One Word

One Word Project from Christine Sneddon on Vimeo.

One of the websites I visit frequently for inspiration and general pleasure is The Shutter Sisters.  It was started by several women obsessed by photography, and it features wonderful images, thoughtful words, and a mindful view of the world around us that I really appreciate.  There's a flickr group, and other great related sites to explore.  But one of my favorites is their "One Word Project", where they offer weekly prompts for photography that could really serve for any creative expression.

Chris Sneddon, one of the founding Shutter Sisters, put together a lovely video of photos that various members have taken to illustrate their chosen word for the month.  It's lovely, and inspirational, and it does remind you -- well, me, anyway-- that the power of stating an intention is a powerful thing.

So enjoy, and if you like what you see, pop on over to the site or the flickr group for more beautiful photos.  And happy weekend!

Mid-November

While I work on cleaning up the mess in my studio (you know, so I can start making NEW messes), here's a picture to celebrate autumn. 

Stay warm and cozy!

Photoshop's Cutout Filter

Renate asked how I use Photoshop to help me define areas of color (which I mentioned when I described how I made my "Midsomer Tomato" quilt above, so I thought I'd demonstrate here. 

First, you start with a photo.  Here's one of some hydrangea florets that I took a few summers ago.

I open it in Photoshop, and go to the "filters" menu, then under the "Artistic" filter options, choose "cut out."  It selects color areas for you. One click, and voila:

When you choose the "cut out" filter,  a menu will pop up that will allow you to slide bars to select edge fidelity, color complexity, and the like.  You can slide them back and forth to see what they do, but they provide various ways of adding or subtracting detail.  If you bear in mind that you're going to try to use the color areas you see as pieces of fabric, you'll remember that keeping it simple while including just the detail you need is the goal.  Here's a simpler version of the same image:

Remember, you can add back detail with thread wok.  So maybe all you want is a fabric base on which to thread paint more color and detail?  Or maybe you want the fabric to do the work, so you'll want more detail?  It's up to you. 

Once I get to this point, I print out the image at what I want the finished size to be.  (I often have to do this by taping 8 x 11 sheets together because that's all my printer will do.)  Then, with a black relatively heavy-line black sharpy, I trace the color areas.

Here's a shot of the tomato one:

You can see that I take each color (in the tomato case, I had reds, blues, and greens) and I assign Dark, Light and Medium value labels. 

Then I trace the whole thing onto tracing paper, and then I trace pattern shapes and assemble from there using the marked image as my guide.  It's sort of tedious but it's really fun to see the picture taking shape.  I don't follow this slavishly -- it's meant to be a fabric painting, after all, not a paint-by-number project. So use your artistic judgment and have fun.

I should add that I never use Photoshop Elements so I don't know if Elements as a "cutout" filter.  Sometimes there is a filter called Posterize that can do similar things. 

Cropping instead of cutting

 

What you see here is what has become of this piece of painted and stencilled fabric so far.   I cut up the fabric, fused and stitched it onto a ground, and have applied a few more birds and some machine quilting.  I decided to work extra big, figuring I'd sort out the final size and shape later.  

So yesterday, after folding and pinning for a while with the thing up on the design wall, it occurred to me that taking a photo and playing with different crops would make this decision so much easier.  I just LOVE my digital camera.  

So I started with a basic ordinary crop.

How would it look with less green on the sides but more on the bottom? Hmmmm.

What about square?

 Maybe even more green at the bottom?

Maybe off center?

Perhaps a tight crop that cuts off elements ....

So far, the second one down strikes me as a balance I like but it's ordinary.  To my surprise, the last one with cut off bits has the most energy to me. I will mull on this for a while.  What do you think?

Wanna Play?

Happy Mother's Day to my mom, and to all of the great moms out there -- and of course to the great kids who've made us the mothers we are!

And because I'm celebrating Mother's Day by, among other things, NOT doing the tidying and house stuff I would normally do, I thought I'd share a scene from the dining room yesterday.  When I came home from the quilt retreat, I piled the two quilts I'd machine quilted on the dining room table -- and Willow immediately made herself right at home.
 

And Willow up on the table meant that Gemma, our black lab mix, was circling the table, thinking that Willow might want to play.  NOT.

"I said, NO."

Wait, where'd she go?

Is she over there?

 

She's down there again.  NO, I don't want to play.

I think it'll be a stand-off.  Or make that "sleep-off."  (Excuse the blur.)

Music in the Air

When I looked out the bedroom window yesterday morning, I found this music note floating in the sky. 

Amazing, isn't it?  I think it's a sign. 

Our Healdsburg Chorus concerts start tonight and we are performing a few times between now and April 18.  Our first concert is at a local Salvation Army rehab facility where the audience, although literally captive, is always enthusiastic. 

Worth A Thousand Words

Christmas, in a nutshell.  May yours be filled with twinkling lights, and delicious food, and sweet music, and happy memories, and loving friends and family.

