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The Creation of Mother Goose

"The Creation of Mother Goose" Detail shots below!

It wasn’t until I got home from shooting and was 2 hours into my edit that I realized the birds in my picture were geese. That had just not computed before. I kept calling them ducks, until I suddenly realized they were not ducks nor were they swans. With that realization came the excited exclamation that I have literally turned myself into Mother Goose. I love fairy tales, I love nursery rhymes, I love Mother Goose. I am one happy camper. My original intent had been to create an image with birds taking over the top part of the character’s body so that she was transforming into them, and adding the goose factor was icing on the cake :P

About to ride home after my super fun shoot!

I got a bike the other day so that I could ride to some nearby shoot locations, and I did just that upon creating this image. I put on my antique dress, and then my camera backpack, my tripod slung over my shoulder, and then my big black cloak over top of all that. I hopped on my new shiny red bike and went the few blocks to my neighborhood park. It was a rare overcast day so I was thrilled to be out shooting at a decent hour in the morning, instead of the usual 6am. So, leisurely, at about 10:30am, I rode off to take a self-portrait.

They strategically eluded me by swimming behind this fence. Smart buggers!

These 3 never left each other :)

I had this idea in mind, but wasn’t sure of where I would shoot it. I had the option of a hill, a field, the woods, etc…there are a lot of good nature options near my apartment. I got to work first taking pictures of the ducks (and geese). I kept walking towards them until they would flap their wings so that I could use those pictures to layer together for my self-portrait. As I was shooting the birds I looked down the little stream and saw how beautifully dark it was. It looked incredibly cinematic, the way the light was illuminating the entrance and got darker the further down the tunnel you looked. I decided that would be a fantastic spot to shoot, but I didn’t know if it would work for this picture.

My fear was that it would be too busy, but my excitement came from wanting to use that location which I had not utilized before. I nearly shied away from it, wondering if I would be able to separate subject from background enough to make the image pop. I did a couple of things in preparation. First, I made sure to choose an f/stop that was around f/4, that way I could create subject/background separation with depth of field. The other thing I did was to make sure I stood where the light was still hitting fairly brightly, which allowed the background to naturally fall into darkness. Finally, I used some creative editing to darken the background even more and get rid of the natural contrast between highlight and shadow in the surrounding areas.

As I started to layer the birds on, things were headed for a hilarious turn…my body had turned into half human, half geese, the results of which I still burst into laughter at. As I started to weave the birds together, I loved the chaos that started happening. All along I thought it would compete with the background, and in some ways it did, but in other ways it made the picture more interesting. I was absolutely sure that I wanted to add a pop of color, and when I saw this little Blue Jay following me around, I made sure to snap his picture and add him in for a much needed break from monotones.

Detail shot of the Blue Jay that I joyfully added to my picture!

A detail shot of all the birdies interwoven together in the final image. Click to see it bigger.

 

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Live Passionately

“Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.” – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Passion can easily turn into a word that is so often thrown out into the world, uttered by people who seem to have a distinct lack of passion or by people who say it so often, that it loses its meaning. The word is, to me, so woven into my vocabulary that I have to be careful not to over-use it. I need to keep my “passioning” in check so that people don’t think I am a hippie who has gone off the deep end. To me though, passion is my heartbeat, my life-blood, the thing that keeps me moving.

I believe with everything that I have that if you have passion, you have a unique road to walk down. If you have passion, you are already five steps ahead of the game. Passion breeds motivation. To be passionate about something means that you want something, and to have desire is the one thing that will push you to succeed. I believe that the most successful people are the ones who have passion for what they do, or for their end goal.

There are people who believe that they have no passions in life, that they are simply coasting. I marvel at how untrue that must be. To think that a human being, with so much intelligence and will to live, could not have a single passion. The only answer must be that they simply have not yet found it, given the amount of things to explore in this world. I have always had passion out the ears, not for photography but for life in general. As a child I would climb trees in the back yard, talk to bumble bees like they could hear me, look out at the view from a tall tree and just be in awe. From that very young age, probably 8 or 9, I would sit in trees in my yard and write in a notebook, writing down little stories here and there, and just feeling so grateful that life existed. I’m sure I didn’t think anything so meaningful back then, but the sentiment was there. I was happy, content, full of love, and, as much as an 8 year old can be, full of passion.

