Cage Match - Inspiration vs The Rules of Composition

taken with my iPhone 5

Some of the best photographers I know use an iPhone.  Its a question not of technique or of expensive equipment but of connecting, of speaking from the soul.  Art speaks to us on a higher level of who we are underneath it all, of who we strive to become.  And no amount of technique being imposed upon a scene will evoke that same emotional connection.  I've always found that those with training who do manage to achieve that connection do it in spite of their training and "the rules" rather than because of it.  If rules were all it took then a computer could create something that would make the masses weep or hold their breaths in awe or dance with euphoric joy.

Yesterday at one of the co-op galleries I'm involved with I had the misfortune to overhear a couple of artists critiquing someone else's work.  The gal who's work was being debated is a lovely woman who's always very positive and very warm, and it shows in her paintings.  All bright color and joy.  Yet because she wasn't traditionally educated (at least in the terms of other the artists I was listening to) they chose to go on about what was wrong with her pieces and how she could "improve"...  It made me sad that they were so closed minded.  I'd previously seen their pieces and found them to be uninspiring.

As a self-taught artist and photographer I've always been moved more by an "oh wow" moment than a set of guidelines when it comes to anything I create.  And frustrated by all the well-meaning people who suggest I join photo critic groups or take any type of traditional class.  Intuition has always been a surer guide for me than anyone else, but then I've always had problems with authority.  For me art is a moment of stillness, of meditation, and a set of rules for composition running through my head would get in the way.  Transcending the guidelines and move towards the center is always easier when the guidelines aren't there to begin with :-)

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Childhood Reinterpreted

  Its funny sometimes the things that bring back memories of childhood.  When I was a kid one of my favorite things were pansies.  They were one of the few flowers that would actually return year after year in the arid clay-based soil of our yard, the first to bloom, and the last to die off in the fall.  I used to collect the seeds and press the flowers for later use in whatever I could come up with.

During my forays to the garden store and the florist in an ongoing search of things to photograph I've always passed the rows of pansies by, opting for more exotic options than one of my beloved childhood friends. 

Well yesterday I looked at pansies again, today in the late morning sunlight I photographed, and here they are, reinterpreted through my camera lens in shades of gold and crimson and deepest amethyst like stained glass.

I'm afraid I'm failing at finding a balance with my new job and the rest of my life.  At times I feel its consuming me, all my time and energy.  But then no one ever said that artists were creatures of moderation.

It occurs to me this evening, as I've spent the past two days pointedly ignoring anything to do with my day job, that perhaps I've been going about it the wrong way.  I function well in terms of extremes.  Perhaps instead of trying to fit all aspects of my life into a single day I should dedicate two days solid to my right brain and my art and the remaining five days to my left brain and systems administration.  Trying to fit both activities within the same day has been requiring a time buffer between the two that I simply don't have.





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If you could see what I see...

Sunflower

Marigold

If others could see what I see... 

Where a sunflower is electric and a marigold is like fire seen from above. 

Where a white kitchen wall shows blue by photo and a black dahlia is truly deep deep red. 

I wonder if it would change the way they see everything... 

From a sunrise to the flight of a bird to the texture of someone's knitted scarf. 









Special thanks to Babylon Floral for the flowers...

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Sails For Seeds

Most people think fall is about  landscapes, but I've always found the ultra blue sky throws the leaves into shadow with its brilliance.  And I don't get up early enough to catch the best light out in the country.

Fall for me is all about texture and patterns.  The feathery tufts that act as sails for seeds, carrying them on the breeze to new homes.  The rising and falling of a sea of grass.  The drying heads of thistle. 

Fall is all about the little details that most of us walk right by if we're not paying attention.

I spent the afternoon wandering around one of the local gardens in near freezing temperatures with drizzle and a brisk breeze.  Three layers of jackets, two with hoods, one knit hat, gloves,  knee-high socks with winged bunnies holding wrenches (love Sock It To Me socks!) and combat boots.  Oh and one very hot latte.  It was a glorious afternoon with everything still damp from the storm.

And towards the end of the afternoon, when my fingers where so cold I didn't dare swap camera lenses any more, on my way to get warm, I passed a wedding photographer leading a group of bridesmaids and a bride out into the wet to take photos.  Short skirts,  no jackets, and heels, with one girl running barefoot and carrying her shoes.  I decided I wasn't cold anymore :-)

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Argh! Marketing!

