2018 flew by. There were many ups (first gallery show, selling my artwork, making tons of new artwork, becoming part of a community of art) and downs, but i guess that is life. A few things am learning and will take with me into the new year:
1. Just keep swimming - as Dory says, even when things are not going your way, keep going. All artists hit a wall of challenge and feel uninspired at times, and it is important in those times to keep doing things to help remove the block. So, if you are challenged with being inspired by painting, read a book, go for a walk, go to a museum, connect with others on IG or other creative networks. But don't give up, it will come back. 2. Moderation is good - in all aspects of life, food, exercise, work, art and even love. 3. Connect with nature - in some way shape or form, i need this. Even if i just get to open the front door and take a deep breathe of fresh air. 4. Connect with people - the digital world is so easy, but it just isn't healthy if all you do all day is sit on the computer. call people, talk to people, spend time with my son; make an effort to connect with people. 5. Just do your thing, girl - I've been struggling with this one in a few facets of my life. I've grown to care too much about other people's opinion. I don't think it always serves me well. I need to focus on my passion... this will definitely be a focus for 2019. It is in my hands. Don't want to go on too much, but those are just a few things i am thinking about! Hope you have a great 2019. Cheers! I love art. Painting, photography, drawing, crafts, sculpture... all kinds. Finding the time to do it, including photography is a whole other story. Toward the end of last year, i made a concerted effort to bring back the art in my life. It helped on so many levels! One of the things i started doing was something called petri art. It's a style of art developed by artist Josie Lewis made by dropping alcohol ink into epoxy resin. The ink drops down into the resin and hardens, and it created the coolest patterns, designs and colors.
If you've seen my photography, you know i love macro photography. I mean LOVE it. To me, its like finding new worlds and capturing things you can't see the naked eye. So, naturally, as soon as i saw the cool patterns in the resin art, i had to photograph it. I love it so much, because it looks like underwater or alien worlds. I usually find time to photograph at night, so i will use a single light source, like a flashlight, to add dimension and interest. Recently, I was blessed to have a local art consultant who, among other things, finds artists for gallery shows, come across my work and want to include it in an upcoming summer show at a gallery in Richmond. The work will showcase my macro resin photos. I am so excited to be able to combine two things i love, art & photography, and have the opportunity to share that in a gallery! I will share more details on that show, which begins in June 2nd. Until then, here are some shots! After the St. Peter's, tour we walked across the street to St. Paul's Episcopal Church to photograph some amazing Tiffany stained glass windows.
Yes… you read that right, Tiffany stained glass. It was beautiful. Much more ornate than St Peter’s, and about 50 years newer. The church itself is also one of Richmond's premier historic sites, listed in both the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places. The parish came into being as an outgrowth of Monumental Church, the Robert Mills-designed structure erected 1812-14 as a memorial to 72 prominent Richmonders who perished in a theater fire on that site in 1811. By 1843, Monumental’s congregation began to outgrow its building. Its assistant rector, the Rev. William Norwood, led an effort to found a new Episcopal church to accommodate the expanding membership. The resulting building, consecrated in 1845, is a masterpiece of the Greek Revival style, and a stately complement to Thomas Jefferson's temple-form capitol across the street. This church has an interesting history, it is deeply associated with the Confederacy. It was the church of Gen. Robert E. Lee. One of the Tiffany windows was donated to the church by Lee’s family (can you find it below?), and his family has a pew dedicated to them. His name is on the donated window and apparently the church it trying to decide what to do about it. We will see what happens, but regardless, the church was clearly important to those in Richmond with wealth and power, and is mentioned in many writings and references throughout history. Here are a few interesting stories and history. More history of St. Paul’s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1DfcjlSTxc https://www.civilwarmonitor.com/blog/fantasizing-lee-as-a-civil-rights-pioneer http://www.stpaulsrva.org/about/history/ http://www.richmond.com/life/faith-values/st-paul-s-episcopal-church-to-remove-images-of-confederate/article_c63ecfcc-b7ae-589b-aac5-e9142ac7475f.html Enjoy the photos! At first glance, it doesn’t seem that old, but Saint Peter’s Catholic Church is marking it’s 200th anniversary in a few short years.
