Tote bags now available . . . Woo hoo!

Fine Art America just began offering my photos as tote bags, and here are two I found that look particularly good. Bold, bright, and colorful.

They offer three sizes for you: 13" square, 16" square, and 18" square. Prices are $28, $32, and $36.

Here's a link to each one:

http://fineartamerica.com/products/2-counting-circles-carol-leigh-tote-bag-18-18.html

http://fineartamerica.com/products/counting-circles-carol-leigh-tote-bag-18-18.html

These would make terrific gifts, and the 13" square tote is particularly cost-effective at $28

I've ordered two for myself (not these two -- two more subdued ones) and I have a feeling I'm going to get more. They are just too cool.

©Carol Leigh

Five years ago this month . . .

Continuing on with my year-by-year May retrospective . . .

FIVE YEARS AGO THIS MONTH

I was photographing waxed paper.

I was finding agates and shells on the beach.

And making strange but cool photomontages such as this.

Six years ago this month . . .

Just because I could, I looked back over my blog, seeing what I was photographing this time of year, going back to 2009.

SIX YEARS AGO IN 2009 . . .

We traveled down to Gold Beach to celebrate our birthdays.

Abby was her typical lovable self.

And I seemed obsessed with time.

Looking a gift horse in the mouth . . .

I received a birthday present earlier this week. I just didn’t know it at the time.

Chris and I were driving north along the Oregon coast, running some errands. A small BMW behind us was driving fast, passing everyone in front of him, desperate to gain an additional 27 feet of the road.

“Typical Beemer driver,” I thought. “Self-absorbed, arrogant, and impatient.” He zoomed past us, speeding up the road.

We hit Newport, made a right, and Chris said, “That BMW is in the vet’s parking lot.”

All of a sudden my preconception of “a jerk at the wheel” changed. He probably had an injured and beloved pet in that car, and was desperately trying to get to the veterinarian for help.

I am often quick to judge. And to judge negatively. My birthday present this week was a lesson in compassion. Sure, most of the stupid drivers out there are simply jerks. But maybe, just maybe, that person may have a valid reason for the rush, the hurry, the seeming self-absorption. Maybe there’s an injured pet in that car, or a sick child.

My birthday present was to remember to think twice, think compassionately, and just shut up.

©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!

iPhone photos of the day . . .

Since I don't have much time left here on the Oregon coast, and since I haven't taken photos in like forever, I spent an hour at my favorite fishing net location and used my iPhone for a few of the shots. I also used my Canon 50D, and it will be interesting for me to compare the phone images to the DSLR shots. That's not going to happen today, however.

But . . . The first photo here was taken using the Hipstamatic app and the second one was taken just using the cellphone default camera. I like the wider-angle of Hipstamatic as well as how dark the pavement went versus the iPhone 6+ regular camera photo.

When I looked closely, the quality of both the unprocessed photos is not good. I looked at the specs of each one.

Hipstamatic: 268k in size, 640 x 640 px, 8.9" x 8.9" 72ppi

Regular cellphone camera, square format: 3.28MB in size, 2448 x 2448 px, 34" x 34" 72ppi

Hipstamatic capture was just 268k! That's NOTHING. The regular cellphone capture was 3.28MB, which is still really small, but significantly larger than Hipstamatic.

Neither image looks really good at 100%. For me, with the ultra-limited knowledge I have right now, this makes the iPhone 6+ a very expensive toy camera. I can't use these photos for anything but showing them here in a small size. To use in photomontages, to create art for sale, no way will this work for me.

I do like the ability to shoot from different angles, however. I was walking around using a 70-200mm L lens on a Canon 50D and could not move in really close to my subject. But for the two photos of rust, all I had to do was lean over the big piece of metal and shoot straight down. That was pretty cool. (Both of these photos were processed when I got home in Photoshop.)

What's my point? I don't know . . . It just felt good to be out shooting. It was fun playing with the cellphone camera. And I'm looking forward to seeing what the "real" camera gives me. I'm disappointed in the quality of the cellphone, though, and just need to read and learn and practice with it so that I don't feel so apologetic about my resulting photos. It's a blow to both my pride and my ego, don't you know!

