sky.
What are these numbered posts all about? Read the introduction to my Photo & 100 Words project and find out!
Apr 17, 2015
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If there’s one problem I find myself running into during this project, it’s presenting seasonal work in a timely manner. We’re now several weeks into Spring and I’m still sending you snowflakes! I’m pretty sure even when I first started sending them, most of you were totally over that magical, winter wonderland euphoria, and ready for the white shit to go away… sorry.
Usually I’m the same way. From the second the temperature starts to drop, so do I. As the daylight hours dwindle more and more, so does my energy, hope, and happiness. I live for spring and summer, long days, and warm sun.
That’s why I saved this photo for last. Even though this is a snowflake and the background came from a snowy scene, it has such a summery feeling. The snowflake reminds me of a sand dollar and the background just screams beach!
Well you know what they say: life’s a beach and then you die… so go out and enjoy the sand! Isn’t that what they say? =P
What are these numbered posts all about? Read the introduction to my Photo & 100 Words project and find out!
Apr 10, 2015
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When I discovered Kenneth G. Libbrecht’s exquisite snowflake photography, I felt I could settle for nothing less in my own.
Then, I read this: “Near-perfect, symmetrical snow crystals are fun to look at, but they are not common.” He wrote. Part of me sighed in discouragement and the other part inhaled a breath of confidence. I would just keep looking until I found perfection.
I almost swept this snowflake off my set and moved on when I saw the crusty edges. Something stopped me, though, something told me to make the image anyway. I could always Photoshop it to beautiful perfection later, I thought.
No two snowflakes are alike, I considered later on in front of my computer, that’s part of their beauty. This tiny ice sculpture formed and it’s the only one of its kind. No one will ever see it again, and I was about to hack it up in Photoshop and mold it into my culturally programmed idea of beauty.
How could I change anything once I realized this? So, in the end, I altered very little but the color.
There’s nothing unique about perfection. Whether it’s beautiful or not… that’s for your eyes to decide.
