Blog post #2,001: The Power of Play

I took a nothing shot of an adobe wall and turned it into this (first photo). Here’s the process I used.

As you can see, the original picture (second photo) is nothing wonderful, just something I thought I might be able to use some day. It's brown, has no contrast, and is blah.

In Camera Raw I selected “Auto.” We see more detail, lights and darks now come into play, and the color turned quite golden. (Third photo.)

I did a “Threshold” layer adjustment, added it as a layer. (Fourth photo.)

I ran through the blending modes until this happened. (Fifth photo.)

Obviously everything is all wonky, so I rotated and cropped the image to get this. (Last photo.)

I think it turned out kind of cool, especially considering what it began its life as — just a nothing shot of texture. Now I’m seeing some sort of island view, as though I’m on one island, looking across the water at another. And maybe there’s some volcanic activity going on.

I’m not going to offer it for sale on Fine Art America because I’m just not sure about it. What I AM sure about, however, is the value of wondering “what if.” What if I choose THIS picture and then do THIS and then do THAT, and oh, it looks like something else, use THAT, and hey! This isn’t bad!

The value of play, with no preconceived final result, is that wonderful and unexpected things may result. Maybe not for sale, this time, but it’s a tool I can try again some other time, with a different picture, but with this same concept.

You just never know, do you?
 Wishing you a very playful day!

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.

44%

This is day #27 of my daily “3” project, which feels like it’s been dragging on for six months! But you know what’s good? Of the 27 pictures posted so far, 12 of them are either brand-new images or re-worked older images. Forty-four percent. (Thank you, C2, for making me more aware of percentages!)

Any project, no matter how tedious, that encourages you to make something new, to see something in a different way, to learn new skills, is never a waste of time.

Which brings us to this, um, gem? This morning I was in the studio looking through an art magazine. I took out my cellphone and, using an effect called “Slow Shutter,” took a photo of an image in the magazine. I don’t even remember what the image originally looked like, but I include the picture here so you can see what “Slow Shutter” came up with. It’s dull, flat, out of focus, and sort of boring.

But I wondered if there was anything I could do to pump it up and incorporate a number “3.” I brought the cellphone shot into Photoshop. I made a large “3” and then colored it red. I copied it, did something else to it, then copied it again, did something else. So now I have three vibrant “3’s.” On top of an out-of-focus pale background. Still boring.

I went to Topaz Simplify 4 and used one of their sketch effects and came up with this. Ta da! At least it’s not dull and boring. It’s colorful, strange, fun, and I will probably never ever do anything with this picture. But… But…

All I did was play and ask myself, “what if?” What if I took a cellphone shot of this magazine picture. What if I moved the phone while I did so? What if I used the resulting image as a background for my daily “3” project? What if I made it bright and colorful?

And even though I probably won’t do anything more with this picture, it’s the process that’s important. It’s the concept of play, of having no expectations, of just trying things.

Unlike some mad scientist, I didn’t set anything on fire. Nothing exploded. No pixels were harmed in the making of this photo.

I figure any day you have fun, make something colorful, and don’t explode in the process, that’s a very good day.

©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!

Just playing . . .

Trying to find my way at the moment. I've not been photographing anything particularly wonderful. The studio is not finished at all, so I'm a bit limited there.

But things have to be made, work needs to be done, and so I'm playing around with my photos, trying this, trying that, with no expectations.

Yesterday I revisited photos I'd taken in the fall in Half Moon Bay. Could I muck about with them and perhaps come up with something different?

I found a photo of a bright pink cosmos and began with that. What if I add a texture to it? What If I remove a lot of detail from the flower, desaturate the image, then add an effect from Topaz? The flower's stem disappeared somewhere in the middle of all this and so I had to make one.

I kind of like this photo. Could I apply this series of steps to a different flower and get a different yet similar effect?

So I tried the same thing with the sunflower shot. I'm not so pleased with this one. But why?

I like the fluffy etherealness of the cosmos image, the soft gauzy look emanating away from the center. The sunflower doesn't have that same soft "feminine" feel to it. It's just too tough of a flower for this treatment.

Do you see what I've done? I have turned on the computer, felt completely uninspired, yet stuck with it, simply playing. Just playing. And in the process I discovered a certain "look" that is different from anything else I've created. And now I have a path, a road, an idea . . . something I can pursue with a bit more discipline, aiming toward a goal of sorts.

And if it doesn't work out? I've at least learned something. Tried something. Played with something. Experimented with something. You can make art or you can make excuses. I'm hoping this will be art.

©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!

Preparing to be wrong . . .

A friend of mine is interested in creating things, in art, but he rarely sticks with one area or genre. He'll try something and if it doesn't quickly come out "perfect," he loses heart and moves on to something else. And then something else. And then something else. And then bemoans the fact that he doesn't seem talented at anything.

He admits it's a fear of failure that's holding him back. And he's not alone. So many of us travel that same road.

There's something I wrote in my journal a couple of months ago that struck me as being pithy (oh, what is life without a little pith?):

"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original." -- Sir Ken Robinson in a talk about how education kills creativity

To illustrate (I hope) what I'm talking about, let me show you something I did to a photo I took of the juvenile barred owl that showed up the other morning. The last photo I took of him is the second image in this post. I was shooting at ISO 3200 and the photo is very grainy. I was shooting handheld at f/4, but the shutter speed was a slow 1/20 second and so my photo is blurry. Not usable at all.

But what I liked about the photo was how the owl was perched on a thin branch, his shape is well-defined, and he's looking right back at me. To me it's classic "owl" and some might even consider it a bit spooky.

I didn't delete the picture because I thought maybe it had potential.

The shot was grainy and soft. What if I were to emphasize those "flaws" rather than try to hide them? So I used a drawing program in Topaz to blur out the details a bit, to remove the color, and to create texture rather than try to smooth out the grain.

But for me that wasn't enough. I tried using a variety of textures in the picture to add even more "tooth" and to make the image look a bit spookier. The first six or so textures I tried didn't work for me. But then something did, and so I used it, flipped it, used it again, and the top photo is the result.

Is it wonderful? Good enough to sell, maybe? Nah, I don't think so. But I think it's still rather cool, something different, not perfect, but not so bad, either. I like how there's sort of a wintry feel to the picture, how the owl stands out (created by my cropping the image down to a square), and how there's no question he's watching me.

What's my point? If I'm looking for perfection, if I'm afraid of failure, I should have thrown away my original blurry/grainy picture and moved on. But because I felt there might be something more to the image, I decided to play with it. Not create something perfect. But play. Take delight in the process rather than being rigidly attached to the outcome.

Because no matter how much I want my work to be perfect, my joy comes from the experimenting, the playing, and I learn something each and every time. I learn what works, what doesn't, what might work even better with a different picture. Nothing goes to waste. And I am having fun.

Perfectionism, I believe, is highly overrated. It can be boring, stifling, and restricting. And if the first time you sat down to make a basket or paint a watercolor or make a clay pot it came out perfectly, what then? Where's the fun in that? Art, to me, is all about solving problems. How can I create a mood with this image? How can I attach this piece of paper to that piece and create a collage that looks like a landscape? What if I attach this fabric to that wire and then mount the thing on a piece of driftwood? How can I do it better or differently next time? And the next? And the next?

Art isn't rocket surgery. (My favorite phrase of late.) Art is play. Art is experimentation. Art is process. And if the outcome is amazingly wonderful, then hooray for you! And if it's not, you still had a good time just playing. Children don't make sandcastles to make them perfect. They make them because it's fun. The process is simply fun.

Wishing you a week full of fun, no matter what you do.

©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!