And now back to packing . . .

©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!

Abstracts anywhere . . .

During an early-morning walk along the bayfront, I spotted all these bright orange chairs stacked up in front of a restaurant. I wish I'd taken a "before" photo to show you what I saw, but the chairs stacked beautifully and I spotted this little composition.

What do I like about this shot? Let me count the ways:

1. Outrageous color. Reddish-orange is an eye-catcher.

2. Repeating patterns. One curve is terrific; more curves make more of a statement. One bright chrome line is good, four make us pay more attention.

3. Movement. I like how the four chrome elements lead our eye up along a diagonal line. I like how the curving elements on the left (not unlike a cockatoo's crest) branch away from the "core" chrome lines and encourage our eye to swing upward and away. And I like how the horizontal repeating elements lead our eye off to the right and somewhat down. There's a lot of movement going on in this simple composition.

4. Contrast. Your eye probably noticed the color first and then went immediately to the four chrome elements. Why? Because they're the lightest/brightest things in the photo. And then there's the contrast between severe, straight lines and the softer curving elements in the orange sections.

If I were to prep this photo again, I might crop in from the left so that tiny bit of chrome there in the lower left didn't show. I find my eye going back there again and again, so it's a distraction, not a compositional element. My photo is all about color, line, simplicity, and movement. That little bit of chrome showing through doesn't add to my concepts of color, line, simplicity, and movement. It should go, don't 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!

Here's a little tip . . .

We are in the process of selling our current home and packing to move to our new home on Whidbey Island. I'd say we are about halfway packed; the house is being shown and drawers, closets, and rooms are emptying out.

I've been working on packing up my art studio and photo studio (lots of jars being recycled, lots of props being sold at garage sales, given away, or recycled/trashed) and I have now come to my lateral files, file drawers containing all my 35mm slides. Almost 20 feet of hanging Pendaflex folders holding countless slide sheets, 20 slides per sheet.

I knew we would eventually be moving from the Oregon coast. So why have I not been going through those slides over the past year or so, a little bit at a time, culling out images that are either awful, unusable, or unnecessary? I KNOW BETTER THAN THIS!

Chris suggests I just throw them all out. Easy for him to say! I did throw away all my tear sheets, all the articles I had published in magazines, newspaper articles about me and my photography, samples of greeting cards, plaques, and school notebook covers that featured my photos. I was able to toss that stuff out with impunity. It serves no purpose now and actually prevents me from moving forward.

But my slides? Hmmmm . . . nope, ain't gonna happen. I don't have time to go through them now, so I'm loading all those Pendaflex folders into boxes, to be looked at once we move into the new house and I can examine them at my leisure.

I am going to pay movers to schlep those little 35mm "treasures" up to Whidbey Island and will probably end up throwing away maybe 75% of them! Aaaarrrrgggghhhh! I am such an idiot sometimes!

So this is my tip to you, my fellow photographers: If you shot slides up until maybe 2003 when you converted over to digital cameras, schedule a few hours a week to look back at all those pictures. Edit out the bad ones (and be ruthless when you do) and get rid of all the crap. Got some that maybe can be salvaged in Photoshop? Keep 'em for awhile, but remember that Photoshop rarely improves a really bad photo. When in doubt, throw it out. Next year you'll never even remember having those images.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have still have 6.04 feet of hanging file folders to pack . . .

P.S. I used to lead photowalks in downtown Los Angeles. We would meet early on a Sunday morning in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art and venture out from there. The most rewarding comment I ever received from one of the photographers was, "I work in that building over there and I never knew all this stuff was here!" The coolest sculpture that MOCA had outside their building was something called "Knife Ship," a huge Swiss Army knife with blades that moved up and down, and silver paddles on each side of the red body of the knife. I fell in love with the corkscrew part, as you can see above. Taken probably using Fuji Sensia or Fuji Velvia film. And a Canon A1 camera. And a 24-70mm lens, my all-time favorite lens for that camera.

©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!

Abstracts anywhere . . .

