Red Pear at Night . . .

Sailor's delight! Is it any wonder I think Chris is amazing? He just came back from the grocery store with not one but two beautiful red pears. "I figured you'd like to shoot these, and then afterward I can eat them!" And now he's up there making margaritas. And look what I did with one of the pears — which I think is quite lovely. It's sitting on an old algebra book. The most practical use of an algebra book I've ever found. -- ©Carol Leigh

Pears

I haven't been uploading my latest photomontages because I'm creating a bunch of new ones for a special project as well as for my upcoming how-to online classes. But this morning, when this one came together, I was so jazzed that I had to post it. I love this one! ©Carol Leigh

"Hard-won cleverness"

To try to keep my mind working (the key word being "try"), I subscribe (via Google Reader) to a number of art blogs. Recently a painter asked if she should just give up. Is she ever going to be really good at painting. I always relate these things to photography. And there were two paragraphs in this blog that hit home. This is from the blog of Robert Genn. Here's the link to the article: <http://clicks.robertgenn.com/give-up.php> He showed some examples of the painter's work, and here are the two paragraphs that resonated with me: Your work has a fine sense of feeling and atmosphere--rain, fog, etc., and a simple, understated honesty. But is this enough? Is there enough to really carry a viewer away? Is there possibly a sense in the minds of many potential collectors that they could have done one of these themselves? As I see it, and there will be many who will disagree, this sort of work is really a bit too facile and too easy to do . . . While there are exceptions to this, the hard, cold facts tell us that only a few top workers are truly thriving. The competition is tough. To the admirable virtues of feeling and atmosphere, one needs to leverage skill, craft and a degree of hard-won cleverness that the average person on the street cannot easily attain. When you add a personal style that distinguishes you from the others, opportunistic gallerists are more likely to check you out. What's my point? So much of what we do with the camera can easily be done by someone else. Are we doing something that is uniquely our own? Is there "a personal style that distinguishes you (me) from the others?" I have no answers. And now I'm off, in an attempt to "leverage skill, craft, and a degree of hard-won cleverness" in my work. -- Carol Leigh

Two's a Crowd

©Carol Leigh

One of my first photos

Looking through an old photo album, I found one of the first photos I ever took using a 35mm camera (a Pentax H1a). It's a black and white shot of a bird and it's awful. But there is a certain appeal in that I like the lean of the fence post, the echoing lean of the bird, and the way the foliage and the overexposed background frame the bird and silhouette it. This was taken in 1977. Yesterday I re-photographed the print, added texture, added warmth, played up certain elements, and made the whole thing look older than it was. Thirty-two years ago. That was the beginning. ©Carol Leigh

Three Dahlias in Bottles

Thank you to my neighbor Gene for giving me the flowers and the inspiration. ©Carol Leigh

Dahlias in Blue Vase

©Carol Leigh

Red Rose in a Bottle

My neighbor Gene gave me a bouquet of dahlias and roses yesterday -- things are rather floriferous around here right now! ©Carol Leigh

Crow Fire

During a walk around the block last week I photographed a juvenile crow sitting on a telephone wire. To it I've added local navigational charts, texture from a wall in Bandon, Oregon, a compass, and a few other things to create a concept of "crow setting out into the world." ©Carol Leigh

Fossilized Fern

A couple of years ago I pressed a fern frond in a catalog. I found it the other day and took it into the studio this evening to photograph. The photo seemed blah, so I combined it with various textures to come up with this piece, which I particularly like. Which is good, because it took hours to create. Somtimes these things come together quickly, other times, well, it's a lot of work! ©Carol Leigh

Old Clock

The clocks are back. I like the double-dial on this one. I combined it with a photograph of a crack in the cement floor of my garage as well as a photo of a page from an old ledger book. ©Carol Leigh

Opium Poppy

I used to do Polaroid dry and emulsion transfers a long time ago and this treatment here reminds me a lot of that dry transfer "look." One would have thought, since I worked for Polaroid, that I could have gotten the film at some sort of discount, but nope, that never happened. Alas. It used to take a lot of expensive experimenting to create these things. ©Carol Leigh

Quiet afternoon

Trees, one of my hand-painted backgrounds, some smudges and a solitary bird combine for this piece. ©Carol Leigh

She's gone . . .

I set out to make one thing and it changed entirely. Deleted are the trees and the numbers I was working with, replaced with a lot of other things revolving around this photograph of a beautiful woman I found in a thrift store. ©Carol Leigh

Daisy and Sun

A daisy looks good when combined with a photo of some background texture I painted. ©Carol Leigh

Summer Weeds

Growing like crazy in the backyard right now is Linaria or "toadflax." I photographed them and then blended them with photos I've taken of my hand-painted backgrounds, did a few other things, and I'm liking the look. ©Carol Leigh

Opium Poppy

Another experiment. (Oh, who am I kidding? They're all experiments!) ©Carol Leigh

Complementary Pears

Music score, my painted backgrounds, and the ubiquitous pear. Or two. ©Carol Leigh

African Daisy Experiment

The process continues. ©Carol Leigh

Cosmos Experiment

I'm not sure what I'm doing. (Yeah, like I'm ever sure!) I'm painting my own backgrounds and then seeing how they look behind certain things. And then doing some other stuff, none of which right now is consistent or predictable. Or replicatable. I like the messy, raw, funky look of this piece, as well as the somewhat muted colors. It's been a good day. Calm waters on the Alsea Bay this morning. Interesting photography experiments this afternoon. ©Carol Leigh