Now on Flickr . . .

I'm finding Flickr to be a convenient way of creating little galleries of my work and so far I've got 9 "sets" of photos up: Buoys, Car Art, Train Art, High Key, Urban Abstracts, Polaroid, Route 66, and Numbers. Here's the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/80859324@N00/

It took a little time to understand the format, but basically the photos show up in a stream as you post them, most recent first, but off to the right you can see the different sets, which makes it easier. When I visit someone else's Flickr site, I now just automatically glance at the most recent images and then look over to see what sets or galleries the photographer has created.

Looking for a source of inspiration? Flickr's a good place to peruse and to charge your visual batteries.

©Carol Leigh, being pulled, kicking and screaming, into Flckr, Facebook, Google+, and who now needs even MORE time in the day...

Chinese lanterns

These have been sitting in my living room since September, when Janet and Ira G. gave them to me. I love how they splay out, how they don't need water, and how some of them have grown pale over time. I cannot bring myself to throw them out or put them somewhere else because they're gorgeous and make me happy when I see them.

Last week I noticed how window light coming through the blue bottle created a pretty shadow on the wall, so took a few photos. (Gotta be quick -- sunlight doesn't last very long around here lately.) I added texture to make the wall more interesting and created this. Which also makes me happy!

©Carol Leigh, finding happiness in small things like orange Chinese lanterns and brief interludes of sunlight

Here comes the sun ...

©Carol Leigh

Point of Impact

I transformed a photo taken at Fort Stevens in Astoria last year to create this rather ominous-looking image. I like the boldness and the simplicity and the texture of it. The monochromatic look, too.

Wednesday we had 4.7" of rain; yesterday we had another 2.3". Things are calming down -- winds are subsiding and rain is down to a heavy mist. We put out extra seed for the birds; I saw the most drenched, forlorn-looking mourning dove yesterday. Don't know how they withstand weather like this. A couple hours ago I said to Chris, "Do you hear that?" He said, "What is it?" Me: "Absolutely nothing." Ahhh, the sound of no wind. Music to my ears.

©Carol Leigh, enjoying the sounds of silence

It's the constant noise ...

The storm here in the Pacific Northwest continues. We've been lucky not to have had a loss of power, loss of shingles, loss of trees. Others haven't been so fortunate. Winds have been as strong as 60, 70, 80, 100 mph (up at Cape Foulweather). Strong winds blew a big truck into another vehicle on the Yaquina Bay Bridge, closing the bridge for at least four hours. Yesterday's rain total? 4.65 inches. Yikes! This is the worst storm we've experienced in our nine years of living here.

What's getting to me is the unrelenting noise of the wind and rain. There's no respite, no quick little break in the weather where things become peaceful, even for a few minutes. Instead there's this constant howling, constant inability to even look outside clearly due to sheets of rain on the windows. It's like living in a car wash!

But we're warm and cozy here inside. We have oatmeal, coffee, and tuna noodle casserole (!). I've shut down the big computer just in case of wacko power fluctuations, but still can use this little laptop, the iPad, and even the phone to stay in Internet contact. We have no complaints. Just wish the noise would subside, even for just five minutes.

©Carol Leigh, wishing everyone calm, peace, and gentle breezes today

Weird but fun...

Okay, I know this is weird... It required a very old National Geographic magazine and Citra Solv® orange-scented cleaner. The process is that you open up the magazine, find pages that appeal to you, and spritz them with Citra Solv®. You close up the magazine, mooshing the pages together. About 15 minutes later you begin opening the pages. The inks have run, pages have stuck together, and the results are often bizarre, abstract, weird, and fascinating. Sometimes the photos on the page are readily apparent (albeit altered) and sometimes they're completely obscured.

In this case, the face was partly obscured. I photographed the altered magazine page and then added a texture layer to muck up the image even more than it was. To me it now looks like a woman peering through a window, perhaps through a sheer curtain, on a train, at night. Fun stuff!

©Carol Leigh, who has a brain exploding with artistic possibilities and a kitchen that smells overmuch like oranges...

Deer Abby . . .

This afternoon Abby was making a lot of noise, staring out the window at the back yard. I took a look and saw, chewing on I don't know what, a female and a male black-tailed deer. The buck looked like this photo that I took in 2009, only bigger. (For a photo of the cat and the deer and the story, here's the link.)

Whenever Chris and I go out into the yard to scare away the deer, they look at us like we're idiots (no comment, please) and continue munching away. Well, this time I put the harness and the leash on Abby and opened the door. It was raining a bit, but Abby walked out a couple of feet onto the deck and the deer took one look at her and took off! Last we saw, the deer were about 100 yards down the street heading south. Abby shook the water off her fur and came back in, smug look on her face and a swagger in her step. ©Carol Leigh, unleashing cat power on unsuspecting overly large shrub-destroying rodents.

