No power = opportunity

We have been without power for more than 24 hours, the result of major winds and downed trees. 

When I heard we were expecting 50mph winds, I pooh-poohed it. What weenies! On the Oregon coast that would be nothing! Well, what do I know? Fifty mph winds here have major consequences!

Our yard (and it's a big yard) is strewn with pine tree detritus, branches nine and twelve feet long came plummeting down, branches as big as Christmas trees. They are EVERYwhere.

No power is a good excuse to go out for breakfast, so we joined a number of other power-less folks at Knead and Feed, a clean, well-lighted place this crazy morning. 

Afterwards we decided to explore the island a bit and I think I've found my beach. I had one in Oregon, and now I may have one here, too. Lots of pebbles, driftwood, offshore boats, and this morning, bull kelp.

The lighting was bad, but I saw the potential and took one photo with the cellphone, an abstract shot of kelp. This beach is close by, has lots of jetsam, and a LOT of photo potential. 

I have no electricity right now, no computer, just this phone. But maybe that's a good thing. We went out. We explored. And I think I've found my beach. 

Power should be back around two tomorrow morning. Finally. But if it's cloudy tomorrow, no broken branch patrol for me. I'm off to the beach!

©Carol Leigh

iPhone photo du jour . . .

Photo taken yesterday afternoon from my "Knead & Feed" restaurant window table in Coupeville, Whidbey Island, Washington. Good view. Good food. Then walked a couple of miles on the beach to hopefully work off some of that good food!

I may be getting tired of the "Lone Star" photo effect, but I still find little glimmers of joy using it. It works especially well on already-old subject matter (would love to use it at Bodie Ghost Town in California's eastern Sierra), or to make classic subject matter look old (like the ferry photo I took the other day). A lot of the time, however, it's just annoying! Kind of like me, I guess . . .

©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 . . .

... get down and dirty!

At last, thanks to Chris, I have some space where I can lay out paper(s) and make things. As I unpack boxes, it's like seeing old friends again. All my monoprints. Ooh, the PVA glue! Reams of white paper just waiting for something to happen. I still haven't found my brushes, nor my brayers, X-acto knives, but slowly things are appearing and space is being made.

Walls and doors have to be built/installed. Things need to be painted. More shelves have to go up. But at least, right here and now, I have a big, L-shaped counter to work on, with a LOT of room to spread things out. Ah, the little things that make me happy.

So yesterday I pulled a few papers and glued a few things. And this morning I tried some other techniques and actually got my hands dirty. Shades of Lady MacBeth, I cringe at getting my hands dirty. But this morning, it felt really, really good!

Wishing you a day of dirty hands (and plenty of soap, water, and paper towels at the ready).

 ©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 du jour . . .

Washington State Ferry and a photo of late afternoon light on the front porch. Both were taken using the Camera Plus/Camera Awesome app and then processed with Snapseed.

I particularly like the ferry shot because it just looks old.

I like the porch photo because of all the repeating lines. Look at the vertical lines on the railings, the horizontal lines of the siding, the wooden deck, even on the overhang, and then the strong shadows leading your eye this way and that. This is a scene that I believe I'll be revisiting as the light changes throughout the year.

Yesterday, as we were waiting in line to catch the ferry back home, there were a lot of fishing boats offshore, big nets, lots of activity. We asked the ticket-taker what they were fishing for.

"Not sure. Probably humpies, you know, pinks. It's too early for the silvers." We nodded like yeah, we understood. We didn't. But we thought maybe he was talking about salmon.

A quick check and yes, pink salmon are also known as "humpies" because the males develop a hump on their backs during spawning. But get this, their spawning runs happen only every other year. This from the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife: "In Washington, pink salmon runs only occur in odd-numbered years. Pinks have a very regular life history, living for two years before returning to spawn the next generation. This is why pink runs in Washington only occur every other year; there are no one-year-old or three-year-old fish to establish runs in the other years."

Don't get it? Just nod like you do and then go look it 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!

Latest Work: "Letter C on Wall"

You know what's cool about living here? In about six minutes we can be at the Keystone ferry terminal, can walk aboard, ride about 35 minutes across the passage to Port Townsend, a touristy yet historic town with a nautical vibe that has all sorts of things to shoot. And aside from the short trip to the ferry terminal, no cars are involved.

As we wandered around one day, I found a wall where a poster had been glued and then, later, partially torn off. Perfect. I also found a big "C" painted on another wall. Perfect again.

