Around the house , . .

This morning's coffee.

Copyright ©2019 Carol Leigh

Happy New Year 2018!

Such a luxurious time of day – morning. No responsibilities for at least a few hours. A time to sit on the couch, sipping coffee, planning, plotting, feeling all things are possible.

May we all feel that all things are possible. Happy New Year!

 ©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. 

Morning coffee

The usual routine ... Avoid the news, check out my Photomotivation group on Facebook, then go to Feedly to see which of the blogs I follow have been updated, read blogs (mostly artist blogs), feel inspired, add notes to my little notebook, check the weather, check the headlines if there's time.

And that's it! Then it's either out to the studio to add to my table runner, or back to the desktop computer where I'm ruthlessly trashing all photos I don't think I can use and/or aren't quite sharp enough to upload to Fine Art America.

Reducing the pixel load, 29MB at a time.

©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.

Morning coffee . . . and the eclipse

I actually had a plan for the eclipse. My plan was not to photograph the actual eclipse, but rather what the light and shadows would do to the surrounding landscape.

We had checked out the area around the lighthouse at Fort Casey for possibilities and yes, that would be a good spot. I was going to photograph the coastline sweep looking north. Maybe some long-exposure shots of waves on the beach below.

Figuring the place would be packed and we might not be able to get a parking spot close to the lighthouse, we arrived at 8 a.m. Ha! We were the only ones there!

It was really, really foggy. So I photographed my coffee sitting on the dashboard. The dark "cloud" above it is steam on the windshield. Nice iPhone shot.

We came prepared to wait for the fog to break, with a thermos of coffee, a box of chocolate-covered mini-donuts, and a newspaper. In a nice warm car. Ahhhhhh.

I kept checking the coastline. Nope. Couldn't see much at all, but then this "fog-bow" showed up. Very cool to see the sun shining down onto the fog below to create what I've learned is a pretty common phenomenon. But I first thought, "Wow! Eclipse-related and unusual!" Alas, no. But it's still kind of cool.

As eclipse time arrived and went, it was obvious it would be a bust at our location. And it was also obvious that 90% obscurity just isn't enough for real drama. The light just dulled down a little bit. No darkness. No eerie light.

So I worked the lighthouse a bit, taking a few high-key, highly-minimalistic shots of architectural detail.

A couple of our friends joined us. I met another local photographer. We laughed. We talked. We had a good time. And I took a few weird lighthouse shots. Life is pretty darned good.

©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.

Morning coffee

Still can't figure out what birds we have nesting out front. They look almost small flycatcher-ish, but they don't fit the descriptions I'm seeing in my bird books. I am befuddled. Which in Japanese is 混乱し, but I don't know how to pronounce that . . .

It's been a very long 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.

Morning coffee ... with chicks

Coffee on the deck, where Saratoga Passage (in the distance) is fogged in. Look how brown the grass is! Luckily it all comes back beginning sometime in September.

I hear one juvenile great horned owl, the one who shrieks. The other, as yet unheard today, makes sounds reminiscent of escaping steam. The rooster, off to the south, crows constantly. Wish he and the owls would get acquainted... Not really. And yet . . .

The chicks are five days old today. Overall fuzziness. Very cute. No parents at the nest, so I snuck out to quickly take a photo. I rushed my shot. Not good. And yet . . .

[Later this afternoon... Oh, man! I just saw my chick picture up close on my desktop computer and it's AWFUL! Am going to revisit it on my phone to see what happened. I softened the area surrounding the nest. Maybe I went too far. A different version now appears below. Better. Not great, but better.]

 ©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.

Morning coffee ... with Nicholas Wilton

This guy's so cool. He's a painter/educator based in Sausalito, California. And he produces (among a lot of other things) short videos talking primarily about painting. I'm not really a painter, but his concepts are so sound and so universal that I get a lot out of each video. Here's a link to his blog.

Wishing you all a cool, refreshing, serene Sunday. And I'm off to the studio to tear and glue more papers.

©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.

Morning coffee

This mug, which says "Friends of Newport Bay," I got back in the mid-'80s. One of my favorite places to go take photos and to just walk around was the Back Bay in Newport Beach, California. And this mug brings back fond memories. I used to lead photo walks there, happy that I could show people places that, at the time, were relatively hidden and unknown.

©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.

Morning coffee

Coffee out on the deck, which isn't as pleasant as it sounds. There's still a lot of smoke in the air. It's warm (for us) at 70 degrees already. And the back yard, for the most part, looks like a hay field -- very light brown and crunchy. The entire island is under a fire watch. No rain in sight for the next nine days at least. Very unusual.

Think I'll spend the day deleting photographs and working in the studio -- which is probably the coolest place in the house today.