What do you see?

A few months ago Chris and I went to a local art gallery. The display was of incredibly delicate yet bold weavings. I asked permission to take close-ups of the details — not the entire weaving, just bits and pieces — and was kindly allowed to do so. Hoo ha! Because what I was seeing in the details looked to me like miniature abstract land/seascapes. A rain squall moved across the ocean, waves undulated past, and a headland stood out over a dark sea.

Remember the "art from art" photo walk I did in San Francisco where we extracted bits and pieces, created compositions from huge murals? Well, this is sort of the same thing on a smaller scale.

And isn't that what we're doing with photography in general? We see something, anything, and we extract, create, and present just a section of the whole, whether it's a photograph of Earth from outer space or the eye of a fly in an electron microscope. We've zoomed in on just a part of the whole with the eye of an artist. We see. We think "wow!" We compose. We calculate the light. We tweak our settings. And then we present that "wow" to whoever will be polite enough to look at what we did.

The woman in charge of the gallery that day was quite polite when I showed her my weaving "landscapes" in my viewfinder. Undoubtedly thought I was crazy, but she was very, very polite.

©Carol Leigh, hoping that today you look just a bit longer at something and find that "wow" . . .

Untitled

In this piece I combined photos I'd taken of a crow, a stained Braille page from the New York Times, an ink spill in an old textbook, and (faintly) characters from an old Japanese book. I like how the ink stain balances the crow and how the "movement" in the ink flows left-right while the "movement" in the crow leads us from right to left.

You know what's weird? As lovely as the black and white beach photo was in the previous post, it's putting together something like this, that most people would not consider beautiful, that is so much more satisfying (to me). And challenging. On the beach I was appreciating and composing a scene. I identified what caught my eye and attempted to fill my frame with just that. In this case, with this image, I had no idea what I was going to make. I just began "building" the picture. One step led to another until I considered it "done."

Bear with me a second . . . Photographing the beach scene was a meaningful experience. The exhilaration of seeing the light and what it was doing, the mystery of the "ghost forest," the adrenaline rush of trying to find a clear viewpoint before the light disappeared — I won't forget that. Photographing an ink stain, some pieces of paper, and a silhouette of a bird cannot compare to photographing at the beach. But the quiet satisfaction of putting together those photos to create this piece, ah, unforgettable as well, but in a different way.

Obviously I didn't create the glory of the beach scene. I interpreted it. Here, I began with nothing, and created something.

It's 2:30 in the morning. I'm babbling. Don't know where I'm going with all this. Probably should just go back to bed!

©Carol Leigh, befuddled with the creative process but carrying on nevertheless . . .

Beautiful light

Gorgeous day here yesterday -- temps in the 50s and no wind -- so Chris and I took a drive up the coast to Pacific City, then headed back home. It was late in the day and the light was becoming quite directional. Near Neskowin, we could see sunlight shining through mist and so frantically tried to find a good vantage point to photograph it before it disappeared.

I took the top shot as soon as the car stopped and then made my way down to the beach where I saw the scene below. The forms in the distance are "ghost trees," a petrified forest of trees that are usually submerged. During the late afternoon low tide, however, there they were. The light changed quickly, and the scene gradually became somewhat ordinary.

Don't you just love these bits of photographic wonderment? And isn't it for exquisite moments like this that we continue our photographic explorations?

©Carol Leigh, who is not usually a landscape photographer except for yesterday afternoon

From the Rolodex...

©Carol Leigh

Red and Black

I photographed a cover of a watercolor journal and created two different photos of it which I then partially turned red. I also photographed a piece of Japanese rice paper with this beautiful calligraphy-ish wash of black ink that I got from Kathleen A. I love the strong yet graceful lines of the ink and how they add a certain delicacy to the bold red stripe. Chris gave me a Chinese "chop" signature stamp over a year ago. I stamped it onto white paper, photographed it, and then added it here. Does it really say Carol Leigh? I like to think so.

This is all quite easily created using Photoshop. If you'd like to take my Beginning Photomontage class to see how it's all done, the class begins Monday. Would love to see you there. ©Carol Leigh

Stars on trains

 I am addicted to photographing graffiti on train cars. With so many files to look at, I begin seeing patterns. And this is one: stars on trains. (Letters, numbers, faces, writings, arrows are some other patterns that are emerging. Fair warning.) Here are five examples of "stars."

Do you do the same thing? Do you find yourself returning to the same subject matter, finding new things in the familiar? Mailboxes is something we all seem to gravitate to. The color red. Reflections in windows. Reflections in water. Riffle through your own photographs and look for "collections" of subject matter. Ten good images built around one theme could become an interesting photo essay.

