Hummingbird

There's a big fuchsia bush in the backyard that, at least on the side that isn't constantly being eaten by deer, is covered with red blossoms. This female Anna's hummingbird (I think that's what she is) diligently monitors "her" fuchsia bush from one of maybe three different vantage points from around the yard.

As I sat in a chair below her, she sat on a little twig above me, nicely backed by some very dark trees. In these two photos you can see her (a) yawning and then (b) stretching. Warm days and late afternoon sun will do that to you. ©Carol Leigh

Aground!

It reminded me of a southern California Saturday night, the sound of a big helicopter circling, the spotlight playing out, focusing on SOMETHING down below. Listening to the scanner we heard that a 40-foot sailboat had run aground about 50 yards offshore and the Coast Guard was trying to figure out if the boat could be towed off the sandbar or if they should just wait for high tide. It was 10 at night, quite dark, kind of scary — for them, not us.

Jetskiers ended up removing the last of the crew and the wait for high tide began.

Sunday morning we could see the boat was still there, masts swaying back and forth, so we went down to the beach, took some photos. A few hours later the boat was gone, freed from the sand, and on its way up to Newport to check for damage.

Not exactly an episode of television's "Deadliest Catch," but a little bit of nautical drama here on the coast. ©Carol Leigh

I surrender!

Elena and I have been having a friendly little "bird war" going on, with her most current salvo looking really, really good. I figure I can outdo her in sheer quantity, but not necessarily quality, so I'm posting these three and then am retreating, waving a white flag!

But it's probably not quite over ... She'll be here in a few weeks, attending our Oregon Coast workshop, and since there are a LOT of crows around here, well, you know what's going to happen . . . ©Carol Leigh

Catching up

It seemed like such a good idea at the time, but when packing my suitcase to leave Sanibel Island last year, that big bag o' shells I'd collected/purchased weighed a ton. And have I done much (photographically) with them? Nope. Except for this one and these, and this, I've not made the most of these oh-so-cool subjects.

I handpainted a background texture and used it to create a soft, warm look for this shell. Now, just 4,261 more shells to shoot... ©Carol Leigh

Circles

Kathleen A. generously supplies me with strange and wonderful papers from her stash. I photograph them before I use them in physical collages. On the left side is a photo of one of the papers she sent. On the right is ink on rice paper that I created and then shot. I put red ink on a rubber stamp "6," stamped it onto the rice paper, and then included it here in this piece. Bet you can't find it!

Why a "6?" Because there are six circles. There originally were nine, but I lopped off three from the right. Naturally, I then had to flip the "9" to make it a "6." Glad I wasn't working with four and eight... ©Carol Leigh

They don't all look alike . . .

Okay, if anyone's to blame, it's Elena — she started it! I posted a photomontage of a bird I photographed in Santa Fe. Elena, Miss Smartypants, who had photographed the same bird, did her magic to it and posted it on her blog.

Well, the competition began. She then posted a photo of some birds carved on a door in Chimayo, New Mexico. I photographed that same door, concentrating on a different panel. Here's the link to Elena's version, so you can easily see what we both did. It's now official: Bird Wars 2011. What will she come up with next? Or is it my turn now?

To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, "a dove is a dove is a dove," except in the eyes of Elena and Carol. ©Carol Leigh

Poppy pod (again)

Poppy pod... Number 14,739 in a continuing series! ©Carol Leigh

Carnival body parts!

©Carol Leigh

Poppy pods

The opium poppies have bloomed and formed their pods. As they dry out on the plant, I clip them off, sprinkle their seeds back into the soil (not unlike shaking a salt shaker), and then bring them into the house to photograph.

Strong winds earlier this year knocked the plants over and so we tied them up. As a result, some of the stems are bent very, very strangely, and look kind of cool.  Just goes to show that if life hands you some strange twists, best thing to do is keep striving upward. ©Carol Leigh

Summery color

This bird was isolated out of a very large mural painted on a garage door. The background detail is from a nearby sidewalk as well as a roofline. All from Santa Fe. Great colors, no? ©Carol Leigh

More summer colors

It's sunny here, windows are wide open, cool breezes — perfect for summer colors such as these. ©Carol Leigh

Right place, right day

Another little trip up the bay to Toledo to check out the annual car show — this time we got the date right. Beautifully soft, overcast lighting made the cars look even better. Nothing like a car show to encourage one to concentrate on simple lines, simple shapes, bright colors, and an occasional dog. ©Carol Leigh

Art in unlikely places

The more you train your eye to see, the more you concentrate on the smaller scene rather than the big picture, the more abstract "art" you're going to find, no matter where you are.

I gravitate toward train tracks, back alleys, old buildings, salvage yards (places my mom warned me about) and can find lots of images like these.