Scenes from a craft fair

On Saturday I headed out to go to an arts and crafts fair on the plaza here in town. Despite the heat, it was a wonderful day to stroll and look at beautiful creations. I had my camera with me and had a good time taking pictures (a good way to bring home so many of the lovely things I saw!)

Look at the beautiful colors and textures on this pottery:

 

And more from the same artist:

 

(You can see more of this potter's work here.)  

The potter's chair was as colorful and graphic as her pottery.

At a different pottery booth, I saw these wonderful little hands.  I'd love a grouping of these!

There was an occasional breeze, bringing attention to this wonderful booth full of scarves:

And of course there were dogs.

The face painting booth was a magnet for all ages.

No, I didn't get my face painted.  But I had a very fun time nonetheless.

Photowalk in San Diego

When we were in San Diego a few weeks ago, my friend Mel and I found ourselves in a lovely neighborhood of craftsman-style cottages.  We started talking about how we wished we'd brought our cameras, and then it occurred to us that we could dash home, grab our cameras, and have a photography walk through the neighborhood!  We spent a lovely few hours strolling around taking pictures.  Here are some of the photos I took that afternoon:

Up Close

I love roaming the garden with the macro lens on my camera.  It's a whole new perspective on life.

Imaginary trip to Vancouver

Wishing you were in Vancouver to see the Olympics in person?  Take a look at this slideshow of pictures on Flickr in the Vancouver 2010 Olympics group pool ... You can pretend they're your very own vacation shots...

Spring Comes to Healdsburg

 

The sun is shining and our little plum tree is starting to bloom.  Spring is here!

Staging Life

Whenever I run across it, I pick up an issue of Artful Blogging, a relatively new (and, as far as I can tell, irregular) Somerset Studios publication. It’s a fun magazine, with excerpts of beautiful blogs and good blogging inspiration – something for which I have dire need (as you might have noticed from the sparse entries lately).

So, I dive into the magazine and the first article is all about photo staging. The point of the article, I guess, is to help folks create photos to convey the imagery they want to feature on their blogs. Wait, I thought, people “create” those vignettes? You mean those aren’t photographic glimpses of what their real lives look like?

This reminds me of the sheepish shock I felt years ago while taking a black and white photography course (in the “before digital” days of darkrooms and film winding and all.) We were all novices, trying to get artistic composition and good black and white tones and the right exposure, all at the same time. One woman in the class printed out a lovely picture of a sweet household scene – a weathered cane chair, a small pair of rainboots leaning drunkenly to one side, a casual bouquet of daffodils wrapped in paper and resting on the chair. Silly, naive me – I looked at the shot and thought “Wow, she took that great picture AND she has that great scene in her house.” In my mind, I imagined the wonderful, cozy, picture-book life she must have with daffodils just lying about with such casual whimsy. I could just smell the cookies baking and sense the gingham curtains that surely must have decorated the charming life that went along with that picture.

And then, of course, the woman started talking about how she arranged the shot and posed everything Just So to get the right lighting and shadows, and how she moved the chair from another room, and found the rainboots at a local thrift store for use as a photo prop. Boy, were my illusions shattered. It never occurred to me that you (I mean, I) could do that! Isn’t that, um, cheating?

Here it is years later, and I’ve taken a lot of photographs. But I’ve never mastered the art of staging a photo to get a picture that looks real and spontaneous ... truthfully, it still feels vaguely like cheating so I never really try. And as I’ve pondered this idea over the years, I realize that it undoes what it is I like about photography – the frozen moment of reality, the wonderful discovery of some real moment in time, the discovery of beauty or happiness in some small detail. It’s using the camera to find something artful that appeals to me – as opposed to creating something artful and using the camera to document the creation.

This means, of course, that when I see those great shots of people sitting on victorian sofas in the middle of wheat fields, yes, I do like thinking that somewhere, there’s a couch in the middle of a field because it just IS there. I don’t want to think about it being hauled out there, just to be a prop. I want life to have sofas in fields, I guess. It gives me hope about the magical, unanticipated gifts just waiting out there for us.

The picture above, by the way, is a scene from real life -- not exactly a sofa in a field, but close enough for me.

Zinnia Heaven

Last week, I visited at my mom and dad's house while Caroline attended a near-by day camp. In my folks' neighborhood, there's a guy who plants about an acre or so of land with a vast garden - tomatoes and vegetables and flowers. From about mid-summer on, he runs a small farm stand on the corner where you can get all sorts of varieties of heirloom tomatoes, squashes, eggplants, lettuce, and more...



But oh, it's the flowers that get me. He has rows and rows of zinnias and dahlias and flowers whose names I don't know -- but I can prowl around there with my camera and have a good old time.



So , here are a few zinnias for you...



They're just the happiest flowers.