Bundled sails, Martha's Vineyard. For me, it's all about the lines -- lots of horizontal ones and then the two bold diagonal ones. ©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: "Pearly Hearts"

Although I love bright colors, a lot of what I create is relatively subdued. But every once in awhile I just start creating and something like this happens.

I used a monoprint I'd made for the background and then cut out hearts from another monoprint. So each heart is different. A few scribbles, a few dots, and I'm done!

And now we are off to Whidbey to see how the interior of the house looks now that the painters are done. Our Oregon house goes on the market this week. Fingers crossed for a quick sale.

©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!

Three glimpses of Kyoto

Every once in awhile I go back to the photos I took in Kyoto and pick out one to work on. Although I loved the trip, the experience, I am disappointed with my photos, so I tend to tiptoe around them, cautiously open a file, see what's there, select one, then quickly close the file again so I can't see what a mess I made of things.

I'm exaggerating a bit, but the core of what I said is true. My photos are noisy, taken in haste, and often do not stand up to close inspection. And that's okay. I did what I could at the time and loved every minute of it.

I was experimenting with using shallow depth of field (f/1.8) on the trees, and in this first photo felt that the color was too much, but I liked the shapes of the leaves. So I converted the image to black and white to remove color and to emphasize leaf shape.

A rustic screen made of reeds covers a window in the second photo. I like the monochromatic look, the stark composition, the repeating forms of the reeds, and the textures.

And finally I offer you a photo of a temple, beautifully carved and painted and gilded. I found Kyoto to be an exciting mix of heavily detailed and refined architecture contrasted with sparer, simpler, and more rustic elements. 

And I will go back again. At a slower pace. A more contemplative pace. And along a more solitary path.

©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: "Year of the Ram"

Another fictional postcard I made this morning using photos of a rubber stamp, a real stamp, stickers (thank you Kathleen A.), vintage pages, Japanese postal rubber stamps, Japanese hanko, and more.

©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!

One or one hundred . . .

The simplicity of one can be just as appealing (to me) as the wackiness of 100 . . .

Here's a photo of a single bike in front of a wall in Cambridge, England and then a shot of at least 100 bikes waiting to be rented on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

This ends my week o' bikes. And I end it with a quote from Albert Einstein: "Life is like riding a bicycle — in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving."

©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!

Old technology . . .

As I’m going through all my office stuff, preparing for a garage sale (citywide) this Saturday, and consolidating things prior to our upcoming move, I’m encountering all my backup stuff. As one who has been writing and publishing, doing desktop publishing, making maps and processing photos since forever, I have boxes and boxes (and boxes) of 3.5” floppy disks. I also have boxes and boxes of Zip drives (remember them?). I am no longer in the publishing/map-making/newsletter business, so I no longer need this material, but oh, the waste.

All these disks contain plastic, but they also contain other material which isn’t recyclable. It’s all going into the trash. And I’m feeling guilty. I’m also feeling a bit sad that this information, all the documents, all the maps, etc. is no longer useful to anyone. It was a good run while it lasted, but it’s over now and yet I still feel twinges of what used to be.

All my paper files are gone. Two huge filing cabinets of research material were emptied and now contain rolls of Japanese papers, decorative papers, etc. for upcoming projects. That’s exciting. New art to be created. But in the here and now, there’s so much to be gotten rid of, dating back to the early 1980s (tear sheets from the various publications my work appeared in, newspaper articles about me, notes and handouts for all the workshops and classes I conducted, articles I’ve written, correspondence from stock photo agencies. Anyone remember PhotoNetwork?!

All my 35mm slides? They’re going with me. And gradually I will go through them, keeping ones that I think I can still use today, but 90% will probably go into the trash. Once again.

My next task? Packing up at least four older computers. Computers that still work, but I need to strip out the data, salvage what I think I still might need, and then dispose of them, too, one by one. Wish I had done that slowly over the years, but, similar to the unbirthday party in Alice in Wonderland (“Move down! Move down!”), they get put in storage as new ones take their place(s). At least I no longer have my old Kaypro machines!

