Mar 1, 2017 |
“No, I don’t wanna be a clown!” I cried as I ran away from my father to hide, and pout, and resist the red, yellow, and blue garment he was dangling in front of me.
I was 7 and I had just spent the past few minutes being awed by my older cousin in her princess costume. In the brief time I was aware I’d arrived at a costume party, I’d also arrived at false expectations of getting an equally girly costume.
Apparently, though, my dad had known about the party all along. As I made a scene, he’d explained how hard he’d worked on the clown costume. Yup, my dad had sewn together the primary-colored atrocity, and eventually I gave in to wearing it.
I didn’t usually make scenes like that. I swear, my parents will tell you I was a pretty well-behaved kid… that’s probably why everyone felt so bad for me. Everyone complemented my ridiculous attire, but I didn’t believe them. I don’t remember any talk about a contest, but suddenly, there was a tiny golden trophy in my hands. I’d won 1st place for my costume.
I’m not a parent, but I imagine parents do project their own hopes and dreams onto their children-whether intentionally or not, and my dad is definitely the funny guy in the family. However corny his jokes are, they’ve rubbed off on me. Today, I’d much rather make people laugh than put a dress on. You will certainly never mistake me for a princess… but a clown… that’s not outside the realm of possibilities.
In case you’re wondering WTF this has to do with this photo, well, I can’t escape seeing a smile in it… what do you see?
Did you know?
Patrons got to see this 2 days before anyone else, and that’s only the start of Patron perks!
Artsy Reflections started out as the Photo and 100 Words project back in 2014 – find out why I started it and how it evolved.
Feb 22, 2017 |
“I want to be an actress!” I said when I was 12 or 13.
“So you want to be a waitress?” My mom replied, laughed, and explained my future as she saw it, should I pursue such a career.
“I want to be a novelist!” I said when I was 22 or 23.
“Hmph! Don’t we all.” My journalism professor stated with a disapproving look, before she lectured me on starting my senior project.
I never had any hope of becoming an actress nor a journalist… and just like that, the novelist dream bubble burst in front of my eyes. Yet the pieces of those shattered dreams somehow merged to form the abstract sculpture that’s now forming in my life.
I didn’t stop writing, and I’ve become the narrative journalist of my life. The word ‘voice’ is often used when discussing a writer’s work, but a couple of years ago I gave myself an actual voice when I launched my podcast… and I fell in love with a new medium.
Now I’m super excited to announce that I’m recording my 1st fictional audiobook! Never at 12, or even 23, would I have guessed that my first completed book project would be as a narrator. I get to help a writer make their characters come alive, and I’m beyond thrilled to get started doing this kind of work.
The perfect blend of acting and book creating… not exactly the dream bubble I thought up… but certainly a beautiful mosaic I was able to piece together with all my broken pieces.
This photo is called Broken Bubbles… we all have shattered dreams, but I insist you always pick up the broken pieces and take them with you. You never know what you might be able to build with them later on!
Did you know?
Patrons got to see this 2 days before anyone else, and that’s only the start of Patron perks!
Artsy Reflections started out as the Photo and 100 Words project back in 2014 – find out why I started it and how it evolved.
Feb 15, 2017
About Reflections: Every photo is a frozen memory. BUT every memory is also a reflection. AND every reflection is a distortion of the truth based on perspective. This series explores literal and figurative reflections.
In the first behind the scenes post on this series, you probably noticed there were barely any literal reflections. I let myself create anyway, and relied on the written reflection, which has become such an important part of my work, to squeeze the images into this series. Once I got started with literal reflections, though, it was kind of hard to stop!
Turning Art into Art!
An online course in palette knife painting led me to create the colorful abstract painting pictured below. It was only meant as a practice canvas, but I liked the way it turned out and decided to keep it. I thought it would be interesting to see what kinds of reflections I could make with it.
Inspiration in the Bottom of a Glass
The reflection surface was inspired by wine! As I was sipping on my pinot noir one night, I noticed how much I loved the reflection of the bottom of the glass into the dark smooth liquid. I wouldn’t dare waste wine, though! So I used coffee instead.
I played with my wine glass a little, but the reflections were kind of boring with its smooth sides. I rummaged through my cabinets to find an assortment of randomly shaped glasses that my landlords had left behind. Jackpot!
As you can see in the above photo I was trying to light the canvas… and it was just not working for me. I couldn’t light the canvas without throwing unappealing highlights onto the glass and coffee.
The Solution?
I took close up photos of my canvas with my phone and used the backlighted images of my art to create the reflection. Then I only had to use one flash, bouncing off the ceiling, to brighten up the areas surrounding the coffee puddle.
I loved the resulting photos so much that I made a bunch of variations by rotating my phone and zooming in on my favorite parts of the image. Here are my favorite picks!
More Techie Details
The other secret behind this set of photos was that each one of these was actually 5 or 6 images all merged together in a focus stack. Focus stacking is a tedious solution for when you can’t get all your favorite parts of the image in focus. I spent about 2 hours on each of these photos in Photoshop.
