Last Photo of the Year

It's New Year's Eve and I was hanging out in my digital "dark room" as usual, but thinking about what movie to watch a bit later with some vodka concoction...yum, when my friend Eric called to tell me I had to go look at the moon, how beautiful it was with the whatever planet below to the side, and if he had a tripod, he'd photograph it probably surrounded by trees, and would I pleeeeeze go out and shoot it. He's a good friend, and I have a heavy coat, so here is what turned out to be my last photograph of 2008.
I'm glad he called.

Happy New Year. Let's make it wonderful!

Silent Night

For years, I've made it a tradition to create my own holiday cards. Occasionally, however, the muse of good ideas skips out on me and I trawl through the racks of commercial offerings hoping to be drawn to an image I like with a message I also can live with. Or vice versa. Sometimes it comes together, other times, my Virgo nature kicks in and I skip sending out cards all together rather than settle for something less than "perfect." It almost came to that this year. No inspiration was bubbling up, nor were there any cards on the rack that called to me. One was close, until I saw it was drowning in sparkle. Not a love match. So looking at my bulletin board in my studio the other night, I was drawn to a photo I did long ago during a candle ceremony at my meditation center in LA where I then lived. It became my card that year. For this variation, I added words with Photoshop. My procrastination precluded getting them printed in time and I couldn't deal with my printer to make them myself (don't ask) so I had them made up as 4x6 prints at the local Wolf's Camera, and hunted down those cards with the frame to slip in the picture of your kids or dog/cat and send off to all the aunts and uncles. Five stores later, I found some that looked ok. Horray. Done. Out the door into the mailbox....whew.

Then, two nights ago, I fell in love with a scene I'd been looking at for a few weeks as I drove from my drive-way up to the road. A neighbor with a forested front yard had strung colored lights on a scrawny little pine tree. It was endearing, but I didn't find it special enough to bother dragging the camera out into the night. I've also been rather lethargic during these early darkness times; wanting rather to be in the house, much warmer and cozy. But....wow....it was so appealing as I passed it this time, heading home. The night silent and still, the air soaked with a fine mist created a scene embued with a life of it's own........a mysterious space surrounded by large old trees, this ungraceful little tree wrapped and glowing with light.



I shot it as a sequence of frames set at different shutter times, counting up to over a minute on bulb setting to get the darker areas to show some detail in the shadows, then did some short exposures to get the lights not blown out. Later, layering two of the raw digital frames after doing some fiddling with Photoshop, I carefully brushed in the less exposed string of lights from the second layer which I hid behind the main image. It took some time and small brush sizes to get the darker lit tree exposure to blend in realistically with the original level of light surrounding it.

Now I was faced with having an image I wanted to share, but I mailed outthe other one....what's a girl to do?....At 2am this morning, an e-card design was born in Photoshop....today I was able to share my new night photo with all the rest of my friends online. Yaaaay technology.

Happy Holidays to everyone....Let hope ring out in 2009!

NEW STUFF

It’s been a bit of rollercoaster ride between coming down from the election frenzy , the economic slip-slide, and starting out the holiday gear up, beginning with Thanksgiving, in recession 2008 style. For me, this all is layered on top of attempting to keep a clear enough head to continue working on photos; both shooting and working with them.








A family trip down to Miami for Thanksgiving gave opportunities for a few hours of camera glee, aside from the “happy snaps” of the moments along the arc of the 3 days. My brother-in law took me along on his pilgrimage for cigars to Little Havana for a few hours one afternoon, opening the space for wandering around a new neighborhood with my camera in tow.




These are what I came up with to play with when I got back home. A beautiful sunset on Thanksgiving evening bled through the sheer curtains in my mother’s dining room as we offered our gratitude and began downing much too much food. Luckily, everyone in my life is used to my visual obsessiveness, so no one paid any notice to me slipping away to photograph the progression of the day fading into evening.



This past week the Moon, Jupiter and Venus provided as all with the excitement of staring at the sky. A friend sent me a photo taken in Australia, where the moon was below the 2 planets, causing folks to describe the configuration as a “smiley face.” Here someone I know said ours was an “upside down smiley face.” Luckily a poet friend came to my rescue by replacing the cutsy cultural iconisms with his version: “Poetically, this celestial event is heaven's menage a trois for the masses.”

Much better, for sure.

ALL THOSE CLICHES COME TO MIND...

"All That Glitters Isn't Gold," "You Can't Always Get What You Want" (thanks to St. Mick), " Ya Shoulda Seen The Fish That Got Away."