Technology has changed. Information-gathering has changed. Publication prep has changed. And I have changed. For the better? I hope so. But it’s still sad in a way. Soon it will all be behind me, but today I’m a little down.

So what’s the solution to all this? I don’t think there is one. I’ve got Rubbermaid tubs of backup CDs and DVDs. I’ve got Rubbermaid tubs of backup external drives. We all read the dire warnings that CDs/DVDs go bad over time. And external drives? Same thing there. It’s quite insane when one thinks about it. So I try not to.

But John Lennon’s words are constantly in my head:

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round,
I really love to watch them roll,
No longer riding on the merry-go-round,
I just had to let it go.

Those of you who are still happily riding on the merry-go-round, how do you handle all this on a daily basis? Are you behind in your backing up? Do you back up your backed-up files? Enquiring minds want to know!

©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!

Civility . . .

They are ever so polite in England. A simple "please" often works wonders.

©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!

Cyclists in Spring Revisited

Remember yesterday's bike photo? If not, it's here at the bottom. Well, I got to thinking . . .

Could I create a photomontage that's composed sort of the same way? So I used photographs of an old oil painting (for the canvas texture), vintage Japanese papers, hand-stained paper (that I stained with coffee and tea), a hand-painted piece of paper (the blue and black bits of the "sidewalk"), and a couple of circles I'd cut out of manila paper and then painted.

So do you see it? The two cyclists, the painted sidewalk lines in the street, the patch of grass, the bit of sidewalk?

And you thought I had nothing more to do these days than pack! Ha!

©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!

Cyclists in spring . . .

A lovely spring morning in Portland, Oregon. Looking down from our hotel room a number of years ago I was watching lives going by and ended up really liking this shot. I like the pair of cyclists, the strong parallel lines running diagonally, which contrast nicely with the  curving arrow coming down from the top of the frame.

Ah, spring. And May is just about (to me) the loveliest month of the year to be here.

©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!

Complementary colors . . .

Bike against a college campus wall in Cambridge, England. Naturally, it was the red box and the green grass that caught my eye first, dramatic spots of color in an otherwise monochromatic scene.

©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!

National Bike Month continues . . .

In celebration of National Bike Month, I'm posting bicycle-related pictures every day this week.

This is a sign I found in Cambridge, England a few years ago . . . Apparently there are a few anti-cyclists here and there.

©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!

Sow's Ear/Silk Purse

It's sort of drummed into us photographers that if you begin with a bad photo, no amount of tweaking and altering will make it a good photo. And yeah, that's usually the case. But every once in awhile the angels sing and you can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

(To produce something refined, admirable, or valuable from something which is unrefined, unpleasant, or of little or no value.)

Chris and I were wandering around Silverton, Oregon and I saw a bicycle in front of a store. You can see what I saw in the second photo below. And yes, it's a ho-hum picture. The lighting was rather dull. The background was fussy. And you can even see my light-colored pants and dark sweater reflected in the glass just over the handlebars.

Normally I would automatically delete such a photo. But then I wondered just what could I do with it? I basically liked the bike.

I created this a number of years ago and don't remember everything I did, but I know I added some contrast, added some texture, added more content on the far left and right sides of the picture (the picture was wonky, so I rotated it, cropped it, and you see the white background/empty space on either side in the original photo). I also darkened the edges, added some shading, and then added an arrow in the upper right.

Why did I add the arrow? Because I purposely placed the bike more to the left side of the frame than the right to give it "moving room," room to coast into the frame. To emphasize that left-right movement, what better than to put an arrow in the shot? It's subtle, it blends in, and it's appropriate.

You can still see me reflected in the glass, but if I hadn't told you the reflection was there, you probably wouldn't have noticed it, and you wouldn't have recognized it as a person standing there.

Bottom line? Yes. I began with a boring photograph. But with a bit of tweakage and Photoshop legerdemain, I managed to transform it into a picture that has richness and depth. And it's one that I printed, framed, and have as part of a grouping on my living room wall. And it looks good!

©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!

May is National Bike Month

It's National Bike Month! Ride in style!

©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!