The importance of keeping track of your ideas

I keep a slew of journals, putting into them miscellaneous bits and pieces of my life. They're not in chronological order, more of a random "I'm tired of this journal's paper, the size, the texture, so I'll paste something into THIS journal instead." They're all different sizes, have different bindings, and every once in awhile I go back and take a look at some of the things I did, thought about, collected, etc.

This is a page from maybe seven years ago. Or two. I don't know. And that's all that's on the page -- the ticket and three words.

As I approach the beginning of a new year, I usually try to begin a new journal. And it'll probably last until March sometime, when I tire of the format and will pick up an older journal and begin adding to that, until . . . well, you know . . .

One thing that's been constant over the past few years is a big black Moleskine notebook (pronounced "mole-ess-KEEN-ah" -- people who say "MOLE-skin" drive me nuts, but I digress). I refer to it as my IDEA BOOK. In it I keep my photo ideas, drawings of potential collage/montage compositions, color combinations I particularly like, quotations, my FAA sales, etc. It is my most precious thing. (Well, other than Chris and maybe the cat . . .)

Let me show you a quick example of some of my journals. And yeah, I purposely blurred the photo because, well, you don't really want to know that I accidentally ate Cheetos one day but that I liked the orange colors combined with blue!

(Took this photo using the iPhone 6+ and used a "Brushstroke" app to blur it . . . Listen to me . . . I'm officially an annoying iphoneographer now.)

What's my point? It's that as much as I dislike all the blog posts that I'm seeing about what people did this past year, what they didn't do, what they will do next year, and all the attendant angst, you can't help but think about where you are, what you're doing, where you're going, and how you would really live your life if you were perfect.

My Moleskine idea book is my guide for the upcoming year (if not my artistic life). My goal is not only to continue adding ideas to it, but to re-read older ideas and (gasp!) actually act on some of them.  Here's one: "CEMETERY ART -- faces, sculptures, headstones, names, etc." This idea has been scuttling around in my brain for years. I keep forgetting to act on it. Well? Maybe this is the year. And if not, then maybe next year. . .

Keeping one journal for art ideas, quotations, successes, future projects, etc. means that when you have an idea, you immediately put it in your notebook, so that when you feel empty, uninspired, adrift, you simply open your idea book and wham! It's all there in your face. So yes, I will always have regular journals and little notebooks scattered all over the place, but the IDEA BOOK? That is constant.

Again, what's my point? My point is that I wish you all, for the year 2015, a plethora of creative ideas, and a big ol' notebook to house them so you don't forget them, no matter how bizarre they may seem. And I'll leave you with this little notation I made on page 25 in my idea book: "IDEA: what can you do with shuttlecocks?"

Ha! Happy New Year!

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

What's it made of?

I get lots of questions regarding my photomontages, especially regarding the components I use to make them. So let me show you an example.

Here's a photomontage (called "San Francisco 1952") I made this morning and uploaded to Fine Art America. Will it ever sell? I doubt it. It's just too weird. And perhaps too plain. Not interesting enough. But I like it, so what the heck. Maybe there's someone out there as weird as I who will just love it. (I also uploaded a square version of this same image, in case someone wants it made into a throw pillow. Yeah, I know . . . weird.)

So what photographs did I take to make this AWESOME piece of work?

First, I saw this shipping container up in Newport. I was drawn to the peeling paint and the red, black, and white graphics. So I zoomed in closer.

See how the paint is peeling upward? See the big letter "I?" See the vertical red bits? See the scratches? Love those things. And so click, there's my photo.

And then I have, in my collection at home, lots of envelopes, stamps, cancellation marks, etc. I liked how clear the San Francisco cancellation was on the envelope, liked the old-fashioned plane, liked the red, white, blue trim on the right. It's all so retro, so 1950s, that it has character. I decided to incorporate this bit in the montage.