So this morning I was riffling through my photos, tweaked both the poster photo and the picture of the "C," added a few pieces of torn paper of my own, waved my magic wand, and created this heavily textured and grungy letter "C."

I'm drawn lately to a palette of blue and brown, warm and cold, and like how this photomontage combines my alphabetical predilections, grunge-o-philia, and my color palette du jour.

©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: "Kyoto Doors in Blue"

This is a photomontage I created using my photographs of some doors in Kyoto, Japan, a monoprint I made, and some covers of antique Japanese books. I like the combination of the golden brown and indigo blue colors, a yin/yang sort of thing of warm/cold.

Because the piece is long (wide), I cropped it three different ways so I could offer a series (of sorts) to Fine Art America.

©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 are you working on?

What are you working on? This is a question that's often hard to answer, but it's very important to have an answer. As an artist, if you don't know what you're working on, don't have a project, then you are simply flotsam in a sea of possibilities, going nowhere.

And that's how I've felt lately. I don't know what I'm working on because, at present, I really have no place to work and my supplies are all packed.

I have definite projects I want to be working on, and I'm taking baby steps toward them, but that's not rewarding at the moment.

It all came to a head the other day when I was unpacking boxes without really knowing where things should go. A kindly suggestion from Chris that I should just throw out all my slides was the tipping point. WHAT? Is he inSANE?

No. He's very sane. But he's not an artist. So I called my friend Kathleen Amt. She's an artist. She would understand. And she did. And as we talked I began feeling more energized, revitalized, and at the end of our conversation I had more of a feeling of direction, of knowing some specific steps I could take to get me back on track, steps that didn't require torn papers, glue, paint, and a brayer.

So what am I working on? I have two photo projects, one to be done in the next couple of months, and the other is more of an ongoing project. I have an idea for an assemblage piece and I'm slowly gathering the necessary materials for that.

And then there are some Photoshop things I want to learn, so I shall research one of them. I'll also revisit an online class I never finished, which will sharpen my skills and perhaps take my work in another direction.

And finally there is one thing I can pursue right now, until I find some of my papers and paints, that will at least give me something to do with my hands, so when the studio finally comes to fruition, I can jump right in.

So thank you, Kathleen, for being as weird as I am, for not making fun of my angst, and by, just in the course of a simple conversation, inspiring me to take some control and to see more clearly where I want to go. To know exactly what it is I'm working on.

And the photo at the top of this post? I have a metal sculpture of a red heart that has a crack running down its length. I turned the sculpture over and saw how cool the back looked, so I placed it on top of a glass patio table and used the iPhone to take an abstract shot of "a river running through it." My plan is to photograph it more professionally and then I'm sure it's going to appear a lot in various photomontages.

So my question to you this morning is: what are YOU working on?

©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 . . .

Last December I bought a book called The Art of iPhone Photography by Bob Weil. The other day, nine months later, I decided to read it. I got as far as maybe five pages into it when I saw it mentioned various camera applications.

One of the apps mentioned was "Camera Plus," which I've also seen as "Camera Awesome" and, simply, "Camera!".

And that's as far as I've gotten in the book.

I went to download the app and discovered I'd already downloaded it into my camera, but had never used it.

Are you sensing a pattern here?

So I played around with it, completely ignoring the book. I walked around the house, trying this, trying that. I used it at the local nursery to photograph the leaves of a banana plant (or maybe it was a giant bird of paradise).

The app does a lot, has a lot of different features, but I just worked with one effect, something called "Lone Star." All of these were taken using that effect.

What I'm showing you here are the photos that I particularly liked. There were a lot of dogs. I threw away a photo of a fern, a hydrangea blossom, and a number of out-of-focus gerbera daisies. A pathway leading into the woods from my yard looked horrible with this app.

What I like about the app is the softness, the sepia toning, and the texture.

My definite favorite is the banana leaves up at the top. I like the repeating lines, the various diagonal lines, and how it just looks artsy to me.

Next is a shot of a fishnet float given to me by my late friend Juanita, who actually found it floating past her and her husband's boat north of Seattle. I have it sitting on the windowsill in a bathroom and I like the slight texture of the window screen behind it.

The two ceramic glove molds took on an eerie appearance with this app. They sit on a brick mantel of sorts and I shot slightly up at them.