Summer Surprises

Remember that appellate brief I mentioned, that was going to take up a good hunk of my time? POSTPONED. Good news and bad news both, really -- I can play now, but it'll come back one of these days.

So, instead of sitting at my computer doing legal work, I've been fiddling with Photoshop and layers and textures. Wow -- a whole new avenue for play. I know I've barely scratched the surface when it comes to the things one can do with Photoshop, but right now the texture thing is keeping me engrossed. This shot, by the way, is one I took in Old Orchard Beach, on the coast of Maine. It was a gray rainy day and everything was deserted, and I love how it looks like a faded old postcard.

Lest you think I've been at my computer all week, I've been earning my Nursing merit badge. My sister, who lives alone in a charming little house across town, has had some unexpected minor health things so I've escorted her to the local emergency room, doctor's appointments, and the odd test and pharmacy-run. I've even figured out how to arrange cushions on her small living room floor to make quite a cozy bed so I can stay the night, and we've had a few sister sleep-overs. She's doing fine but it's nice to know we have each other for these curve-ball episodes.

I'm still mulling and sketching about "passion" for the upcoming 12x12 theme. Yikes -- time is running out. I think I'll be diving into fabric tomorrow. It has been a hard theme for all of us this time. Be sure to check the 12x12 blog on August 1 to see what we've each come up with!

Bokeholic delight

One of the things that I love about photography is that it makes me see the world differently. Even when I don't have my camera with me, I find myself noticing lines and colors and things that would make a great picture.

I snapped this macro shot of a bottle brush bloom in my friend's backyard. I grew up in a neighborhood where lot of people had these in their yards, and I disliked them because they give off a sticky substance that I inevitably got in my hair when I ran and played under them. But they're amazing and interesting blooms, and I had a great time taking macro pictures of them.

I love bokeh. That blurry, spotty, glowy background? The photographic term is "bokeh." I'm a bokeh-holic.

The Little Things

I can't seem to stop taking pictures of the fruit trees that are blooming around our neighborhood. I'm in love with the soft billows of white and pink I see see from afar, with the delicate fragrance of spring flowers as I stand under a blossoming tree, with the gentle buzz of the bees dancing among the blossoms, with the drifts of petals that have floated on the breeze to the ground below.

But most of all, I love looking at each individual blossom. They're so small, yet so different. Some are ruffly and jaunty, some are perfectly formed and upright, some droop or have petals flopping... But they're all little masterpieces, and when I get up close with my macro lens, I lose myself.

I suppose it's no accident that focusing on one tiny flower provides a bit of mental rest. Isn't there some Zen saying that applies here?! Most days I'm adrift in a sea of small details -- household stuff, and what homework Caroline has due this week, and what phone calls need to be made, and bits of clutter that accumulate around the house whenever I turn my back. Perhaps it's a lesson -- take one detail at a time, focus on it up close, take care of it, and then move to the next detail.

Take life one blossom at a time. Perhaps I've coined a t-shirt. :-)

In Bloom

The fruit trees are starting to bloom, and there are clouds of pink brightening many of the streets in town. Our flowering plum tree is showing off a stunning color, and I can't resist taking picture after picture...



after picture...



after picture...



They're just so... pink.

Expect Happiness

I know, another photograph of a random child from my day at the zoo ... I promise, I'm not going to start shoving pictures of babies and kittens at you (oops, I HAVE done the kitten shots, haven't I? Can rainbows be far behind?)

As I've been working through the pictures I took at the zoo last week, I keep stopping at this one. We were at an exhibit where owls, hawks, and other big birds one doesn't usually get to see up close were on display, and I was happily photographing birds. As I turned, I saw this sweetheart posing for her big brother, and she sat waiting and smiling while he fiddled with his camera. I simply couldn't resist photographing that lovely expression.

What stuns me in this picture is this girl's happy expectancy. You can tell that she's looking at someone she loves, can't you? She looks so open, and eager, and yet totally relaxed.

So she's my poster for another resolution for the year: remember to expect happiness. Look forward with a smile, not with fear or worry. When we expect happiness, we will find it.

Starting the New Year with Joy

A few days ago, we went to the zoo for the day. It'd been a few years since we'd been there, and we had a grand time strolling around, watching the animals, and taking pictures. Perhaps because I was armed with my camera, I found myself looking at things a bit differently -- and I started thinking that watching the people was actually more entertaining than watching the animals. It's certainly a great place to find a lot of smiling kids, that's for sure.

This one adorable little girl caught my eye as she was blowing bubbles with her grandma. I snapped a few pictures, and the sheer happiness on her face in this one just takes my breath away. So I've decided that this will be my "goal" picture for the coming year -- to remember to enjoy the moment, to let myself be surprised and delighted by the little things that happen each day.

I wish I could send this picture to this girl's parents, to tell them how much her spontaneous smile inspires me.