Well, it was like that the other afternoon....
Driving down a street near town a delivery truck turned a corner and suddenly my windshield view was taken up with this huge square shape filled with a beer glass and bottle looking so perfectly scaled and color coordinated with the red, yellow, orange autumn follage surrounding it. And the sky's blue was the perfect complimentary color.... I reached across the seat into my handbag for my ever present camera only to not find it. I continued on searching for it, and my mind, wondering how I left it at home. The image began to taunt me....beginning to glow like a gem just out of reach. Blocks later, I had to turn off onto the freeway, and would lose my opportunity; the image began to be more and more important in the face of having no way to possess it.....We got to the freeway entrance, and omfg, he turned onto it also....and the tree lined expanse became more lush and perfect with the uncluttered road way, not messing up the perfect composition. The Photo Gods were laughing at me now, I thought, they're amused at my frustration. And then came the moment of "aha...the cell phone!!!" I have to say, I never use the camera function and barely know how to work it. So there I am, tailgating this truck at 65 miles an hour, clicking furiously, barely able to see what was on the tiny viewer without my glasses on,
plus not knowing how to save the little suckers....click, click, click. The truck finally got to his exit and away he went, probably grateful to get this crazy woman off his ass...I had no idea what I got, except feeling it was a futile attempt for the crumbs of a glorious cake that got away. When I finally looked at the file in the phone, most didn't get saved for not knowing how to work the damn thing. There were 3 frames of my dashboard only and this one with the truck somewhere out there in the distance, above the dashboard which I cropped out. It sure ain't art.

So the magic of the moment was the only prize of the day; the lesson for me is that's all there really is.

ART OF MANIPULATION

Converted with the antique plate filter

No one sees things exactly the same as another. If you put 10 reasonably creative people with cameras in the same situation I suspect you'll get 10 different photographs. Not only that, but someone else looking at those photographs then interprets what we have seen in their unique way. Pretty cool on one hand, because all we can do is what we do, then put it out there for others to see in it what they will. However, as an artist, we have many options to create a portal or path for an observer to follow into our own special world of visual delights. I find there are times I have a specific intention for a photo, and want to make a particular statement. Sometimes it's more illusive.....an image seems to make it's self intuitively, the outside beckoning me from within; a feeling sparking pure consciousness into being, connecting perfectly into a form in the confines of the camera's window frame. Those are magic times; I think that's what keeps many of us clinging to our cameras as one would a love interest. (that sounds weird, huh?) Anyway, with new technology adding more possibilities to extend our photographic vocabularies and flights of fancy, visual impact becomes more and more available and sometimes overwhelming. If money were no object, I'd probably overdose on lens and software, like a diabetic run amok in a candy store. I should probably be grateful I'm being protected from myself. That said, I found an interesting program that I'm using on a 15 day trial download (thank you photo-god.) It's Silver Efex Pro by NIK Software. It's a filtering program that goes into Photoshop and lets you create very interesting black and white conversions. Since downloading it yesterday, I've been experimenting with how one image can be altered to create an entirely different emotional feel.

This is the original photo of Central Park in NYC

Converted with yellow filter and some contrast fiddling

THE LUXURY OF TIME

Being unememployed is certainly a major inconvenience when it comes to having money, but the one trade off of having my time is priceless. Not having to parcel creative time around committment to being somewhere for so many hours a week, has opened a precious space of unbound availability to wander around inside and out, shooting and working on images way into the quiet of night. Here are some of the results of last week's meanderings.

FULL MOON SHOOT IN OCTOBER

My friend Jean who lives out in the boonies told me how cool his pasture looks when the moon light is spilling everywhere, and I should come out to shoot during some full moon time. So I went this month. On the way out there, I had to stop when I noticed the clouds were swooping so dramatically around in the sky. As usually happens, I couldn't quickly find a road or driveway to pull over into that gave me a full view of the sky and wouldn't get me killed by passing cars. The twilight faded more than I hoped when I finally found a spot, but it still was worth the hassle, I think.

My friend was right about the moonlight on the pasture, and said the view from the barn was good; he and his friends sit up there, have a few beers and watch the moon rise sometimes. (The other side of the barn was set up to watch the sun set, by the way.) Anyway, after noticing the scene in front of me while he got absorbed in the moonlight, I asked him to just stay there and stop breathing when I said,"Now." I'll be damned, his torso is still a little soft focus. I still haven't figured out how to pull this off, but I like how it turned out having a figure in the composition.