Then I went over to a wall where I have a "gallery" of eight of my photos, some are photomontages, some not. I zoomed in on a photomontage, taking a photo of a photo, which is a photo of an actual collage, isolating just a section of it. I like how that one turned out, too.

Then, late yesterday afternoon, I went out to the front porch where I have a funky old chair in one corner and where I've placed things I've collected here so far, such as a bird nest, a crow feather, some driftwood sticks, and some dried seed pods from the summer's columbine plants. Nothing's artistically arranged; I just throw the stuff there because I've nowhere else to put it at the moment.

The light was lovely, the chair is a rustic one (another gift from Juanita), and I liked how the composition came together.

Would I make prints of any of these and frame them? Yes, I think I would. Not the chair photo, but some of the others, yeah. Will I think the same in a few months? Maybe the banana leaves.

But this could easily become a "what the hell was I thinking?" sort of situation. (I remember an enhancing filter, the Celestron 1000mm mirror lens, the Vaseline on the UV filter for soft effects trick.) Happens all the time!

And that's the fun of it. This is TOTAL PLAY. No expectations. Lots of surprises. Cool results. I'm a happy photographer right now.

©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: "Bridges and Barriers"

I'm not even going to TRY to describe this one! The colors are pretty cool, though, aren't they?

©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 I saw / What I made

The reason I like photographing fishing nets so much is that I enjoy making order out of chaos. Big overviews don't do it for me, but simply wandering around and looking for details is exciting and, frankly, it's what I'm good at. So being surrounded by color and texture, lines and forms, it's like being at Disneyland.

In the first photo you see an overview of a pile of nets. My "job" is to simplify the view, find something within the whole to frame and present.

What I liked about the big pile of nets was that area in the yellow rectangle (first photo). I liked the slightly diagonal line of one rope holding the bundle of nets together. And I liked how the edge of the netting sort of swoops down there in the bottom right corner. Two big diagonal lines going two directions that enclose the repeating pattern of all the ropes, which also are moving diagonally, just in a softer curve.

I probably could have stood there and made four more photos, but like a kid, I wanted to see MORE, so off I went.

How to see is the hardest thing to teach, so I just thought you'd like to see what I saw and what I did with it. 

©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!

Same shot, different color

This began as a photomontage incorporating a variety of pictures of peeling paint and some paint splattered on concrete, to which I added little circles and other elements. So the "bones" of both photos are the same.

What makes them different is the color of the final layer of texture. One texture was grey and the other purple.

Each color brings out certain things in the background elements and I ended up liking them both.

Two-faced, double-sided Gemini that I am, I'm drawn both to ultra-subdued images as well as brightly colored ones. So the day I created these was a happy little day for me. Or was it . . .

©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!

Creating a series of pictures (3 of 3)

This is the last in my set of three postings regarding creating photos/pictures in a series. This was, for me, a very big sale at Fine Art America.

I took a couple of photos in Orange, California of a tattered piece of paper on a pole. Actually, it was a tattered piece of paper and some partially erased graffiti.

By chopping everything up in the photo and then rearranging it, I created a series of maybe twelve photos that were all different yet had the same "look."

Fine Art America had a wholesale decorator plan going on at the time (don't know if they still offer it) and what I think this sale was all about was for either a hotel or a suite of offices. Because FAA was selling these images at a bulk discount, my take was smaller than it ordinarily would have been, but still. Eight photos in one swoop! The paycheck was quite sizable.

You may look at these images and wonder, what the heck was the buyer thinking? These are nothing, really. And I can understand your thinking. But I think they're very cool.

My point is that if I'd made just one version and stopped, I would not have gotten the sale. I offered a bunch of similar images, and that bunch is what made the images even more salable. And is what paid the mortgage for a couple of months!

How do you apply this to your own work? Simple. Don't stop at one. If you photograph mailboxes, one might be nice, but a series of mailboxes is even nicer, is more interesting, tells more of a story, and, if you market your work, gives your buyer more than one reason to purchase your pictures.

A series of greeting cards all created using the same color palette, or with the same subject matter, is more appealing to a buyer than one card of a butterfly, one of a macro shot of ice, another of a farmhouse, etc.

And thus ends THIS little series. Until I think of another one . . .

©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 . . . A walk around the yard

Late in the afternoon it was very overcast and sprinkling a bit -- a drop here, a drop there. I went out into the yard to see what I could find.