This old church was recently restored, and our photo group got the chance to have a little tour and free reign to photograph the old gal. (Well, almost free reign, the organ balcony was locked and two ‘slave’ balcony’s, with railings only a foot tall, were out of code and not safe to use.) The doors of the bright white, pillared, church opened to a reveal modest-sized traditional church that was given new life. The refinished floors and pews were shiny, with a warm and inviting caramel hue. The gold-plated lighting, with candle-shaped lightbulbs, were bright and lit with pride the ceiling which was newly painted to look like the heavens above. Even the smallest details of brass, marble and wood were polished and cleaned with care. We had the pleasure of hearing some history from one of the staff members, and it was fascinating. Saint Peter Catholic Church was dedicated on May 25, 1834, becoming the first Catholic church in Richmond. After St. John Episcopal Church on Church Hill, the structure is the second oldest church in the city and the oldest to be built on Grace Street. At that time, the Catholic Dioses was not very welcome in the city and were unable to buy land to build a church, so Bishop Dubois secured the land at Grace and Eighth Streets through a group designed to purchase for the Dioses. Father O’Brien raised funds for the building of St. Peter, which was built in a neoclassic style, similar to the Church of Saint Philippe de Roule, in Paris. St. Peter Church was named after the Prince of the Apostles, Saint Peter. The church is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register. The Church also served as the cathedral of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond from the 1800’s until 1906, when the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart was consecrated. Did you know a church can only be called a Cathedral if the Bishop’s chair is there? I did not. So, while there may be many Catholic churches in one area, each Diocese will only have one “Cathedral”. For more info on the history of the church – see their website. Enjoy! It's 16 degrees outside, warmer than a lot of other places right now, but still too dang cold to go outside. So, instead, I bought some flowers with some yummy colors to work on some macros! Here are a few of my favs!Focus stacking is a technique used by many photographers today, particularly macro photogs. In macro, your depth of field (DOF - the area in focus) is so shallow or small, that you end up with only a small portion of your subject in sharp focus. You see this quite often when photographing things that move, like insects. In order to get a sharp image, you need a fast shutter speed, so the aperture is opened all the way to let in lots of light. Open aperture = shallow DOF. Focus stacking means you select the sharp part from multiple images to create one image with more of your subject in focus. It is like putting together a puzzle with only the sharp pieces of your photos. It also means you need to take multiple photos with different areas in focus. I exported to Photoshop (Elements) and layered the 3 images into one. My approach is to keep the base image on top, and layer the others underneath. Using the layers panel, i adjust the opacity and resize or move the photos around to ensure they align and then delete portions of the base image. The layer underneath then show through.
This one was simple, only 3 images. The most I've done manually is 10... but i know of pictures created with 20+ images all stacked together. I believe that newer versions of PSE and PS have auto-stacking... I need to investigate that and upgrade. It's a lot of work to stack, but the results are nice! Final below. Taken at 8pm EST with the Nikon D7100:Nikkor 27-300mm @ 300mm; ISO 250; 1/250; f11
The moon isn't as big as it will get, but I wanted to take some shots before it got too dark... and before Walking Dead was on. I wish I had a better lens for these shots, but you must work with what you've got! I set up on a tripod of course, you just can't take night shots free hand. I also thought the tripod was a bit wiggly, so I pulled out the remote (wired) shutter. I started with the ISO a bit lower and played around with the shutter speed and apt, finding that: A. the lower apt is better B. you need to speed up a bit to minimize the movement you get when you take the pic C. means bringing the ISO up a tad. This set-up also means you can keep the pic a little on the dark side (of the moon - PF rules!), the slightly darker pic of the moon gives you more detail. LR adjustments were minimal... cropping, sharpening and tweaking the clarity is bit. boom - moon. See ya. j Maymont is a 122-acre estate of the Dooley family, which was donated to the city of Richmond, VA in the early 1900's. The Dooley's spent decades landscaping the grounds and furnishing the mansion with wonderful treasures and inspiration from all over the world. Today, the mansion and buildings are still maintained for touring. And, in addition to sprawling lawns, animal farm, and a zoo of sorts, Maymont has the most wonderful gardens. If you need an escape, like I did this week, these gardens are the place to go. It's another world. You forget you are in the city.
My son and I went to a Pow Wow they have here every year. It. Is. Awesome. We learn about the culture of the American Indians, traditions, customs... and the dancing, drumming and singing is awesome. Truly moving.
And this year, it means even more since J is learning about the Eastern Woodland Indians, in particular the Powhatan. I am, of course, honest about the history, as much as i know about it. And he is piecing together that the British and others, stole their land. I am sure more questions will be coming. Until then, enjoy this small selection before they go up on the site.
