Feb 21, 2014
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I tossed the velvety scarf into the air and, when it landed, I explored its curves with my camera.
After many attempts at molding the fabric into the sexy scene I envisioned, I finally gave up on sculpting and decided to give randomness a try.
The result is a bit more up close and sensual than my initial idea, but I’ll take it because it was given to me! If something’s not working sometimes it’s worth it to stop forcing the issue and just let it all flow.
Now if I could only relax and apply that theory to life, well that would be a miracle!
What are these numbered posts all about? Read the introduction to my Photo & 100 Words project and find out!
Feb 14, 2014
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Today is the only day I get a license to be cheesy, so you’ll just have to deal with it!
I haven’t composed a rhyming poem (not counting the songs I make up in the car) since high school.
To my boyfriend in New York:
Rosas are red,
agua is blue,
I’m all alone in Guatemala
and I’m thinking of you.
The snow’s up to your eyeballs
as I sit here in the sun.
I’m getting my tan on,
but without you it’s no fun.
It’s Valentine’s Day
and we’re so far apart,
but no matter the distance,
you’ll always have my heart.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
What are these numbered posts all about? Read the introduction to my Photo & 100 Words project and find out!
Feb 7, 2014
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Gracie and I were rushing back to the house after her mid-day potty break. More likely, I was rushing to get back to website building, email answering, or social media wrangling… one of those most urgent matters.
As we trotted across the deck that little leaf called out to me like an old woman stretching her wrinkled hand out for spare change. I felt bad for it, being encapsulated and drawn into the icy depths below.
The way I see it: ugliness + sadness = beauty.
It was nice to slow down for a second and just witness nature.
What are these numbered posts all about? Read the introduction to my Photo & 100 Words project and find out!
Feb 1, 2014
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I’m in beautiful Guatemala where Christmas never ends and the decorations are still prominent in homes and businesses alike.
This photo was taken back in November, when the first Christmas songs were being drilled into my head. I went to a Sear’s and one of the clerks told me they started playing them before Halloween!
Halloween and Thanksgiving are my favorite holidays and it makes me sooooooo angry that there is no space for their celebration. It makes me a total scrooge.
This photo is a result of the media and stores jamming Christmas down my throat for two months every year.
What are these numbered posts all about? Read the introduction to my Photo & 100 Words project and find out!
Jan 30, 2014 |
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I believe a photo is worth a bazillion words, but these days most of us can only afford the time for about 100. I blame it on inflation and our shortened attention spans.
It’s sad to say but if the paragraph is too dense, or the page scrolls for too long, we just won’t read it. Unless it’s an email from your lover abroad, then maybe.
All throughout school I unconsciously learned to stretch out the word count. If I had a 500 word essay to write and, after I got my ideas out I was 200 words short, what did I do? I added things that weren’t really necessary. Don’t tell me you’ve never done it!
I’ll never forget the story my journalism professor told me about a man who landed a job with two words: “I’m concise.” That was his entire cover letter to a newspaper.
These ideas have inspired me to begin a new project! For the next six years I’m committing to 1 post per week. Every Friday I’ll send you a photo with around 100 words. My goal is to keep creating my art on a regular basis and learn to write short. My own little “just do it” boot camp.
You, my friends, are the most critical part of this project. You see, I’m really bad at meeting personal deadlines. If I don’t have anyone to answer to I won’t push myself as hard.
I’ve been creating photographic art for quite a while now, but it’s always been third to the product photography and pet photography that eats most of my time. I’ve decided I want to put my art first for awhile and I hope you will enjoy taking the journey with me.
Update 1/5/17
What I originally dubbed the “Photo and 100 Words” project has evolved into “Artsy Reflections.”
The 100 word limit was great practice in conciseness and how I made a weekly blog post an achievable goal… but somewhere in the first 100 blog posts I changed the rules to 100-and-something words, and then I finally realized that most posts were never less than 197 words!
I briefly toyed with the idea of moving on to a “Photo and 200 Words” project, but that idea quickly fizzled out when I realized that would limit how little I could write. So a new title, with limitless possibilities, was born!
Don’t worry, I’ll continue slashing the wordiness out of my stories, but I’ll save tons of time NOT obsessively checking the word count tool!
New Artsy Reflections come out every week! My Patrons get a sneak peek of new art 2 days before anyone else, and my Insiders are the 1st to know when new work goes public. Patrons and Insiders also get all kinds of other perks nobody else gets 😉
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Oct 26, 2013 |
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Looking at this photo you might think I’ve just come back from a relaxing retreat in the middle of the woods. Must have been such a serene experience, you might imagine, sitting nearby a beautiful waterfall and just waiting for the camera to finish its 30 second exposure.
It’s believable… right?