But what else do I have in my stash? I felt I needed something in the lower left to create a sort of diagonal flow in the photomontage, so I selected a picture I took of "No. 4955." I don't remember if it was on an envelope I had, but it was in a section of photos of other envelope "bits," so I think it was. I included it in the mix.

And then, so you don't have to scroll back up again, here's the final piece once again. (To see how important I thought it was to have "No. 4955" there in the lower left, block it out with your finger. See how empty that side of the photo looks without it?)

Do I plan these things ahead of time? Not at all. If I knew what I was going to make, there'd be no point in making it.

So I began with the close-up of the peeling paint. Played with it, felt it looked spare and simple and plain and had a retro modern-art vibe, so I riffled through my photos of stamps and envelopes until I found something appropriate and included it.

Then, feeling I needed some other compositional element, something "stampish," I found the "No. 4955" picture in my files and stuck it on.

It's like making a physical collage. Only my hands don't get dirty. And I can easily change my mind. Two concepts which are ridiculously important to me.

There you have it. So. What have YOU made today? Hmmmm?

©Carol Leigh

All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Latest work: "Silver Bracelet"

As I'm creating my photomontages, I am trying to be smarter, trying to create various versions of the same thing so that if someone is interested in one of the images, they might also be tempted to purchase a few more and use them in a grouping.

It's more difficult than you might think. But why?

I think it's because when I create a photomontage, it's sort of like walking along an unknown path. Things come up that I didn't expect, the path twists and turns, and finally something cool (I hope) emerges.

To create a second version of the image, yet make it somewhat different, requires a different mindset. There are more constraints. But mostly, there's less adventure. It's a sort of "been there, done that" feeling. It's just not as fun. There aren't the same little surprises along the way. It's more mechanical rather than experimental.

And that's why I don't set up an assembly line of tricks and techniques. That might be the smarter marketing way to go. And I'm probably foolish to not travel that route.

So I continue making these things, seeing what happens, and if I can make one or two more along the same lines, then great. But darned if I'm going to push it and perhaps lose my sense of adventure and my zest for creativity.

Here you see three versions of the same concept. I made the top image first, and it was fun to do. Lots of problems came up that I had to solve, and the final result pleases me. But then how can I make another one that's compatible with the first? Well, as you can see, I added a vertical element. And then in the third image, I simply removed the horizontal element. Borrrrrrinnnnnggg! I do not want to make ANY more of these! I want to make something new now.

So there you have it. A little slice of insight into my thought process. And a huge slice of insight into why I'm not raking in millions of dollars with my work!

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Latest work: "Winter Solstice"

I knew I wanted to create something for this year's winter solstice, but (as usual) I had no plan. So I just began bringing photos together to see what I could find, and maybe something would show up to sort of lead me along. The winter solstice makes me want to be quiet, to reflect, to wind down, to rest, so I used warm brown and ochre colors, scratched metal, an owl from a U.S. postage stamp, some photos of my own painting attempts, and snuck in an Egyptian hieroglyphic or two. I put pale blue around the edges to make the warmer colors really stand out. Hope you like it! (Click to enlarge.) ©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Latest work: "Indigo Crossing"

A simple placemat caught my eye as we sat down to lunch in a restaurant outside of Kyoto. I liked its texture and the softly worn colors. So I took bits from another placemat and added them to the original, creating a feeling of a bamboo forest and/or chopsticks, both totally appropriate.

I'm thinking that it might also make a pretty pillow . . .

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

It's a good day to . . .

. . . reminisce.

I'm working very slowly through my Kyoto photographs. The trip itself was life-changing. My photographs? I'm not thrilled. But that's okay. Because I keep going back to the term "life-changing." Or maybe it should be "perspective-changing."

Our culture, compared to the little I saw in Kyoto, is so loud, brash, overbearing.