Apparently deer aren't too fond of sage (at least I think that's what this is) because there's a big mound of it nestled against some rocks with nary a bite taken out of it.

And then I liked the pattern on the side of the woodpile. "Use these in the fire pit, Carol, don't bring them inside for the fireplace" warned the former owner. Why? I should have asked. But I'll take his word for it.

And then these are the few hosta leaves and flowers that the deer (and rabbits) haven't eaten (yet). I'm hoping that they'll eventually turn brown, dry up, and curl oh-so-artistically for future photos. (The hosta leaves, not the rabbits and deer.)

Roasted tomato basil soup (made with locally grown and harvested fresh basil) and a salad for dinner. Not bad.

©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!

Shout out to June . . .

It was six years ago today (or yesterday) that I met June, one of my favorite students (at least that's what I told her), who was out on the Oregon coast and stayed with us a few days before moving on. We took her to the fishing boats where Capt. Tom Morrison kindly invited us aboard. Here's a link to my post about that little adventure:

http://carolleighdailyphoto.blogspot.com/2009/08/aboard-fishing-vessel.html

So hello today to you, June!

iPhone photos of the day . . .

Having fun with this . . . Took photos this week of:

Penn Cove on Whidbey Island
Decorative gourd detail
Car taillight

I've got three different photo projects in mind to play with between now and the end of the year, but still haven't unpacked my DSLR equipment, with the exception of a few lenses and two bodies. Haven't found the battery charger for one of the bodies, which is just a momentary speed bump.

This is where being cautious bit me in the butt. I didn't want to label certain boxes "EXPENSIVE CAMERA GEAR. DO NOT DROP!" when we moved because that's just asking for problems, isn't it? But I THOUGHT I would remember which boxes the good stuff was in . . . apparently memory's the first thing to go . . .

©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: "Raven Ahead of Time"

From the Oregon coast, where I had the pleasure of living among crows, I am now on an island off the coast of Washington and all of a sudden Raven has appeared. I love the sound, early morning, early evening, when everything is still and quiet, of loud raven calls. Not frenetic and cacophonous like crows, Raven is more contained, more dignified, says more with fewer words than Crow. And so it was with Raven in mind that I put together this photomontage this morning. Moving ahead of time, yet looking back. And yes, that's a heart in the upper left corner. Other elements include photos taken at a winery in the Napa Valley, a sign taken at the Getty Museum, the hand on a clock, and a row of numbers at the bottom.

©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!

Domestic Goddess ...

I'm having fun with the iPhone. That's about all I can say about it right now. You know how I feel. But . . . it's fun to be doing something, then run to grab the phone, take a snapshot, then keep on doing . . .

The other day I began a quest to go back to simplicity (yeah, right) and so harvested about three cups of blackberries from vines that grow along the front of our property. The berries are in their prime right now and if I don't pick them, a marauding neighbor I've heard about will!

And what did I make? A blackberry skillet cake (sort of like a pineapple upside-down cake, but not as sweet and gooey). It's a Martha Stewart recipe, so you KNOW it had to turn out perfectly!

And it did.

Here's the sequence, showing the berries, how the cake looked right out of the oven, how it looked flipped over and onto a plate, and then ready to be eaten.

What you're NOT seeing is a shot of the scale, showing the extra two pounds gained as a result of eating said cake (warm, with vanilla ice cream!).

And today I went back down to the berry patch, trimmed away about ten feet of ferns and old branches and, in the process, filled my little red bucket with what looks, unsurprisingly, like about three cups of blackberries! Only 40 more feet of trimming to do. I promise I won't show any more pictures.

©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: "Harbor Lights"

This all began with a photograph I took of a bright orange fishing boat reflected in a harbor on the Oregon coast. From there I twisted, turned, completely altered the image and then applied a sort of pastel-ish painterly effect. I love the colors, love the moody feeling, and how the image still has a watery, nautical look despite how I completely destroyed my original photograph!

 ©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: "At the Gate"

These days I'm finding myself combining bits and pieces of old photomontages and making completely new images such as this. Because every aspect of this piece comes from something else, and that "something else" is composed of all sorts of other things, I officially don't know what any of the "building blocks" are nor where they came from any more.

I do know that part of this is torn rice paper onto which I'd printed an old photomontage. There are some vintage Japanese papers (naturally) in there, and the yellow vertical things on the bottom are from a "work in progress" image that never really went anywhere. That's about it!

©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!