Wishing you all clear skies and refreshing breezes.

©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.

Morning coffee

Well, this picture is more about the ketchup, I am sorry to say. We headed off to Home Depot early this morning, stopped at a coffee shop for breakfast. Typical coffee shop ambience.

There was a bat crawling across our driveway as we left. I wanted to photograph him, but no, probably quite sick. He was huddled against our garage door when we returned, soon to be nudged into a dustpan and relocated to the woods, where I hope he recovers and lives to devour another 500,000 bugs. Tonight.

"Our" bats regularly appear at twilight, and Abby and I stand at the window screen and watch them zoom past, often so close we can hear the slight "whiff" of their wings. Small pleasures.

©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.

Morning coffee

Coffee and a little Moleskine book where, as I'm assembling a large, handmade book, I glue in bits and pieces of what I'm including in the larger book, as well as experiments I've done using inks, stains, water, glue, rubber stamps, etc.

By the end of the big book, this little Moleskine book will be bursting with interesting, unrelated papers and colors. And with my luck, it'll probably end up much better than the real book I'm making!

Smoke from Canadian fires is wafting its way south to us here in the Puget Sound. Kind of a nasty overall haze going on. Air quality alerts have been issued.

We've also not gotten much rain at all, and there are burn bans island-wide. No campfires, no nothing. The lawn is like straw, and crackles when you walk on it. The birds are loving the birdbath, and the robins come in and just seem to marinate in the water. A smaller bird flies in, sees the robin, thinks, "Oh, man, is he still there?" and immediately flies off.

Two large dragonflies have died -- one in the garage, and one on the sidewalk out front -- and are now safely ensconced here in the office waiting for me to photograph and/or scan them. The second one I thought maybe was still alive, moving across the cement. Had to play tug-of-war with an ant who was dragging him away. The ant put up a heck of a fight. And it was interesting to see him circle around, frantically looking for his disappeared food supply. "It was just here! What the . . . I swear, I just saw it and it disappeared into thin air! What am I going to tell the kids? Sorry, but no dinner for awhile?"

©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.

New project: Morning Coffee

Don't you just hate when you visit a blog and the first part is one big old apology for not having posted anything in like forever? Me, too. So this isn't that.

What this IS is that I've been thinking about something I could post that wouldn't take much time, that I could do every day, and might be interesting for both me and you.

One thing that's part of my routine is an early breakfast (with coffee) where I read (foolishly) the news of the day on my iPad, and/or write stuff in my "idea book," or do a crossword puzzle, or whatever.

I try to begin the morning quietly and softly (well, except for all the sighing and eye-rolling that accompanies the news) as I drink my cup of coffee.

So why not take an iPhone shot every day of my coffee/cup either right where I'm sitting (which might be the couch, or at the table, or out on the deck) and see what I come up with.

I process these shots using Snapseed in the camera, put my name on them, frame them, and they're ready to go -- all without having to go downstairs to the desktop computer.

I'm liking the selective focus look, especially when I'm photographing the coffee cup next to my "idea book," where some of my ideas are so stupid I don't want anyone to see them! Using selective focus, I can just blur them out.

Here are my first four images, beginning with July 29, where I was sitting on the couch, using a tray for the coffee, and where I had set down my "avoidance book" just because the more it's handled, the better it feels. So I have it with me a lot.

(It's an "avoidance book" because I was stuck working on my Kyoto book. To fool myself that I wasn't being lazy or procrastinating, I made this little accordion-style book that has pockets where I put tags. It was a fun project and I want to make more. I'm back to the Kyoto book now, so don't need an "avoidance book" to keep me going. For the moment.)

The second photo shows the coffee cup with my little carry-around always Moleskine book (blurred so you can't read my "to-do" lists, quotes that I've found and want to keep, and other trivia). Thought I'd use a page on my iPad showing my work at Fine Art America as a background. The picture looks contrived to me now. And it was. But there you have it.

Third photo is self-explanatory.

This morning's photo was taken at the dining room table, where I set the coffee on top of my "idea book," a larger Moleskine book where I've been keeping ideas for YEARS. None of them are dated; the ideas are stuck in randomly, wherever there's room on a page, and I don't go through the ideas often enough. There are a fair number in there where I read them today and don't know what the hell I was talking about back then. And so I'll update them with a hastily scribbled "what the . . .?"

So there you go. I'm up to date and I'm hoping this project will continue for awhile until I (with my ever-shortening attention span), find something else I think is a great idea . . .

[These are probably also going to appear now and then on Instagram and Facebook, so if you see a coffee cup in your feed, just ignore that post. Go read about the presidency instead . . .]

©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.