An example: I was checking in at Asiana Airlines in Osaka to return home. It's a foreign airport. I was traveling alone. I was hoping that I would end up in the right spot. At the head of the line was a "greeter" of sorts. He spoke English and I said I was a little nervous. He said "don't be nervous" and he disappeared for a moment, only to come back and say, "I found you a new best friend! This woman is going to Seattle, too!" I looked and saw an obviously American woman named Nancy and so we chit-chatted a bit, went through all the procedures, spent a bit of time in the waiting area, and all was well.

Sure, I could have done this fine all by myself. But the fact that there was someone who cared, who saw another American and put the two of us together so we might not feel so alone, was a gift.

It was this sense of caring, of recognition, of helpfulness that impressed me during my trip to Japan. Everywhere I went, everyone I interacted with, was kind and gentle. I return to the United States and it's as though a switch has been clicked on. Or off. Waiting in line at customs and an airport official striding back and forth ordering "No cellphones! No cellphones!" with a determined and stern look on his face.

Or watching an elderly Chinese couple trying to go through security and the agent being sarcastic, demanding, and patronizing to these foreigners who obviously didn't speak English and weren't exactly frequent flyers. (It's tough enough as an experienced American citizen to go smoothly through security.)

This is an extreme thing to say, but these officials, these "welcome to America" employees, came across as Nazis. "Stand in line. Take off your belt. No, don't put your watch there (sigh), put it in the bowl. No! In the bowl! (eye-roll)." It was embarrassing.

The Japanese emphasis on small bits, an appreciation for simple things, for a prettily wrapped gift, the way a dish is placed in front of you and then turned so that you see its best side. Small wonders. And even a slight, oh-so-slight forward bow when passing me on the street (and my delight in slightly bowing in return) was a gift. I obviously stood out as decidedly not-Japanese. Trudy, a fellow photographer on this trip, commented on this recognition, describing it as an "I see you, you see me" sort of thing. And that phrase will remain with me the rest of my life.

We can learn a lot from this culture, a culture that welcomed me as an obvious foreigner and did everything it could to make me feel I was not an imposition.

I realize that I was there for just a short time, that I didn't see everything, that maybe there's a lot of rudeness and impatience and officiousness that I wasn't aware of. And I know that there is a lot of compassion and helpfulness and kindness here in the United States. I know I'm generalizing.

But to return home, walk through the veil, and be assaulted by anger, sarcasm, and rudeness was so jarring, so like a slap in the face, that I can't help but compare.

So yes, my pictures from this trip do not represent my best work. But the interactions I had with everyone I met, what I learned about respect, what I learned about appreciation, about sitting up straight (!), far outshine my disappointing pictures. My photographs, even if they had been spectacular, aren't nearly as important as what I learned those ten life-changing days in Kyoto. 

So yes, indeed, it's a good day to reminisce . . .

©Carol Leigh

All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Sold the first two weeks of December . . .

The first two weeks of December went well, especially since Fine Art America introduced a line of home decor throw pillows. Can't tell you how cool it is to see your photos as throw pillows. There are some at FAA who are saying that FAA should be all about wall art, but I'm liking the home decor concept and we shall see where that goes. The cellphone cases? Not so sure how I feel about those, frankly.

Quick note: I've got an iPhone 6Plus, which is thinner and wider than other phones I've had. It's slick, smooth, and slippery, which makes holding it (and not dropping it) very tricky. So I ordered a cellphone case featuring one of my photographs from FAA. Well, it looks good, but the case is rigid, slick, smooth, and slippery. I ended up taking it off and buying a neoprene/rubber/flexible case instead from Amazon for $8. Not as cool, but much easier to hold onto.

 Of the prints sold by FAA, the canvas-wrap format seems to be the most popular. But the red door photo sold as a nicely framed and matted picture. The basket photo at the bottom of this post was sold as a metal print, which should look good.

My picture of the cat dozing on a bed sold three times ... once as a cellphone case and then twice as pillows. (And for those of you who have asked, nope, that's not Abby! This was a cat in a La Conner, Washington gift shop. This was a nice cat!)

Getting back to the pillows, I'm pleased to see this addition to FAA and I'm pleased to see people so enthusiastic about them. ©Carol Leigh

All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Latest works . . .