The one downfall of using a macro lens (I was using a Nikkor 105mm f/2.8) is that the closer you are to your subject the less you are able to get in focus. In other words, shooting into a deep glass, my lens might be able to make about an inch of depth sharp, but the rest of the detail will be blurry.
So what happens if you have 5 inches of depth and you want it all in focus? First make sure you’ve pushed the limits of your aperture (for the most depth of field use the highest number f-stop). If you still need more distance covered you can focus stack your images to create more sharpness in Photoshop later.
So, for each complete image, I also had to shoot several images that were focused at various points inside the image. I used manual focus, and after each shot I rotated the focus ring slightly to bring my focus point a tad closer in each consecutive shot. That’s the easy part… I will not even begin to tell you how I merged the resulting photos into one completely sharp image, but maybe I’ll make a video about it one day. Leave a comment if you’re interested in seeing this process at work. =)
One More Tip
If you need a larger screen you could use a tablet, laptop, or even a TV to do the same thing. The possibilities are really endless with this setup. I could spend a lifetime simply using different images on my phone and then swapping out the glass with other reflective surfaces… but I bore too easily to stay in that comfort zone.
Part 3 will reveal the shiny objects I used for the next part of the reflection series. Stay tuned!
Feb 8, 2017
I stared at this photo, and I wanted this story to be as deep as the center of the earth is, because surely that’s how far someone could have dug in the length of time I spent staring…
Yet the mantra in my mind was stuck on repeat and it repeated a cliché. I hate clichés. I spend hours rewriting clichés, but I couldn’t rewrite this one. So I wrote a poem about it instead. As if describing a cliché is any better than stating it outright.
It’s an acrostic poem, but it’s also a riddle!
Endlessly transparent,
Yet solid as clay,
Every time the curtains open
Soulful feelings bound to stray.
Every emotion, every word you think…
Every one of ‘em, shot out of each blink.
Can you guess the cliché? Answer below…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Eyes are windows into the soul.
Did you guess right?
Feb 1, 2017
The truck was rolling backwards with my sister and me inside, but no one was at the wheel. We were just about to leave, but mom had forgotten something. She hopped out of the old Dodge Ram to dash back to the house, but when she slammed the door closed, the gray beast was shaken out of park and lurched into reverse.
Gravel crunched below the tires as we began to roll. My sister was trying to get into the driver’s seat, she was climbing over the center console from the passenger seat and I was doing the same from the back. We were both screaming.
We rolled out of the driveway and the gravel sounds silenced as we backed across the road. Mom was running towards us then, we rolled into the neighbor’s yard, and we were both still struggling on the massive center console when we finally smacked into the tree that stopped us.
Mom was already at the door and we were both fine, but for years after that I would have dreams about being in a self-driving car. They were always a little unsettling, I never knew where I was going and I had no control, but I wouldn’t exactly call them nightmares. Now, in retrospect, I might call them premonitions. Wink wink.
Did you know?
Patrons got to see this 2 days before anyone else, and that’s only the start of Patron perks!
Artsy Reflections started out as the Photo and 100 Words project back in 2014 – find out why I started it and how it evolved.
Jan 25, 2017
“Where are you going? You were supposed to make that turn!” Nick said.
“Well I didn’t know, why didn’t you tell me?” I shot back as I slowed down to make a U-turn.
“Really? How many times have we gone this way?” he asked.
“Uh, never. We’re always coming from the opposite direction!”
“Really?”
It was true, we had taken these back roads dozens of times to weave around traffic on the way to work, but this was the 1st time we’d ever driven the route heading home. The turns are on the other side of the road, in reverse order, and the scenery is totally different… very confusing to me. So confusing, I’d missed the very 1st turn.
If a cop ever asks me to recite the alphabet backwards, I’m screwed.
So I suck at navigation, forwards, backwards, all of it. I’m always studying maps before I drive anywhere solo. When I don’t understand the maps, I’ve even used Google street view to give myself a simulated pre-drive… what would I do without Google?
Sometimes I try to plan my life the same way. I Google how to do this or how to do that, trying to find a road that will lead me to my dream life. Unfortunately, there are no maps into the future… but there are maps of the past. In any life map, the paths are only visible after you’ve traveled them. And unlike regular road maps, I can read my life’s map as easily as I can read a Dr. Suess book.
I try not to live in the past anymore than I have to, but sometimes it’s really useful to have a little retrospect. Looking back at my road map in reverse I can clearly see the roads that had dead ends and those that led to bigger, wider streets. I can see the short roads, the long roads, and the roads that led me to places I wanted to be.
There is no final destination, just more roads.
Did you know?
Patrons got to see this 2 days before anyone else, and that’s only the start of Patron perks!
Artsy Reflections started out as the Photo and 100 Words project back in 2014 – find out why I started it and how it evolved.
Jan 18, 2017 |
You know that ditz you see in your home town? The one who’s using “walk mode” on her GPS to get 50 feet from where she parked her car. Well that’s me… only I mute the volume and try to pretend I’m texting.
