And I love it!
I've been reluctant to bring anything else in here because I'm enjoying the spareness. The lack of distractions. Every morning I come in, fire up the Mac, look at my "works in progress" file to see if there's any inspiration there, and then begin playing around with photos.
My goal for this winter (when it might be cold and rainy -- but NOT as rainy as the Oregon coast will be) is to methodically go through all my slides, just a few slide sheets every day, and scan those that I think I can work with now, using new techniques, or that have sentimental value. All the rest will be trashed. Finally. I've not looked at my slides in 10 years or so, so this will be quite interesting. Or depressing. Who knows?
These two images are the same. The top one is simply an extract from the bottom one, but I think both work well. And both were submitted to Fine Art America a couple of days ago.
While in Savannah, Georgia in January I photographed a lot of wall textures and then combined some with a photo I took last week in Port Townsend of sidewalk detail. To that I added a photo of the cover of an antique Japanese ledger I got in San Diego, pages from a Japanese dictionary, Japanese calligraphy from a variety of papers I have, and then included a vintage image of an oriole. I "tricked out" the oriole using a paint program before adding it to the mix.
People ask how I make these photomontages, and the previous paragraph pretty much describes the process. I take weird pictures. I rummage around in my files, pick out a few, begin combining them, and let THEM dictate what the next step will be. I never know what will result. It's always a surprise. And that is precisely what I love about what I do: no plan, no routine, no "recipe." It is simply play, intuition, and problem-solving.
If I knew what I was going to make, there'd be no point in making it. For me. Thank God I'm not a plastic surgeon!
©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!