For the past few months I've been experimenting making monoprints -- laying paint down on a gel plate, putting a piece of paper over it, smoothing it out, then pulling the paper up. It's fun, and the cool thing is that I can then use the paper in physical collages or I can shoot the paper and use it in photomontages as you see here.

I made all of these specifically to offer as throw pillows on Fine Art America. I think using your own art and seeing it as a home decor/designer element is more than cool. And apparently lots of others think so, too, because they're selling well. Each image I have on FAA (over 1200 now) can be made into a throw pillow. (I've spent way too much time simply clicking on my pictures, then clicking the throw-pillow option just to see how they look! Some don't work at all, but mostly they do, and some even look better as pillows!)

To show you what I mean, here's a picture and then an image of how it looks as a pillow. Fun stuff! ©Carol Leigh

Latest work: "Enso Circle"

I have a huge Japanese ledger book with a tattered, faded cover. I photographed the book cover, which forms the faded calligraphy in the middle of this piece. And then I added photos of my own brushwork, a monoprint I'd made, random marks, and more. I like the faded blue "enso" circle and how that same blue is echoed in the calligraphy. The warm glow, the cooler blues, the texture -- all combine well for an interesting abstract image. ©Carol Leigh

All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Latest work: "Beginning of Winter"

Photos of forsythia leaves in my backyard are incorporated into a monoprint I made in studio. The skeleton-like leaves with their soft brown counterparts look good against the sky-blue and blue-grey background colors and to me depict the changing of the seasons. Once again. ©Carol Leigh

All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

A quasi-infrared look using Topaz Adjust 5

Here’s a photograph of a tree that I took In Japan. We’ll call this one TREE 1. I like the strong form of the tree as well as the lovely colors in the leaves. But then I wondered, what if I were to create a black and white version of this photo? Why? To play down the bright colors and emphasize the shape of the tree. Don’t let color get in the way of the basic forms.

I realize there are a lot of ways to create this look, lots of different applications, programs, effects, etc. If you have your own way of creating a look like this, yours may be even better. But this is what I have, and this is what I used.

TREE 1, OPTION 1 (High Key)
I created a duplicate layer of the tree and then brought it into Topaz Adjust 5. I selected a High Key effect, which lightened and brightened everything, but there was still a bit of color left. So I used a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer in Photoshop and desaturated the photograph until it looked black and white.

The effect was too cold and bright for my taste. How could I warm it up?

I brought the photograph again into Topaz Adjust 5 and went to the Toning effects. I opted for Black Rose. This effect warms up the scene, creates a bit more contrast, and I was pleased with the look.

TREE 1, OPTION 2 (Bleach Bypass)
Topaz has another effect called Bleach Bypass. And it offers Bleach Bypass Cold and Bleach Bypass Warm. What if I used the Bleach Bypass effect rather than the High Key effect? Would it make a difference?

So I tried it, using the same steps as above, i.e. making a duplicate layer, bringing the photo into Topaz Adjust 5, opting for Bleach Bypass Warm in this case. Then I used Photoshop’s Hue/Adjustment layer to desaturate the image some more. I brought the photo back into Topaz Adjust 5 and selected the Black Rose toning effect to warm things up.

I wondered how these same treatments would look on a different tree. So here’s a pretty straightforward shot of another tree. We’ll call this one (cleverly enough) TREE 2. (It's the isolated tree, in color, just below. Formatting in this blog can be weird, so bear with me.)

 
TREE 2, OPTION 1 (High Key)
I tried these same two approaches on a different tree. I duplicated the layer, brought it into Topaz Adjust 5, used the High Key effect, desaturated the image in Photoshop, then applied the Black Rose toning mode in Topaz Adjust 5. (The first B&W tree below shows you this effect.)

