Cleats and coils . . .

I'm always impressed with boat owners who take the time to coil their mooring lines. It shows care, pride, and also makes a darned good photograph!

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 for your understanding and kindness.

WHAT-IFFING: Unnatural Colors

In July, I was thinking about complementary colors and began playing around with a picture I have of a green palm frond I photographed in Florida.

Off the top of my head, I don't recall how I turned it into this -- I would have to bring up that file and look at all the layers and see what the sequence was, and since I'm having computer problems at the moment, that's not in the cards.

Even though these are ridiculous colors for a palm frond, I really liked the vibrancy, the combo of purple and yellow, and the overall simplicity of the picture.

It looked good as a full-frame horizontal image, and when I squarified it, it looked good that way, too.

So here they are. Two formats and an example of what just playing around can do for you.

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 for your understanding and kindness.

Latest work: "I Would Go Back There Tomorrow"

Created from my photos of vintage Japanese book covers and pages, India ink calligraphy, and a ledger book cover (daifuku) I gathered in Kyoto, Japan.

The original image was so big that I decided to create three other smaller, square images from it. Since I uploaded this to sell at Fine Art America, it gives me four different options for my buyers. (Trying to be smart about marketing!)

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 for your understanding and kindness.

Recent work: "Canyon Walls"

This picture began as a vertical image and I started with stripes, working from right to left. It was when I placed the far left stripe that I saw a landscape of sorts.

From there it was a no-brainer. Rotate the picture 90 degrees counter-clockwise so that what was originally the far left stripe now becomes my base.

I like the overall warm colors and how the complementary bluish elements at the bottom are just the opposite -- cool colors.

Gotta say, the process often feels simply magical, how everything goes together.

I also cropped the picture down to a square format, to give my buyers on Fine Art America a choice of sorts.

There's an autumnal feel to it, isn't there? Well, the weather around here feels pretty autumnal right now. Happy fall everybody!

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 for your understanding and kindness.

Squarification

I post a lot of my work on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/visualeigh/ and like to keep everything consistent in a square format. So whenever possible, I look at my photos and, if they’ll look just as good in a square format, I’ll crop and save that version as well, for a possible Instagram post.

Here are a couple examples of full-format pictures and their squarified versions.

DRAGONFLIES
I’ll be posting the square version of the dragonfly picture on Instagram, and here’s what the full-frame version looks like. I can’t really say that one is “better” than the other. It all depends on the final use of the photo, really. (Will it be a notecard, will it be for a framed print, for a magazine article illustration?)

That being said, however, I do like the full-frame version. Why? Because dragonflies fly! They need room to fly from and to. So I think the extra space helps with that concept of movement.

I uploaded both versions to Fine Art America, just to give people options. Here they are: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/two-dragonflies-square-carol-leigh.html

OLD FORD
Again, the square version of this picture will go on Instagram, but here’s how it also looks full-frame. The square version is appealing to me more today because it draws my attention right onto the subject. The full-frame version offers more “looking room,” but that slice of emptiness to the left isn’t all that interesting (to me). This one will not be going up on Fine Art America. Why? Looking at it at 100%, I’m not satisfied with the amount of sharpness.

So there you have it. Two photos, two versions each. One more way of looking at your photos — full-frame, or squarified. You be the judge.

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 for your understanding and kindness.