A Little Texture

I love trees. I love their majesty. I love their function in the natural world. I love the wide variety that can be found in their bark.

Although, sometimes I have to remind myself to stop and admire the things I enjoy most. 

All the worrying I've been mired in for the past year has helped to prevent me from letting myself enjoy some of those simple things I love. I think I haven't felt worthy of joy. When your world is disintegrating, it's easy to feel like it's warranted. But it's not.... not really. It's just life. And remembering that you are supposed to feel joy as well as pain is sometimes hard.

And that's what brings me to the texture in this tree. Hills & valleys.... AKA: Texture. It's rough, but it can also be beautiful.

Just rambling on a Tuesday afternoon....

Looking Up

As I navigate through my day, I try to remember to force myself to look up... or down. The different perspective usually yields some special little visual gift.

This particular view is from the Atrium in Spirit Square just after one of my Intro to DSLR classes I teach at the Light Factory.

I love it when Utility and Art fall in love and have a baby.

What I Did This Summer...

Sometimes you just hit a creative rut. I think that's what happened to me earlier this summer. I was not really "feeling" creative. I would go through the motions but everything I did left me feeling like a fraud. I hated it all.

Then an opportunity presented itself to me --- I signed up for a graphic design course at Queens University in Charlotte, NC. It presented the chance for me to try my hand at something other than photography.

So every Tuesday evening for the past couple of months had me heading home energized with new thoughts and ideas and methods. I love pictograms and even have some that i created on TheNounProject.com. I got to tinker with Adobe Illustrator. And I discovered a few things about how I look at the world. Some of it surprised me. Some of it confounded me. But it all helped clear my cloudy vision.

Hopefully within the next year I'll be able to weave more of the design principals into my other work... Until then, I'm just waiting to find out what grade I earned.

Blur!

Today's word image is blur... Photographically, it's something that most people try to avoid.

Not me. I love the abstract patterns I get when I purposefully slow down the shutter or spin the camera as I hit the shutter release. Of course that's kind of how I like looking at life...
From a technical aspect, though, sometimes a blurred image tells the story better than a tack sharp image... Sometimes you just can't convey how frenetic a situation is unless you show it to your audience through purposeful motion.

Sometimes life is just moving faster than you are...

Day 20 - Clouds

There are two things about this 30 Day Photo-a-Day Social Media Challenge that I've found to be beneficial: I'm being consistent in posting and it's forcing me to shoot subjects that I wouldn't normally stop to photograph.

I'm not a big cloud chaser. After 13 years and 9 months spent in TV news, I have a hearty disdain for inclement weather. I don't look at clouds an see bunnies or Abe Lincoln's head or flying pigs... I hear the phone ringing and my former boss' voice saying "Cancel your plans! We're going wall to wall today..."

I was not looking forward to today's challenge because of that. But then I just looked up and saw the clouds. I can image Eric Thomas or Al Conklin or Kelly Franson at WBTV explaining them in all their scientific glory. But now I think I see a flying pig in those clouds...

Day 2 - Makes Me Smile

Okay... So I got the title of the project wrong... It's actually the "30 Day Photo a Day Social Media" challenge (which will make it more acceptable for my die-hard photography friends).

Day 2 is something that makes you smile... So here she is in all her quirky, snarky feline glory... See you tomorrow...

Individual Vision

I start new Intro to DSLR classes at the Light Factory this week. It's always exciting. I get to meet new people and share one of my greatest passions with them. Then I get to be there as they, hopefully, discover their own individual creative voices.

Sometimes they just struggle with comprehending what Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO are and how they combine as Exposure... but I usually get to at least see a glimmer of how these other individuals see the world. Sometimes people just want to know how a particular shot was achieved so they can shoot just like that. That's not what I'm usually hoping to pass along to people, but I'll give them the basics to see where they take it.

One of my favorite portfolio reviews was with photographer Brian Ulrich when he had an exhibit here in Charlotte. It was more like a visit than a formal creative critique. He really looked at every image I put in front of him and asked me questions about how, why and where I shot each frame.