I know that finding passion isn’t so easy for everyone. In fact, I might even say that I am a serial “passioner”. I am passionate about being passionate. I love to love. In this way, it was and is easy for me to find things to be passionate about. Sometimes the desire to find your passion will lead you to it. Sometimes simply asking yourself what you love is enough to guide you. I have done that three times in my life. The first time was when I was about 16 years old. I thought I wanted to be a writer. I thought, specifically, that I wanted to be a journalist. However, I only thought that because I was under the impression that only journalists make a living from writing. At that point a light bulb went off. I realized that even if that statement were true, it didn’t matter. I realized in a flash that even if journalists were the only paid writers (what a silly thought now!) then I would make my own path and be a full-time fiction writer.

A year later things changed and I re-evaluated my passion. Yes, I loved writing more than anything but I had recently found filmmaking. It was a new and exciting path, and I eat, breathed, and dreamed about filmmaking. It became my obsession, and I went on to study it in college. I also studied English and creative writing, but I felt a visual medium was my way to go. The entire time I was in college though, filmmaking never felt right. I felt passion for thinking up ideas for movies, and for the final product, but not at all for the process. I tried to force it, but forcing passion only leads to a distinct lack of passion. Three years later I graduated college and found myself with an opportunity…photography.

I had never properly tried photography before, and suddenly (overnight, really) found that photography checked all of the boxes that I was looking for. It was visual, it was a solo-endeavor, it allowed me to “write” stories every single day for new images…it was my heart beat in life. It became my obsession just like filmmaking and writing, but this time it was different…it felt real, it felt right. It gave me energy and it ignited something in me that I didn’t know was possible: meaning, purpose…

Edgar Allen Poe once said, “With me poetry has not a purpose, but a passion.”

I understand this sentiment and I feel similarly, despite what I just said. You see, putting those stories into the world gives me purpose in life, but the act of creating is a whole other thing entirely. The act of creating is the driving force in my life. To create is to explore myself and my inner-workings. To explore myself and discover what makes me tick is not my purpose in life, it is my passion. My passion fuels my purpose, and that is the best reason I can think of to pursue your passion as your career. I try to allow every decision I make to come out of passion. That is not to say without reason, as so many people think they are mutually exclusive. Passion is what makes me tick, what keeps me going; reason is what keeps me afloat…how do I say, financially.

It isn’t always easy mixing passion with your living. I think the number one thing stopping people from making the move is fear of finances. You get out of school, you have a job, and your lifestyle becomes reliant on that job to live. How, then, does one move away from that steady income to simply jump head-first into your passion. I wish I had a good answer to that, but all I can do is share what I have done. People often say to me, “So, you just quit your job and started photography?” The answer is not so simple, but almost. When I graduated college, I worked two jobs in the following year. First I worked as a receptionist at a production company, and then got hired as a legal assistant at a big movie studio. Better pay, gut-wrenchingly un-passionate work. I knew I wouldn’t last because my heart wasn’t in it…in fact, it was so far away that I had to rip myself out of my car each morning to walk into work.

However, I knew it was temporary. I never once entertained the thought that I would not be an artist. Instead, I looked at it as a fact. I had been doing photography for a solid year at that point, and I wanted it badly. So for that first year I was out of college I lived on as little money as I possibly could. We scaled down, we did what we had to, and all so that I could become a full-time photographer. I saved as much money as I could and after one year of working in the “real world” I stepped out into my fantasy and I became a photographer. I made sure to have enough money saved that I could live for a year, assuming I wouldn’t make any money as a photographer.

It seems strange to write about passion and then write about money. I mean, isn’t it taboo to put those two words in the same sentence? The fact is that I really would just be a crazy hippie if I only said that passion is all you have to have. If I shouted from the rooftops for everyone to just up and quit their jobs with no plan, only passion, I’d have a whole lot of people angry with me for giving such illogical advice. Money won’t get you to where you need to go, this is a fact. Passion will get you to where you need to go, this is a fact. Passion is the end-all be-all of life. If you have it, you will get there. I knew while working a job that I hated that I had enough passion for art to withstand it. I set goals for myself, gave myself deadlines, and did everything in my power to get there.

Passion carves the road for you in life. If you let passion guide you, the road might be bumpy and untraveled, but by the end of it the journey will have been glorious.

The road that you take in life should not be one that is already paved, but instead one that you carve yourself. An adventure.