Here you see I've found torn tape and rust on a dumpster, a metal door painted blue that is slowly aging, a hinge on a metal box of some sort by the tracks, and finally a Mondrian-esque look on a big old electrical panel.

Color, texture, line, shape — they all come together in these images which are, to me, quite pleasing.

What I find interesting is that if we were to see the top image of the dumpster and the bottom image of the electrical panel as paintings in a gallery, we would think "of course." And we wouldn't wonder "what is it?" Once we know it's a photograph, "what is it?" usually becomes our first question.

Do I have a point? I think so. I think that if we can turn off the "what is it?" questioner in our heads as we wander about with our cameras, the more we're going to pay attention to color, texture, line, and shape, and the more these sorts of abstract images are going to jump out at us, begging us, of course, to turn them into art. ©Carol Leigh

Right place, wrong day

I am severely time-challenged. Rarely do I know what day of the week it is nor the date. So when I told Chris that today's the day for the antique car show in Toledo and we needed to get there early before the town filled up, well, imagine our surprise (or lack of same) when we arrived to find the streets fairly deserted and hardly anybody around. Oops. The car show is TOMORROW, not today.

Undeterred, we parked (LOTS of spaces available!) and walked around the town. Toledo, which is just inland from Newport, has been undergoing tough times because of changes in Oregon's logging industry as well as the general economy. Despite these challenges the city looks great, with clean streets, lots of flowers, and a minimal amount of empty storefronts. It's a town that seems to have a lot of pride, and it was a pleasure to walk around.

We expected to find a car show. Instead, we had a good time walking around, and I got some decent photos, met a cat named Tiberius, and got a little exercise. And isn't that the beauty of photography? No, we might not always get what we expect, but it's always good to be out and about, tramping around and meeting cats.

I felt kind of silly for being unaware of the date, but not as silly as the guy in the old blue Chrysler who cruised down the street and asked US where the car show was! We'll see him again tomorrow, I'm sure. ©Carol Leigh

Everything old is new again . . .

Have you ever begun doing something, let's say years ago, and you didn't know where it was going, but you seemed to be preparing for something? Well, that's what's been happening here.

Slowly over the years I've been working on my photomontages, shooting textures, patterns, designs, etc. I've also been collecting things to photograph for them, such as textured papers, postage stamps, vintage books, cards, etc.

Well, now I've collected so much crap treasure that it's made a natural progression into physical collage. I've done research, watched tutorials, read books, etc. and finally feel ready to begin.

The cool thing is that as I make my physical collages, I photograph bits and pieces of them to use in digital photomontages. And then those photomontages are printed and incorporated back into physical collages, and...

Do you see where this is going? Do you see the insanity? Do you see the incredible amount of excitement generated by all these possibilities? I feel I have woodpeckers pounding on my head!

And so I present my first three "real" collages. And then I also present three different photomontages I made that incorporate bits of what went into the physical collages.

#1 is my favorite and my most recent. I just finished it. I used part of a cover from an old (1880s) Japanese book that was falling apart as well as a few pages from within the book. A rusty washer, a coin, some wire, and a strip of paper I used to clean paintbrushes also show up in this one. It's 5x7 inches.

#2 is 5x5 inches and contains dried teabags, bits of paper given to me by Kathleen Amt, tracing paper, part of a Japanese book from the 1960s my neighbor Juanita gave me two years ago, and miscellaneous beads.

#3 is 5x7 inches and contains a shipping tag, parts of Juanita's Japanese book, paper from Kathleen Amt, a postage stamp, pieces of torn red paper from CJ, black and red squares that I painted, and dried teabags.

And then you see the three photomontages I created using bits from #3.

The beauty of this mixed media is how one artform blends into another, how my concept of putting pieces of a puzzle together using photographs now translates into putting pieces of a puzzle together using paper, metal, string, and other things. And then photographing THAT to use in more photomontages, and so on, ad delightum.

What I THOUGHT might turn into something a number of years ago HAS turned into something today. As of 3 p.m. And finally! A use for all those watch parts I've been collecting!

And now if anybody's wondering what to get me for my birthday next year, a little bag of rusty washers would make my day!

Wishing you similar delight in whatever artform you're pursuing...

©Carol Leigh

Time Sink

I just don't know what to say about this one. It's blue. It feels like water, feels like sky, feels like snow. It feels weird. But I feel I like it. ©Carol Leigh

Journal scribblings

I keep journals where I scribble, doodle, color, paint, keep ideas, suggestions, and oh-so-pithy quotations. I've begun photographing some of my pages, some of my drawings, bringing them into the computer, transmogrifying them, and then printing them out again. Here you see four different versions of a heart that I drew. The original? It's the one at the bottom.

Do you keep a journal? Do you have little pieces of art in there that you could photograph (or scan), then bring into Photoshop or some other program and create something new? The results could be good, could be awful, but the process is a fun one. ©Carol Leigh