©Carol Leigh, currently awash in photographs, flotsam on a sea of pixels

Black Geese

The components of this piece are: photos of old paper, hand-painted indigo paper, Japanese paper, old card stock, an old (1932) matchbox label from Belgium, a photo of splattered paint, and a photo of a card from the post office (the card they put in your post office box when you have a package that's too big and you have to go to the counter to pick it up). I. Love. This. Process. ©Carol Leigh, who is teaching an online class on how to do this beginning next week...

Because I could . . .

This is a goofy shot, in keeping with my 2012 word "play." I combined a macro photo I took of bubbles in ice with a fish I photographed at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Why not? Makes me smile. ©Carol Leigh, reminding you that you, too, can learn to combine a fish with bubbles in my upcoming Beginning Photomontage class (although why you would want to, I don't know!).

Daily doing and weekly study

From The Free Dictionary, an artist is:

1. One, such as a painter, sculptor, or writer, who is able by virtue of imagination and talent or skill to create works of aesthetic value, especially in the fine arts.

2. A person whose work shows exceptional creative ability or skill: You are an artist in the kitchen.

3. One, such as an actor or singer, who works in the performing arts.

4. One who is adept at an activity, especially one involving trickery or deceit: a con artist.

 

The key words in these definitions (leaving out "trickery" and "deceit") are "imagination," "talent," "skill," "adept," and "exceptional creative ability." 

 

We can have the skill, but without the imagination and creativity, we produce lifeless work. And imagination and creativity will get us just so far without the skill. 

Whether we're photographers, ceramists, quilters, calligraphers, collagistas, painters, or gardeners, to excel at what we do, to be artists at what we do, requires the wonderful fusion of creativity, ability, skill, talent, and imagination. And all that requires practice.

Tomorrow is Sunday. Just another day. But it's the beginning of 2012. The start of a new year. A brand-new calendar. A "starting over" of sorts. I have no resolutions (other than to spend less time sitting on my butt here at the computer), but I do have plans. Do you?

My plans are to play this year. To play with a new project I'm working on in photography, which will show up in the next few weeks, and to play with learning how to be a better collage artist. Those are my plans. Each of those activities requires creativity, ability, skill, talent, and imagination. How to approach that?

My photography/Photoshop skills need buffing up. So each week I'll be learning a new Photoshop technique, trying to use it every day so that it becomes an automatic part of my repertoire. Because I have a mind like a sieve, a little cheat sheet of how-to info hangs on a clipboard on the wall by my desk. Easy for me to look at, to constantly remind myself. 

My collage work needs to be looser, more free. I need to worry less about careful placement of precious papers and just do it. And do it often. So every morning, for at least an hour, instead of sitting looking at blogs and seeing what others are doing, I will be doing the doing. (Did that make sense?)

What this boils down to (for me, and probably for you) is daily practice. Every day, create something. I don't care if it's a doodle on a scrap of paper, a photo of a piece of string, folding an origami crane, or gluing glitter onto macaroni. Create. Anything.

And study. Each week, learn something. How close can you get with this lens? With that lens? Open your camera's instruction manual and read just one thing. One. (If your manual's as miserable as mine, often that one thing is totally incomprehensible, but try it anyway.) 

 

Go to the library or a bookstore or online and look at -- really look at -- art other than photography (if you're a photographer). If you're a quilter, look at paintings. If you're a ceramic artist, look at quilts. Study the forms, the patterns, the structures. You may find yourself turning a corner in your own field as a result. Those carved and scratched patterns someone made on a clay bowl might inspire your quilt work, your photography, your painting. You never know. And it's never time wasted.

I'm going to shut up now. My point today is that 2011 ends in a few hours. Look at 2012 as a new beginning for you and for your art. Take it to the next level with daily doing and weekly study. 

 

For me, I plan on playing more. But I'll be taking this playing thing very seriously! Happy New Year's Eve, everyone. ©Carol Leigh, Artist

Smile!

A new year is just around the corner. Here's hoping it gives us all something to smile about, even if the smile looks somewhat forced. Happy New Year to each of you. May 2012 exceed our expectations. ©Carol Leigh

Merry Christmas!

©Carol Leigh

Sweet dreams...