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April Contest Winners! Theme: Emotion

Well, let’s get right down to business! The theme for the contest this month was “EMOTION”, and boy did that theme go over well. What I have concluded is that emotion is such a wonderful place to draw inspiration from, and there was no lack of it in this round of images submitted. Our guest judge for the April contest was Jeremy Cowart, and he wrote to me noting the near impossibility of choosing winners because of the enormous pool of talent that submitted pictures. We did, however, come to a conclusion…and here are the winners and honorable mentions!

1st Place Winner: “Melancholy” by Maryanne Gobble

"Melancholy" by Maryanne Gobble

Brooke: The first thing that I love and appreciate about the image is the framing. I love how he sits in the top third of the frame while the rest is left as empty space. This helps drastically to amplify the lonely feeling that you get from it. His body language says so much in the way that it is balled up, as though he is protecting himself. This is a pose that so many people can relate to, and so the picture opens up to allow our own emotions to seep in. The entrapment happening from the grass is the extra clincher to turn this into something really special. Everything draws the viewer’s eye in toward the subject, and we yet are aware of the negative space at the same time. The black and white works so well here, furthering the feeling of melancholy as implied in the title.

Jeremy: This photo is just original. I’ve never seen this before. I have no idea how it was accomplished either. It’s beautiful, it’s sad and makes me ask all kinds of questions. I love the composition as well. Extremely intriguing. I find myself wanting to see the rest of the stills behind this story….

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The Journey, not the Result

A selection of my older works. 2009.

The other day I was looking back through my Flickr stream with friends and we all sort of laughed about some of my earlier pictures. Some were pretty comical and didn’t reflect my style at all, while others showed promise and provided a light as to where my style might go. Someone asked me, “Why don’t you delete these pictures?” She was referring to some of the more comical images that I’m sure are often seen as downright bad. I thought for a moment, and then explained something that I find to be very important as an artist: GROWTH.

I believe that there is nothing more important than experiencing growth as an artist. If someone creates consistent work, that is a wonderful feat but it often means two things: the artist isn’t pushing him or herself to grow, or they aren’t interested in getting better. It is quite obvious that when looking at a body of work some will be old and some will be new. Some will be better than others, and some will be downright bad. It is an easy temptation to give into to delete what is bad and keep what is good. Especially with the internet, hitting the delete button is an entirely easy process and if you change your mind, you can upload again with similar ease.

There are so many people out there who delete their early work, and might continue to do so until they no longer create since what you create today will inevitably become earlier work in the end. I have nothing against artists doing this, but I do find it to be sad when suddenly that part of their history is no longer documented. Sometimes when I go on Flickr to check out someone who I’ve been following for a couple years I’ll find their entire portfolio to be gone, nothing left but a few new images. It doesn’t take long to forget where they came from and what their work used to look like, and with those lost memories often goes the desire to follow what they do. I am well aware that something created in 2008 is not indicative of an artist’s 2012 images, but I still love to see the journey they followed to get here.

Being an artist, to me, is so much about the journey that one takes. The path one follows to get to where they want to go. And what I find even more admirable is knowing that you will never get to where you want to go. For me, the ultimate perfection in creation is understanding that the journey of getting to perfection is what makes art fulfulling. We can all answer easily enough what we want our art to look like, but it is a whole other beast entirely to make it look that way. Trying, failing, picking the pieces up and trying again…that is the heart of creating art. That is what I live for.

I love looking back at my older work from time to time. I give my Flickr stream a good look through at least a couple times a year. I love reminiscing and looking at old pictures, remembering how they were created or funny stories that happened along the way…like the time I stuffed myself in a freezer (or an oven, or a trash can, or a shopping cart, or a dryer…), or the times that I stuffed myself into the walls of my apartment, a concept I still love to reinvent. I especially love looking back to how dark I could be, and by doing so I rediscover my love for dark art. There is a lesson in every image that I look back on, and while I might not want to always repeat those images in the future, they teach me all I need to know about what I do and don’t want to accomplish. They are my past, my mistakes, my triumphs, and I would never want to lose that documentation, however embarrassing it might be, for anything in the world.

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Moving Forward

 

I didn’t shoot this as a professional project, just something lovely that makes my heart flutter. So often I find myself in situations that I wish I could capture as perfectly as I feel them, but of course that is a nearly impossible task because I can never quite relay just how much I feel, or how much beauty I see. The camera can never seem to capture it the way I feel it. That is one reason why I take my photography beyond what I capture naturally into a realm that is otherworldly. Those worlds are distinctly different from our world, but they play out in my mind all the time. I feel at home in them.