Although now I see this image and I can feel the peace I was trying to portray, this was in no way an easy, breezy photoshoot.
I was struggling to find the right angle for this shot. I wanted the swirling pool AND the waterfall to work together compositionally. I probably tried three different spots, and fired off dozens of photos at each. Nothing looked right.
It was while crossing the stream at the pool’s base that I realized where my camera had to be. Naturally it was in the middle of the stream where I found the best angle.
Now imagine me balancing on two slippery rocks, my tripod balancing on three, and you’ll have a clearer picture of how this photo came about.
It was all worth it though, because now I can lounge around, look at it, feel the tranquility, hear the raging, yet soft, white noise of the water, and have some deep reflections.
Oct 13, 2013 |
Photography and writing have always seemed to be in a battle to the death for my attention. A camera on my left shoulder and a pen in my right hand.
Even though they seem like perfectly compatible obsessions to have, you might be surprised to find out that’s just never been the case for me. It was always one or the other, never both.
I used to write poetry all the time. My poems went from mushy, gushy, inexperienced love to deep, dark depression. Back then being content never fostered enough emotional charge for poem writing.
Didn’t matter though, there was never an apathetic second in my life. Every moment was so dramatic because every experience was brand new. Every feeling so grandoise. Everything was always so all or nothing to me.
I’m going to be a writer! No! A photographer! Yeah, a photographer… ugh my photography sucks!! I’m going to be a writer… ugh my writing sucks even more.!!! (Well that’s the long story short – which I’m sure you appreciate ;-D)
I’m just realizing now that it wasn’t my photography and my writing that sucked… it was the photography and writing they told me I had to do if I wanted to make a living out of it. What royally sucked was being told to write about school politics and photograph bitchy women in white dresses. So I gave up.
Like a bad addiction though, they always crept back up on me, I just so happy that now they are playing nicely together.
Making this calendar was the first time I’ve ever put my two obsessions together. It was fun, it flowed, and I didn’t even realize what I was doing while I was doing it. I can have both? I can!
Not only can I do both, but I don’t need the desperate emotion to write something meaningful. The mundane can be interesting under the right lens, I just need to make someone look through it.
So I’ve been thinking about starting a weekly post featuring a photo and a poem. What do you think? Would you be interested in subscribing to this?
If you haven’t already, download my fine art calendar for 2014. It’s free!
Sep 21, 2013
I don’t have children, so with my lack of that experience can I safely say that looking at this is like watching the birth of my child? Or maybe the birth of my parrot (birds are NOT cute newborns) would make more sense in this scenario.
Anyway, thought you might be interested to see how I started out in this business. I was so eager to do everything even when I knew nothing. We all start somewhere; I’m not ashamed… I’m actually kind of proud of how far I’ve come =)
Aug 31, 2013
For those of you who don’t know me very well, I hate weddings. I know what you’re thinking: Who in their right mind could hate weddings? Well the answer is me, I do, but no comment on whether or not I’m in my right mind.
Well I’m in that period in my life when everyone and their mother is getting married, so I’m at least beginning to develop a numbness to all the poofy, showy, expensive nonsense of it all. But I’m not here to complain about weddings am I? No, today I’m going to be grateful for a wedding I went to.
Nearly two years ago my boyfriend’s best friend got married. We were sitting at our table, just after dinner when the DJ announced a game for everyone. If I remember correctly it was like hot potato only with a dollar bill. The dollar circled around the table and if it was in your hand when the music stopped you were kicked out of the game.
Well I won, then the DJ said with a big cocky grin, “Now pick up that centerpiece and give it to the person who originally supplied the dollar!” Well, the dollar was originally supplied by my ever generous boyfriend so I won twice! HaHa, joke’s on you Mr. DJ.
The centerpiece was a floral arrangement in a square glass vase with a big beautiful Gerbera daisy. So I took it home, pressed the flower, forgot about it, and recently discovered it again. Well thank you wedding for giving me an art opportunity, and thank you boyfriend for being such a winner!
This is the simple equation for those of you who are just a little curious, but if you’re a fellow Photoshop nerd scroll down below the photos for more details.
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When I first compiled these two images I thought I would come here to write a tutorial on how to give any image this opal like iridescence. I was oh so wrong though. Try as I did, I couldn’t get this effect with any other photo or photo combination.
In my Photoshop document I had two layers, with the flower image being on top of the candleholder.
I changed the opacity of the flower layer to 65% and changed the blending mode to color dodge.
Then I adjusted the hue to +11 and the saturation to +25.
The only thing I did to the candleholder layer was change the brightness to -23 and contrast to +100.
Then I merged the image together and silhouetted around the edge of the candleholder with the pen tool in order to get rid of the grey background.
That’s all there was to it, a bit of playing around, and a bit of luck!