While stumbling around the barn with only a small flashlight on the way to the doors, I noticed, well, more like almost fell into, a hand made boat that the owner of the property was storing there....I love when you find stuff you never in your life would think to bring to a shoot. It's that serendipity that the universe loves to toss into the mix and you can decide whether or not to go with it. Of course, sometimes what crosses your path is just something to step over and walk on by, but I loved the idea of a boat coming into the composition to add a bit of mystery.

"A few days after that night, Jean emailed me:

About half an hour after you left, the nightly barred owl chorus began with an intensity befitting the full moon. As if on cue the coyotes (apparently the teenagers from the spring litter)joined in for one of the most delightful and bizarre choruses I've ever had the hair on my neck stand up to."

Home is Where the Art Is

The first night I saw the reflection of the Japanese maple tree down below on the bedroom wall I knew it had to be used in a photo. This night image is the first of now three photographs done here, with a few more in mind. This house I live in now a year and some inspires me so much that a photographer friend informed me he thinks I should move because I enjoy being here too much and hardly ever want to go anywhere. It's also been said by sages that one doesn't have to travel half the way around the world to find one's Self. I've been in both situations...Staying home doesn't cost as much. I do notice though, that as a visual artist, I tend to go into a heightened state of awareness when places aren't familiar. That's why traveling is so seductive, such a high. A shift takes place, newness glows, visual epiphanes abound!!! Click.Click.Clickclickclickclick....So, anyway, I'm staying home a lot getting high behind the lens just looking around where I live, getting especially fixated on the Japanese maple during autumn when every day you think it couldn't possibly get any more red, and then the next day it is pulsatingly red...red red. For some reason this environment keeps me in that altered state (no drugs, I swear) much of the time. I really sound like a bliss bunny, I suppose, but visual stimulation is my obsession. Luckily, it doesn't take much to "click" in, so to speak. Just staying present in the moment as I look around, absorbing the simplicity of the light, the shadows, the reflections play between objects, all the manifestation of this world we live in...what a play! What a joy. I'm so glad cameras were invented. Someday maybe photographers will just implant a flash card into our eye and all we' ll have to do is wink to make an image .... downloading is another story.

Showing at Horace Williams House

Fine Art Photography and Political Involvement

Last week I posted a comic style photograph "Be Afraid." It kept crossing my mind all week, how never before had I spent any creative time and film/pixels making images or combining them to create a political statement. I'm using the term "political" here in the narrow term, as in national and world politics, such as we are immersed in these days with the economy and presidential elections....I tend toward making images that have more to do with my personal life and interests; political involvement is not on my usual radar, in fact I usually avoid cluttering up my mind and emotions by not watching or listening to the news on a daily basis..I know I'll hear about anything going on that's important. For me, the a constant diet of "news" is like watching the weather reports....so what....look out the window...keep an umbrella in the car...most of the time they just make you worry about weather that doesn't even happen...(don't get me started on this...I can rant.)
Anyway, the other night I was testing how to best work with people in long exposure night scenes. The last 3 years I've mostly shot tableaus without people, so it's easy to just open the shutter to "bulb" setting and hope the wind doesn't pick up too much when trees are involved. A photo I did a few weeks ago showed me I need to learn more exposure tricks to keep people sharp. Using the self-timer and myself as the subject, I set up the shot you see above, and did a number of variations to work out other visual issues.
Late into the night, my newly spawned political junkie mind led me into the comic software once again, and I concocted a variation of what is shown above...basically it was the same, but the box with the words was much more about just the crappy condition of the world, and the blue bubble suggesting the meditator with the freaked out mind "go deeper" wasn't in what I thought was the piece before I fell into bed around 3am.
Something didn't feel right...I had the sense from the previous comic that what I put out into the world played right into the same fears that have put us here in the first place....fear begets fear. As an artist, I had my irony going on, but at bottom, (or as the new worn out phrase goes.."at the end of the day..." ) I was using my creative energy in a way that was, to me, not too karmically cool. So as I drifted fitfully off to sleep that night, I thought about how to keep the truth of "ommmm my gawd" that I/we are dealing with, but take it to a higher/deeper level, to
express a way to raise our consciousness out of the morass, bring light into the darkness rather than let it continue to drag us into the abyss. Maybe this photographic comic solution is too "airy-fairy," but so be it...I lived in LA for a long time. Om Shanti Om. Namaste.

Be Afraid

The outside world is too weird at this moment to spend my time talking about photography. As many are doing, we listen/watch the news, rant to our friends, beat our chests or tear our hair. One of my outlets is to work out layers of frustration and existential angst into something I call "Late Night Comix" on a little software program called Comic Lite...