This video, while it is not a representation of my still imagery, seemed to capture a certain feeling that loops in my mind. The image of a lone girl running in a field, not necessarily away from anything or towards something, just running. Always going, always coming, always moving. Movement is an important element of my photos. There is something about the way a breeze can hit a girl’s hair, or the way a dress looks as the wind catches it, that I find so intriguing. It says to me that even though everything seems calm in the world, there are always invisible elements at work making you wonder…what else is there?

As I watched her run away in the field, the time of day nearly nightfall, I could see her run out of focus through my camera and I dared not look up to see the real thing. I wanted to believe she was out of focus, moving into a land that was unexplored. How dreamy, I couldn’t help but think, to move into a realm where everything is blurred, where we don’t know left from right or up from down. To learn new rules for a new world…how beautifully foreign that sounds.

I watch this and relate this to so many different journies through life, some big and some small, and all important. Sometimes it doesn’t matter where you are going, as long as you’re moving forward. She keeps running out of view, towards what we don’t know, but towards something we are sure. I try everyday to have a new adventure, to wake up and tell myself that the day will be wonderful if I allow it to be, and I wish very much that every day of my life to come I feel the same way. I hope that my mind is always a haven for the character in this video, and I hope even more that I myself can be that character every waking, and sleeping, moment of my life.

 

“Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you,you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.”

- Winnie the Pooh -

 

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An Accidental Wedding…I Swear!

So, you know how last month I posted that big wedding photography blog (found here!) where I stated emphatically that I would never do more wedding photography…well, it turns out I lied, but not on purpose! My friend Sonalii texted me on a Tuesday and asked if I would come to her rather spur-of-the-moment wedding at a courthouse on Thursday. I was super excited to go and packed my camera just in case, but truly was just going to watch my friend on the biggest day of her life. When I got there I was a bit nervous as usual to be in a group of people I didn’t know, so I didn’t hesitate to ask Sonalii if she wanted me to grab my camera from the car and snap a few shots.

This truly wasn’t planned in any way, we didn’t do anything formal, and I just tried to document a little bit of what happened on the day so that she would have something special. The issues I ran into were, first and foremost, having a less than attractive courthouse to work with. The couple, Sonalii and Jack, looked absurdly gorgeous to the point where everywhere they went everyone stopped and stared. It was like watching two supermodels get married. That was the easy part of the photography.

An unedited view of the wedding chapel

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European Workshop Tour!

I will be taking my “Storytelling & Compositing” workshops international in August with a 4-country tour across Europe. My workshops are for anyone from absolute beginner to the advanced photographer. You will walk away knowing how to seamlessly edit multiple images together, but also with a new sense of how to find inspiration…and most importantly, your own style. This is an 8 hour class where I will go through my entire process from start to finish, doing demos, shooting models, editing in Photoshop, sharing before/after images, and dissecting Photoshop files. We will do several inspiration exercises, portfolio reviews, and everyone will receive 1-1 help. A no-fluff overview of how the fine art photography business works will be shared. Everyone will receive a thorough editing DVD to take home. Each guest will walk away with several unique images from the day.

Here are the workshop cities and dates. When you click through, you will find detailed information (overview, schedule, price) as well as a space to register for the class.

BERLIN, GERMANY                                                                                   July 29

AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS                                             August 4

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND                                                                       August 11

 LONDON, ENGLAND                                                                             August 18

New date added:

      LONDON, ENGLAND                                                                              August 19      

 

Thanks!! :-D

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The Process of Shooting 3 Images

I recently had the pleasure of shooting one of the most perfect dresses I can imagine. Now normally I don’t pay huge attention to wardrobe in the sense that I am not shooting fashion. I care very much about the costume my model wears, but I don’t get overly excited about a gorgeous dress or some piece of high fashion. This dress, however, was pretty much my dream rolled into a big piece of fabric. It had a pirate flair and enough fabric to cover my car entirely with just the train.

Okay, enough gushing about the dress. I was able to shoot with Lindsay Adler, one of my closest friends, out in an expansive field where we shot this behind the scenes video:

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The Business of Creativity

More and more I have been spending my time thinking about business and all of the things that go into it. That is not to say that I have been spending my time less on creativity. I still go out shooting every other day or so, I think of new concepts constantly, and I feel inspired all the time. However, instead of spending so much of my time flubbing, which is the word I’ll use for doing things that are not in the least bit productive (yes, I made it up), I have been thinking about how I can turn that time into a business opportunity. And when I say “business opportunity”, that is code for creative opportunity. Any business venture that I embark on allows me, in the end, to be even more creative in different ways. It is a portal to reach and interact with new people or in different ways, which always lets my creativity flow.