Public Aclaim

My Taste

On my ever ongoing journey of "let's try and make (or at least not lose as much) money on photography" I'm finding the most difficult thing isn't the finding of amazing subjects and the taking and subsequent processing of photos but the business side of things.  Specifically the marketing side.  Everyone can love a photo but unless they love it so much they crack open the piggy bank and actually buy a copy that love doesn't really help my bottom line.  Which is unfortunate. 
 

Its also an ongoing guessing game as to which of my shots people will like.  Pictures I absolutely love, that speak to me on a deep level, get little to no reaction when posted online or shown at events.  But shots that I almost didn't even post or include get rave reviews.  Very confusing.  Very frustrating.  Because if I cave to the demands of popularity I lose what I feel makes my work interesting.  And since evidently I'm not good at predicting what the general populus will like probably not a good road for me to go down.  And if I continue to do work that interests me I don't make money.  Catch 22.  

Good thing I have a day job!

SEO is another thing driving me batty right now.  Shows won't let me include my business name, but if google-ed my name doesn't tie back to my online gallery.  We've spent almost a year building up the business name and now I have to build up my name as well.  Argh and argh and there's a reason I fix networks for a living!

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Swirl Like Water

Swirl Like Water

More and more when I go out searching for flowers and plants to photograph its about my seeing the potential of items and bringing it out than finding the perfect flower.

And usually those items produce far more interesting final prints than that "perfect" flower.

Point in fact yesterday at Tagawa Gardens I picked up two crazy-looking air plants.  The name Google provided was Xerographica, a cluster of odd pale greenish gray tendrils.  They're hang suspended in my  loft on the same hooks that held my begonias at the first of the summer.  And when moved into the sun they illustrate a play of light and shadow in the swirls of the tendrils in pastels of grey and green, blue and maroon.

Like currents in the ocean almost...

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Thought of the week :: Art teaches us not just to look at the world but to take the time to actually see...

And once we start to see our entire perspective changes and our lives fill with wonder.  From the sparrow perched atop a traffic sign on the way to work to the poppies along the roadside.

And with my printed work to help other people to look at something as simple as a flower with awe, to begin to see it, and the world, as I do...

And judging by the amount of work I sold at a festival in its very first year, I think its just beginning...  Now if I can only find a balance between my new job and my art things will be better.  Because the lack of sleep caused by starting the new job the week before my first show can't be maintained.  :-)

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Morning Glory Bush

Yeah, only one...

I'm always amazed at the plants I find when I'm out and about.  From bi-colored gladiolus at the local Safeway to super exotic plants at the garden store its truly a new experience every day.  Granted the fact that I tend to get a bit crazy at the garden stores probably doesn't help.

The ironic thing is that when I go visit the garden store I'm usually intending to only purchase one thing.  Yeah...  Guess how often that happens....  On the bright side it allows me an ever-interesting and often unusual selection of flowers and leaves to photograph.  It has necessitated the transformation of our spare room into my plant storage area, as certain kitties like "salad".

Full shot of my morning glory bush

My most recent trip yielded, among other unusual plants like some kind of dahlia / black-eyed susan hybrid, a sugar maple, and something called a morning glory bush.  Now this morning glory bush came out of the pond section and is taller than I am.  I picked it because of its prolific crop of pink flowers.  Sadly the flowers didn't survive the trip home in the car with the AC on.  Luckily the plant put out happy new flowers within 24 hours of arriving home and being propped in one of my giant peace lilies in a bag full of water.

I'm sure I looked a bit odd carting my prize up the stairs this morning to the loft for its photographic debut.  It was so top-heavy I had to anchor it into an orchid pot and then prop the pot up using a ikebana kenzan and a Ganesh statue.  Pictures turned out nicely though.

Flowers on a Morning Glory Bush

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Crickets in the Morning

Up early on a Sunday as my morning to take lots of photos without the pressure of being late for work.  Granted with the current job that's not much of a concern but with my new job it might be.  We shall see.

Anyways, up at 7:30a, sitting out on the back deck waiting for the tea kettle to heat, listening to the little birds and the crickets.  One of the best things about late summer is the crickets in the morning (and at night too but definitely in the morning) and the smell of wet grass and the feel of fall on the cool morning air.  Its funny, but I can always start to feel fall coming in early August.

The light in the mornings changes this time of year.  It becomes more angular, less direct, at least up in the loft where I take pictures in the summer.  And the white lilies and the lisianthus and the dahlias.

Two weeks out from my first big show and I'm starting to feel the pressure.  Positive procrastination can only get one so far, and today's the day to order the prints.  We ended up getting a very nice art canopy from someone no longer in the business for a nice discount, the frames have arrived, and I'm expecting the business cards and matting any day now.  Seems surreal and yet not y'know.