His interest and talent doesn't surprise me. We come from a long line of creative-types on both sides of my family. My mother, her brother and her father, my grand-father, are/were artists. My grandmother on my dad's side was an artist. Heck - my great-great-uncle on my dad's side used to travel around with a stuffed leopard and take pictures of it all over the place. He was clearly a creative type. Or nuts. Jacob is a creative type too. I obviously encourage it, but I encourage a lot of things... and the things he really seems to love these days are art, math, rocks and gems. Oh, and video games of course. Man, where has the time has gone.
Most times, i scope a place i'd like to shoot and then wait for a moment that i think will give me a great photo. Like the morning i woke up once and it was foggy, and i knew the old swamp down the road would be so cool to shoot.
Then there are moments where you see some pretty amazing stuff and don't happen to have your camera. This happens to me more often than not. Just today i was driving home from the store, the sun had barely set, the moon was out and 4 fighter jets happen to be flying right in front of it. Then there are rare moments like this, where you catch something so funny, or so unique and just happen to have your camera! I have no clue what he was doing, but i can tell you it was hot as heck that day, so perhaps he was trying to cool off a bit in the shade. Or perhaps he was waiting for our dog, whom he likes to taunt. Silly squirrel. Summer is over and my not-so-little Little is starting a new program at his school called 'Transitional Kindergarten.' Essentially, it's Pre-K but with the Kindergarten curriculum.
We spent the last few days of summer going to an amusement park, visiting grand parents, playing around the house and of course, the water slide! I actually tried it with him this time since he has no neighborhood friends his age, and he was just dying for someone to do it with him. i had a really great time. :) The summer has gone by too fast, as usual.
We've done a lot, had a nice long visit to my home town, time on the beach, amusement parks...every weekend there seems to be something going on! I've captured a lot, but taking time to go through and process the images is time consuming. My son, who is getting bigger by the minute, learned how to slide on the slip and slide this year. Something seemingly minor, to major to me. It means he's growing, getting stronger, understanding the relationship between his body and the world, and figuring out how to use it to do what he wants it too do (make a big splash!) I can still remember last year when we first got the slide... poor child could do nothing more than run and plop himself down in the puddle at the bottom of the slide. This year, he is actually sliding. Time flies too fast. What advice would you give to amateur photographers?
I strongly advise to use your time wisely. Laziness is your worst enemy. Enough looking at photographs taken by your idols. You’ve commented on enough work that you hate. It’s time to take photos. Your best photos. Let go and shoot, shoot, shoot! ~ Oleg Oprisco http://iso.500px.com/an-interview-with-the-incomparable-oleg-oprisco/ Wow, its been a busy month. And a cold month too! Like most people, i am ready for warmer weather and am anxious to spend more time outdoors.
Not having a lot of time this month for 'hobby' photos, i was happy to have a free half hour before work today to capture the aftermath of some early morning rain. I used the macro and am really happy with how they came out and selected a few of these shots for the March Challenge with my photography group. The sun was still coming up, so the lighting and the water all over the plants was perfect! While i was putting together the 'snow' tutorial, i created these little red arrows to point to specific things in the PSE menus and realized 'hey! i can make this into a brush and make my life so much easier!' And so i did... and here's how (it is so easy!) Step 1; Create the Image I create the tip of the arrow using Web Dings 4 in black. Its a good idea to make the brush relatively large from the start. While you can re-size it as a brush, like any image, it will get pixelated if you go from small to large, versus going large to small. I may have mentioned this before, but i never paid much attention to wild birds until i got my first real camera. They are always interesting to some degree, but there are only so many photos you can take of birds sitting in trees, or flying or eating seeds.
This is why i love when it snows. Not only does it provide a cool backdrop. but the birds access to food becomes limited (or they believe it will be limited anyway), and whether or not they are truly starving, they tend to get a little more aggressive about the food... which makes for some very cool photos. Plus, when you put out seed on a snowy day, you get a greater variety of birds willing to eat the seed. Yes, i know, it sounds cruel, but we've got a mutually beneficial relationship here.... they get fresh seed thrown out on top of the snow that otherwise would not have been there and i get some cool photos. Here was my favorite from today... the male house finches were out in droves. I usually see the females, but the males can be a bit more illusive. |