I used to think of business as being a bad thing for the creative soul. After all, there is a certain pride that comes with being a “starving artist”. I used to think of creativity as being only for those people who just “have it” in them and were born with it. I used to separate business and creativity into two very different and mutually exclusive categories. I am realizing more and more that they can be the same thing if you are open to thinking of them in the same way. I believe that the most successful people in life are those who are both business-oriented and creative. If you learn to see everything in a creative way, nothing seems out of bounds.

I am a creative person I would say. I have always thought of myself in that way because of the fact that I love doing activities that challenge my storytelling sensibilities. I love art of all kinds, and have previously thought of myself as a writer, filmmaker, and now photographer. This definition of creativity, however, is only the most commonly accepted definition. There is so much more to creativity that if we allow ourselves to think about creativity in different ways, we will all-around be more creative people.

Creativity can be taught just as inspiration can be taught. I will often have this debate with people who think that you have to be born with creativity in order to do creative things. On a very regular basis, because of teaching workshops, people will say “I’m just not creative”. To that, I say no way. I believe that anyone can be taught to work the creativity that is inside, no matter how deeply it is buried within. Absolutely I believe that some people are naturally more inclined to use their creative muscles, but just like any muscle, it has to be worked out in order for it to be useful. Creativity is not limited to those who are naturally creative and it is not off limits to those who are not. Business people as well as artistic people can be equally creative.

Back to seeing everything creatively – I believe that is the key to success. I believe that any situation or problem has a creative solution, and the more you can see solutions in a creative way, the more problems will be solved. Here is an example: I was applying once in college to be an RA (where you monitor the students in dorm rooms) and we were given different problems to solve to test how well we would handle different situations. One of the questions we were given was about how to assign blame to a certain situation. I answered that either no one should receive blame or everyone should. The rest of the students in my group were outraged that I answered the question in this way because the rules said to “assign blame” and I didn’t pick one person. I didn’t get the job…

…But I still stick to my answer, because not only did it fall within the rules of the question, it also answered how I felt it should be answered. I approach my everyday life in the same way. I answer questions however I feel they should be answered without concern about the “right” answer or “wrong” answer, or even if it falls within the “rules”. I believe that the rules that exist will constantly bend, break, and transform as we grow as people. I believe this in full effect with regard to photography, both creative and business. I believe that photography as we know it will always transform (especially to make room for digital capabilities) and the business of photography will have no bounds. When I think about different business opportunities, I try never to think about what others have done and how I can follow in their footsteps.

I try to make up my own answers to questions that have already been asked.

Sometimes I find myself watching another photographer’s career and thinking how I’d like to do something similar, but I try never to think that I’d like to do the same thing. I always believe that there is a new path to follow, a new way to find personal happiness. The business of creativity is something so personal that I love all of the avenues I have opened up for myself just by believing they are possible. The more creative I get with how I think about business, the more I find myself with creative business opportunities. They don’t always appear out of thin air (in fact they never do). I have to create them, and that is the core of creative business…literally, creating business. And the beautiful thing is that anyone can do it, and there are no rules, regulations, or people saying that it is wrong.

Isn’t that the most liberating thing to embrace?

Ebay Auction: Nikon D80, Lenses, Extras

I never thought this day would come, but I finally feel like I can part with my old camera. I got a new one a year ago and my Nikon D80 has been sitting on a shelf ever since. I’m sad to see it go since I took my very first pictures on there, all the way up until March 2011, but I’m letting it go into better hands who will use it well to create awesomeness!

I have put it on Ebay for a starting price of $395. The package contains: Nikon D80, 50mm f/1.8 lens, 18-55mm lens, 2 batteries, 3 wireless remotes, camera strap, battery charger, and camera bag.

Everything is in working condition, but some things are worn. Example: the side cover for the camera is missing, as pictured below. The lens cap for the 50mm lens is missing. The side zippers on the camera bag are broken. Not pictured: battery charger. Also pictured are my 3 favorite images I got to take with the D80. Please see pictures below, and if you like, you can bid here. Thanks a bunch!