But sometimes, even my GPS can’t save me.
I was headed to Safe Haven Animal Sanctuary, which wasn’t far from me. I’d reviewed the route on my computer before I left AND I was using phone navigation to get there.
Stopped at the red light, which was my last familiar landmark before heading into unknown territory, I recalled that once I’d turned onto the road in front of me, I’d be looking for the 1st quick left. When I turned, though, Miss Google Maps told me my turn was over a mile ahead and on the right. She sounded so sure, I just listened to her; Miss Google Maps knew what she was talking about.
In my defense I did, vaguely, sense that something was off… but I also questioned my own memory about the left-hand turn. About 6 minutes later I found myself at the very same traffic light I mentioned earlier.
Apparently, Miss Google Maps had lost her connection and rerouted me in a pointless circle.
I don’t know about you, but I’m already a robot when I’m driving. When smart cars take over I’ll be a zombie, totally unaware of what my car is doing and where it’s taking me. I’ll be writing, or reading, or watching Netflix as my car drives me off a cliff.
At the same time, I’m oddly eager for this kind of zombie robot apocalypse to happen in my lifetime.
What about you? One report I heard said Ford plans on releasing fully automated smart cars within 4 years. What do you think about a world full of robot drivers?
Did you know?
Patrons got to see this 2 days before anyone else, and that’s only the start of Patron perks!
Artsy Reflections started out as the Photo and 100 Words project back in 2014 – find out why I started it and how it evolved.
Jan 11, 2017
Nick is my navigator, but sometimes he puts too much faith in me as the driver. Like when we’re going anywhere other than work, I’m rambling away, driving on auto-pilot, making turns leading to Yonkers… I haven’t gotten any better, but he has.
“You know you’re turning here,” he’ll say whenever the blinker’s not on. Most often, no, I didn’t know. Or I did know, subconsciously, but that doesn’t mean I’d have made the turn.
I still slam on my brakes to turn onto our road at the last possible second. Sometimes I still make turns onto other roads by mistake. We’ve been living here for over a year and, yes, I still have problems finding my way home.
After one of these ridiculous instances, Nick said, “If I ever wanted to get rid of you, I could just drop you off somewhere 5 miles away, and you’d never find your way home.”
It’s silly but true, I guess I’m lucky he doesn’t want to get rid of me.
P.S. Doesn’t this photo look like a map? I have a few of these mappy abstracts coming up, and a bunch of silly stories to go with ‘em. Let’s call it a series within a series.
Did you know?
Patrons got to see this 2 days before anyone else, and that’s only the start of Patron perks!
Artsy Reflections started out as the Photo and 100 Words project back in 2014 – find out why I started it and how it evolved.
Jan 4, 2017
Finish the sentence: I suck at ______. What’s the 1st thing that comes to your mind?
Do you wish you didn’t suck at that thing? Have you ever tried to not suck at it? Can you attribute your suckiness to something someone told you?
For me, the things I’m so quick to dismiss as things I can’t do are often the things I wish I could do most of all.
I suck at singing.
I was 5 years old, sitting on the toilet, swinging my legs, and singing like no one was listening.
“You’re not on Broadway, you’re in the bathroom, Becky!
To be honest, I don’t remember exactly what my mother said. All I know is that I was made painfully aware that my singing was heard and not appreciated.
Maybe it wasn’t even an attack on my voice. Maybe someone just had to use the bathroom and I was taking too long… but I thought I sucked at singing for years afterwards.
That’s why I limited my urges to those times when I knew no one could hear me, but I never stopped. I sang in the car, when I was home alone, and every once in awhile, when the music was loud enough, I’d sing among close friends.
A few years ago, I was singing in the car with my friend Dominique. She told me I had a pretty good voice and suddenly 20+ years of doubt melted away. I can’t explain why I needed validation to do something that brought me joy, whether I sucked or not, but I’m grateful my friend helped me see a little bit of my gold.
The gold found in this photo was reflected into a silver lined bottle and wrapped in wire very similar to a chain link fence. (See that vague outline of the wire in the foreground?) Sometimes you can’t cut down the barrier that blocks you from getting to your gold, but you can look through the gaps… and as you focus on the gold, you’ll find that your barriers start to fade away.
Nov 30, 2016 |
Stretched Gold
Thanksgiving was sooo last week… and that’s where many Americans left their gratitude. I’ve always thought it so interesting how a day of gratitude is followed by a day of chaotic consumerism. The start of a season that’s supposed to be about giving has been skewed into a salesy spending frenzy.
Wouldn’t it be funny if I gave you a coupon code right now? Nope, I’m not here to beg for your credit card… even though it is purple Wednesday…
I guess I just wanted to remind you, and myself, not to let gratitude get all fuzzy around the edges. Remind yourself what you’re grateful for every day.
I’m grateful for:
You, my virtual friends
My rock, and partner in life, Nick
My BFF, Lauren
My “boss” John Walsh – follow him on Instagram
My dog… duh!
A warm house with an overflowing drawer of fuzzy socks
What/who are you grateful for right now?