TREE 2, OPTION 2 (Bleach Bypass)
Instead of using Topaz Adjust 5’s High Key effect, I opted for Bleach Bypass Warm. Desaturated the image, then applied the Black Rose toning effect to warm things up. (The second B&W tree below shows you this effect.)


Which effect pleases me more? The Bleach Bypass effect seems harsh, stark, and crunchy whereas the High Key effect looks dreamier and softer and, to me, much more appealing. It has that soft infrared look that I’ve always been drawn to.

As I said, this is not THE way to create an effect such as this. But with the tools at my disposal and with a bit of experimentation, it’s what I came up with this morning. Tomorrow I may try something completely different, but today, here’s what I did, how I did it, and here are the results for you. What do you think?

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Great blue heron

I was walking along the docks in Newport, Oregon and photographed this great blue heron all hunkered down, standing in the shallows. I liked the rather high-key, minimalistic look, and so I exaggerated the effect in the computer, creating a simple, almost Japanese feel to the scene. I like this soft, painterly look.

©Carol Leigh
 All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Signs of life

Some signs are obvious, even when written in Japanese. For instance, "please take off your shoes." That's pretty clear.

And "Merry Christmas," in this primarily Shinto/Buddhist country, really grabs your attention (and I love the hat on the snowman). But the florist apparently had a lot of autumn items still around, creating a jarring effect. Nothing says "Christmas" quite like a big orange pumpkin!

And finally, the sign in the third photo (click to enlarge), clearly means keep your dog on a leash and don't leave dog poop on the ground. But when I initially glanced at it, my first thoughts were "don't poke dogs with a stick" and "watch out for radioactive doo-doo!"

Yup. The clueless and easily amused American visits Japan . . .

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Squarification . . .

As I begin looking through and processing my images from Japan, I'm looking at them wondering how they would look squarified. Why? Because sometimes turning an image into a square changes the entire feel of a scene.

In these first two examples, you see my original photo and then the cropped, square version. In the first, I get a feeling of how immense and dense the foliage is in the Imperial Palace Gardens, making the group of tourists look rather small and insignificant.

By turning the photo into a square, I've now played down the immensity of the gardens and have made the tourists and their umbrellas a more important element in the frame.

#1 = big gardens, little people. #2 = people in a park.

Which one is better? Neither, really. It all depends on the feeling we wish to convey.

In the second pair of photos, you can see my original scene, the way I saw the trees in the park. I focused on the leaves and let everything else fall away softly. Because the tree trunks are so bold, they stand out nicely even though they're out of focus. The overall feeling, though, is trees in a park.

In the second, cropped version, the feeling is different, isn't it? Now it's more about the leaves, with the tree trunks a bit more secondary.

#1 = trees in a park. #2 = colorful leaves on trees in a park. The emphasis decidedly changes.

Am I recommending we all begin squarifying our photos? Of course not. I'm just suggesting we begin looking at our photos in a slightly different manner, noticing how the impact of a photograph, the meaning in a photograph, changes with the format.

So the next time you look at your pictures, just for the heck of it, try cropping them into square versions and see how the emphasis, the entire feeling of a photograph, can change in the blink of an eye.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Sold the second two weeks of November . . .

The last two weeks of November were good ones, with a variety of photos sold, ranging from images as large as three feet on a side to notecards to a cell phone case. The TWA picture sold twice, once as a print and then again as a package of notecards. The "Silent Night" tree sold, too, as a notecard package.

I'm always happy to see my "Raven and Cat" picture sell because it's one of my favorites. The tall, skinny tryptich of images I made in Santa Fe also sold, which pleased me a lot because (a) it's different and (b) I particularly like it. And then the "Baja Landscape" image also sold, three feet by three feet in size, which is great because although I love it, I've been wondering why it's not sold before now.

I share this info with you all not necessarily to brag, but to show that you never know what's going to sell, nor why.  I must say, however, that I'm incredibly pleased at how well my work is doing. The fact that people will actually spend money to have my images as a part of their lives is enormously satisfying and quite flattering. I am so thankful. ©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!