Night Test in Raleigh

While parking the car on a side street in Raleigh a few weeks ago, I saw this old building and knew it would be a great location for a night shoot. I asked my friend Chandler if he wanted to go with me, firstly as a bodyguard, I didn't know the neighborhood, and I get so involved in shooting, I don't pay attention to what's going on around me. Once in LA I almost had my camera stolen that way) and secondly because he's been interested in learning stuff in photography and previously helped me while I shot a Civil War re-enactment at night. As an afterthought, we talked about having him be in the photos, and he came up with the suit and hat. (He's an actor when not a newly sworn-in lawyer.) I asked him if he had an old chair around, and he found a really nice one in the basement of his family house. The intention for this shoot was to practice adding extra light to the long exposures by way of hand held strobes, in this case using an SB-800. Usually I use only available light and occasionally "paint" with a flashlight. For the top 2 photos, I popped the strobe, which was set on TTL, two times, then added a warming gel for the figure, popped one time, then switched to a blue gel, ran around to the side and popped it twice to get the wall. The tree branches got a few pops without a gel. The photo of the figure in the pool of light was just a find.....it was there. I added a strobe pop for the foreground of the leaves and single white crepe myrtle flower. For the portrait, after the strobing, Chandler continued to sit while the camera stayed open for about another 35 or so seconds gathering more ambient night light. (I don't use a stop watch, which is probably stupid. I like to just count heartbeats til I get to around 54 to 72 based on how dark it is. Shooting digitally, I can also see what's averaging after you shoot a test frame to get into the ballpark) The sharpness of the face was compromised, but the alternative choice of shooting him separately lit only by strobe on another frame and merging him into the shot, would have resulted in a slightly unnatural juxtaposition, my photographer friend Scott in DC said when I called him about the problem. I'll probably try it next time, though, just to see what it looks like. Maybe someone has figured out how to successfully get a figure sharp in a very long exposure. Hopefully, someone can explain how to do it....or maybe it's just what happens, and you live with it. On some level, it keeps the photo more honest, since you get to see that the person was moving slightly from breathing! Hmmm, that's a nifty rationalization....or an art critic's way of interpreting.

Shots Magazine - "Dreams"

Shots Magazine, the independent reader-supported black and white photography magazine publishing since 1986, accepted two of my images for their autumn 2008 issue, "Dreams." The Birdcage, shot in color, is one of the images in my series "Lifting the Veil of Night." The second photo, Man with Barbells by the Sea" is one of a toy camera collection of images shot over many years. This one happened probably in the mid-90's sometime while helping a friend do a piece for her portfolio at a small stretch of beach, north of Los Angeles.

Woman with cell phone

While shopping at Trader Joe's today I saw this woman with her red cell phone tucked into her head wrap. It went through my mind whether I should ask her if I might photograph her, or just grab the G9 from my handbag and go for the moment. I went for it with heart racing, thinking she'd be pissed off if she caught me. When I do this sort of kamikaze act, which is more often than asking and ruining the moment at hand, I realize my visual ruthlessness. Shoot first and talk your way out of it if caught. She didn't notice me. Unfortunately, I didn't get a sharp image, since I was a bit too much in a hurry. I find it a really fine line in these situations to balance taking the time to get the best shot undetected with getting it at all.

Downtown Raleigh Twilight

Last Saturday evening I was in Raleigh, roaming around the Glenwood Ave. area with my friend when we heard some rock music wafting from a block or two down past the railroad tracks, so off we went to find the source. The music wasn't much to speak of, but I was taken by the blue lights that were bathing a gated electrical station . Out came the Canon G9, (my best inanimate friend,) and into the zone I went. My portable tripod was in my car which was in the garage at home, so anything nailed down was the next best thing. Poles work too, if you can wedge the camera against it and lean in with your arm....anyway, these were my favorite images; many others were just not sharp. The plan is to return another evening to the scene later at night with the tripod and Nikon 200 when the rock music crowd control paraphernalia is no longer cluttering up much of the area.

Yeah, mission accomplished.....my first photo posting. This is my grandchild Roman, who has just recently discovered his tongue, using it to explore everything within reach.

First foray into blogging

Instead of working on putting together whatever it takes to get headshots and portraits going to make some money, I've gotten sidetracked today with finally starting this blog. The plan is to keep track of the process of what I'm doing as a fine art photographer as well as little forays into whatever is going on in my little teapot. Hopefully, I'll figure out how to add photographs into the postings or why else would I do this.....we'll see how that goes.