Then he asked me why everything was always shot with a shallow depth of field. I had never really thought about it... Maybe it's because I have an astigmatism and the blur just registers as "normal" in my brain. Then he suggested I try shooting my normal subjects with a greater depth of field. I was aghast! Wouldn't that be the way someone else sees the world? Maybe. But I wouldn't know if I didn't at least give it a try.

So later that week I was working on my flower series and I tried it. I ended up liking it.

I still favor a fairly shallow Depth of Field, but I am trying more techniques. If they look like something that would come out of my mind, I keep them in my mental creative files. If not, they get filed in a different area... because the technique might perfectly express someone else's view of the world.

Mind Buzz...

I'm just back from the Maine Media Workshops in Rockport, Maine where I got to take part in Sean Kernan's Creativity & the Photographer II workshop.

I was a little nervous going into this. The workshop focuses on the creative process, not the technical aspects of photography. Sean uses movement and theatre exercises to get the photographer more in tune with the world around him or her. I was worried what it would actually be like...

Thankfully, it was wonderful. I have never known what it is like to be in a truly safe environment for creating art. The group of people melded together in a way I've never experienced in a workshop setting. It was like being a part of a litter of puppies --- ready to explore!

Some really wonderful work was produced... Some was just started.

I'm excited about working on my creative projects in the coming months. I have Sean Kernan and the other "puppies" to thank for that!

To Retouch or Not to Retouch...

... that is my question when I'm doing a self-portrait. Is it more honest to leave all the blemishes when you're exploring who and what you are or is it okay to soften things a little?

Even when you have 20/20 or better vision, don't you really gaze upon others (and yourself) with an emotional filter? Hmmm... that's my conundrum as I work on my latest project.

What do you think?...

Goal Searching

Forgive me... It's been 199 days since my last entry... I've been busy. In the past six and a half months I have:

• tried writing for someone else


• become disillusioned


• received sad news about my family


• dislocated my knee


• and lost faith in my visual voice

So I took stock and I think I am beginning to see the light beyond the water's surface. I'm still a few feet below the surface... There are some scary things floating around. And I'm still not 100% certain if the things I'm clinging to for support are going to help me break through or if they will drag me further down.

But I have to start over somewhere and I think that might be here.

I Survived My First Solo Show!

I survived my first solo gallery opening this past Friday night!

It was touch & go there for a while... I felt quite insane all last week. Not at all like an inspired artist getting ready to tell the world what's on her mind.

I even went as far as to shoot two new images the morning of the opening! (I already had 2 portraits of Venetian masks and I wanted to fill up a tall, slim blank wall... so I shot 2 more of the masks I had at home...)

I was nervous because this was all my work. No one else to fall back on. If people didn't like it, there wasn't anything else in the gallery for them to look at. Plus, 3 people from the Light Factory (one of 4 museums in the country that is devoted solely to the promotion of photography and filmmaking as art) came to the opening... The director even bought one of my prints.

Not too shabby.

The nice thing is now I'm really ready to start shooting new projects. I think the exercise of doing the show without a backup helped me focus. I know more things I want to say with my images...

So the day after the show, I went to my friend Austin's annual Shrimp Boil. I got to see my cousin and her (painter) artist husband who was just back from visiting his father abroad. I told him about my almost meltdown and he just laughed... He told me "I've seen worse situations." He used to own a gallery himself and told me about the artist who had an opening one Friday night and as of that afternoon had not hung a single piece of work. The artist told him that she was not going to have anything to hang, but he talked to her and by that evening, she had the show hung. That did make me feel better.

Note to self: Procrastination bad... Preparation good. And don't listen to the naysayer voice in your own head who keeps trying to talk you out of taking the leap of faith.

Did any of that make sense?

Lensbaby Luv...

It's difficult enough getting pictures of my cat when she's not in the mood to be my model... That's why I'm particularly fond of this image.

I'm still learning to use my LensBaby 3G. I still feel like I'm all thumbs and when I do manage to get a shot of her, it's usually of the back of her head.

But when I look at this image, I realize that I can actually accomplish something that I like. More experiements to come...