Positive Feedback . . .

Fine Art America posts random reviews from their buyers and I take a look at them regularly -- to see what products are consistently good, what buyers might be complaining about, and to see if any of my pictures that people bought made them happy.

This is one that made me VERY happy! Apparently my picture, taken from a ship in Alaska's Inside Passage, was one of four that she purchased recently from FAA. I'm pleased that my photo, done in black and white, was a part of the mix.

She took a picture of the four photos in place on her wall, which was also wonderful to see. When someone buys my art on FAA, I rarely know who it was nor how they liked the image. Loved seeing that this person liked it enough to put it on her wall.

 

Experimenting: Color or Black and White? Full-frame or Square Format?

Original photo, full-frame.

Last month we took the ferry to Port Townsend. It felt weird not getting out of the car and not being on deck during the ride, but it still felt good just to be out, you know?


I took a couple of photos of buildings at the boat yard. Why? I found the way they intersected stark and interesting. 

[Currently I'm having trouble with Blogger putting photographs where I want them to be. The other three photos are at the bottom of this post. Grrrrr.]

Back home, I began a bit of post-processing and wondered how they'd look in black and white. If what I liked about the scene was its starkness and simplicity, maybe the color is too much. And the shapes are so strong, perhaps black and white would emphasize those shapes.

And then, I turned each one into a square. Why? To simplify the composition and to emphasize the shapes and how they overlap even more.

Although I love color, I found it distracting. And square versus full-frame? The wide horizontal look emphasizes movement as your eye follows one building over to another. The square format is rather static because your eye hits the picture and then just stays there, but to me it makes the subject matter seem more important.

My final decision? The simplified square B&W version, followed closely by the B&W full-frame format.

But most of all, it felt good getting outside, going somewhere different, and using my digital SLR camera rather than resorting to the iPhone. Ahhhhh . . .

All images copyright ©2020 Carol Leigh

Square version of original photo.

Full-frame, black and white.

Square, black and white.

 

Recent Work: "Time Out"

When I go back and see the art I've made, there are some pieces in particular that I'm especially fond of, and this is one.

I made it in March of this year, as the pandemic was gaining traction. We didn't know what to expect, we were isolating ourselves, and time stood still, became meaningless.

So this mixed-media picture began with a big circle, a circle which is a photograph of a watch face. With no hands. There are some watch face bezels, hand-painted papers, and metal tags in the mix as well.

The colors are both bold and strong, bright and subtle. The vertical elements within the frame contrast wonderfully with the big circle. 

I made a square version as well as a full-frame vertical, and it looks good both ways. Because I sell my work online at Fine Art America/Pixels, this gives my buyers flexibility -- flexibility in format and in price. Sometimes a square works better in a certain location than does a vertical picture. 

Click here to see this picture in high resolution at Fine Art America. And, as always, thank you for looking at my work.

Images copyright ©2020 Carol Leigh

 

Around the yard . . .

It's been a particularly good year for seeing pileated woodpeckers (actually, perhaps in part because we installed a suet feeder on the back deck -- duh!) and they are still around! (I took this photo the first week of August.)

The birds are pretty big, with a wingspan of slightly less than 3 feet. But they're relatively small when compared with a raven (4.9 feet) or a bald eagle (7.5 feet).

The juveniles (like the one on the left) wait impatiently to be fed and, while waiting, pound their beaks (bills?) on the wooden railing, chipping off chunks (giant splinters) on the back side. 

Nature. Gotta love it.

Image ©Carol Leigh, 2020