Wishing you sweet dreams and a quiet Christmas Eve. Special greetings to Las Tres Amigas in North Carolina, who read this blog every day, and to Bugsy and Sam, who do the same. And to all, a good night. ©Carol Leigh

Countryside

Usually, when returning home after a trip, we're in "get home fast" mode and take the quickest, most direct route, no stopping. This time, because the light was so soft and pretty, and because there were SHEEP in the distance, we took a side road and stopped for a few photographs. Love the tree in this one. I added a soft texture layer and sepia toning to emphasize the quiet look of the scene. ©Carol Leigh

Light in a long night

The nights are long these days, but there's light to be found. This ginkgo leaf fell out of a book today, a symbol of hope, longevity, peace and resilience. I placed it on a piece of paper I'd painted indigo blue, then added the stars. Wishing you lots of light when things look dark. ©Carol Leigh

Two from the "Wheel o' Pith"

Happy Winter Solstice to you... A new beginning of sorts... What are you working on? What artistic endeavors will you pursue this new year? Here are a couple of cards from my "Wheel o' Pith." (I've mentioned this Rolodex idea holder a couple of times this past year, here and again here.) (Click to enlarge.)

In this flurry of holiday activity, take a few quiet moments and think of one artistic thing you wish to pursue this new year. Just one. Maybe it's getting up the nerve to photograph people, something that might really scare you. Or maybe it's to take one good photo a day. Or a week. Or maybe you want to learn one new Photoshop technique every month and really master it. Or perhaps you will give yourself an assignment every couple of weeks. Buy flowers for the house every two weeks and photograph them. Shoot the cat. (You know what I mean!)

DO something, CREATE something, and do it CONSISTENTLY this coming year. The time's going to go by anyway. Have something to show for it.

©Carol Leigh (who pretends she's talking to you, but she's really talking to herself)

Got color?

While in San Diego I saw a bright red building. When I see color like that, I immediately begin wondering what I can find in FRONT of it. I first tried focusing on the bark of a palm tree, but that didn't work so well. What DID work was this giant bird of paradise plant growing right in front. (Click to enlarge.)

What makes it stand out? A few things...

First, there's the magic number of THREE. Three stems branch out from the base of the plant.

Then there are the diagonal lines, which give a feeling of movement.

Then look at all the red triangles here: left, lower right, another to the left of that one, and the tiny one at the very top.

Finally, we've got complementary colors of red and green, each of which makes the other look especially good.

The final result is colorful, bold, clean, simple, and smooth with just a hint of contrasting texture along the raggedy edges of two of the stems.

©Carol Leigh, wishing you a colorful, bold, clean, simple, and smooth life with just a hint of contrasting texture along your raggedy edges . . .

Ho! Ho! Ho!

My friends Rich and CJ have wooden Santas placed strategically around their house this time of year, some whimsical, some oh-so-artsy, some adorable. Here's a little sampling of three I had to photograph during my visit. ©Carol Leigh (a Santaphobe but curiously drawn to these wooden figures)

"P" is for "PLAY"

A "P" found on a railroad car combines with a picture of a boat reflection, resulting in an extreeeeeeeeemly colorful photomontage. (Thinking of you, Janet G.)

This is an example of the alphabetical pictures I'll be continuing to create next year during my "26 in 26" alphabet class that begins January 1.

©Carol Leigh, who believes "P" is for "PLAY," which will be my word for 2012

Dark and sexy . . .

I took this picture at an antique car show, but darned if I can remember if this is the actual car or a reflection of the actual car. And I don't even know what PART of the car this is. All I know is that I love the sexy curves, love the mystery, the darkness, love the bit of reflection there as a focal point and how the metal below it seems to be softly squished.

Has that happened to you? Where you shoot something and then later, in the cold, clear light of day, you haven't a clue what the picture depicts nor why you took it? No? Well then it's just me, with my "softly squished" brain. ©Carol Leigh

Squarification

Sometimes when I create my photomontages, I'll create two different versions, one rectangular and one square. And it's interesting to see the different feel between the two. Sometimes I like one version, sometimes the other, but it's always good for me to create them both, just to have a comparison.

I'll often begin these pieces and then walk away from them for a week, a month, a year, to revisit them later with new eyes. That's what happened here. I knew I had SOMEthing, but wasn't sure what, when a couple of months ago I began working on this. It all came together yesterday.

This photomontage was made from a variety of photographs, including typewriting on onionskin paper, peeling paint, a scratch on the side of a train car, a bit of red paper, part of a wall in Mexico, an adding machine tape, etc. 

This "squarification" concept works well in "normal" photography as well. Let's say you have a landscape and you've composed your photo so that the barn is more toward the left side of the horizontal frame. What if you were to crop away some of the right-hand side? You may find that now your barn looks pretty prominent; all of our attention goes to the barn rather than wandering around a larger frame. Sometimes this is good, sometimes not, but the key thing is to THINK about the possibility of squaring your frame when you're taking the photograph.

Try it. Take the perfect landscape shot. Then think, "what if this were a square format?" Recompose your photo and take it again.

And think about photographs you've already taken. What if, on a cold and rainy day, you were to rummage around in your computer, looking for images that might benefit from being presented in a square format? You might be surprised (pleasantly) at what you find.

©Carol Leigh, who squarifies more often than not . . .