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What do you mean I can't turn the kitchen into a full scale model..."

Mock-Up

They always say the first festival is the hardest. Six weeks out and I'm agreeing adamantly. Trying to pick a set number of photos that I feel best represents my work. Harder than it sounds with over 400 pieces currently on my website... And what I like isn't always representative of what other people like.  Trying to decide what size of prints and how many. (Having only sold smaller pieces up to this point the question becomes how big is too big...)

And I find myself having photographer's block. All these questions, and the current answer to most of them is "I don't know..."

Some of the blog articles on the subject say to pick a show piece that will draw people to your booth. Okay but which "show piece" to pick. I think ALL the photos on my site are varying degrees of awesome because they made it to the site. The mediocre ones didn't make it out of Bridge.

Trying to spec out the layout in Illustrator isn't giving me the perspective I need, and I somehow think the other occupants of the house might object to my turning the kitchen into a full scale model. Weirdos.  What's a girl to do but head to Home Depot, buy correctly-sized corner posts, and create a full scale model in the back yard.

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Wondering Why

Touch of Lotus

There are days I sit here and wonder why...  Why I bother to add all this stress into my life...  If I've lost my mind to complicate my life so...  Filing out LLC documents and submitting Articles of Organization, researching tax forms and accountants.  Attempting to pick only a few shots for submission in contests and for printing, for cards and prints, for display at art shows.  It fills my mind when I should be sleeping, haunts my days with to-do lists and deadlines, makes me hesitate (not too much though) buying the next set of plants to photo.

And then at the end of the day I sit down and finally put aside the organizational nightmare and actually get back to processing the photos I've taken the week before.  And find my inspiration again.

Sometimes there isn't "why" so much as "why not"...

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My First Event

This past week was my very first gallery-type event.  Local florist Abloom hosted a get together featuring five local artists.

I feel like a real grown-up artist now.. :-)

The whole thing was elating and stressful and probably good practice for my upcoming initiation into the world of art festivals in August.

The impossible choices of picking limited pieces to actually print for the show.  The logistics of getting everything assembled and transported over to the site.  The amount of time to get everything displayed.  (Double the original estimate and that was with Sterling's help.)  The last minute signing of limited edition paperwork and posting of prices.  Yikes!

While the event was wonderful, and I actually sold some pieces <shocked face>, I find that more and more often I almost have to divorce the process of taking the photos from the process of attempting to run a business marketing and selling said photos.  Its hard to feel inspired by flowers with a head full of accounting figures from working on my finance spreadsheets.  And when leading up to events its even harder to find the time to process pictures that have already been taken while trying to figure out if I have enough frames or if the matting will arrive on time.

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"May everyone be happy..."

"May Everyone Be Happy"

Quite a few people rave about my flower pictures, but what many don't realize is that the published photos are simply a by-product of what's really going on.

For me, the act of going to the garden store, to the florist, to local parks, is a continuing journey of surprises where I discover unexpected treasures around every corner.

And the act of taking the photos is a moving meditation. Outside concerns fade away, the ongoing to-do lists and nagging voices cease to exist, and in a way time itself stops.

The begonias hanging in my loft

This weekend was a perfect example of both finding unexpected treasures and moving meditation where time stops. On Friday there was a sale of annuals at Tagawa Gardens. I dropped by in the afternoon looking 1) to replace some plants that hadn't fared well during the hail storm earlier in the week and 2) to maybe find some tiger lilies already in flower. Instead I found hanging pot upon hanging pot of huge tuberous begonias. And I was hooked. Luckily they were on sale, so the damage to my credit card wasn't too severe. One of the store employees had to actually bring me another cart, and the amassed plants barely fit into my car for the ride home. Many petaled flowers feeling strongly of Japan and chrysanthemums in hues of coral and white, red and golden orange. This morning I spent over four hours taking photos, and yet it seemed only maybe 30 minutes. The petals shone, and the scalloped edges glowed in the early morning light. Even now I'm having a hard time with the clock-based time of 1 am, feeling like it should be maybe 8 or 9 pm. One blossom in particular was reminiscent of a line from a Buddhist chant " May everyone be happy..."

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Light Through Willow

An Indescribable "Something"

One can no more impose a technique in the dojo than impose a shot on a subject. They say in Zen that if you have to ask the question then you've missed the point, and that trying too hard is worse than not trying at all.  I've found this statement to be true is practically every situation.

So if you're asking what I mean by imposing technique then you're probably already trying the imposition.  Think of the difference between counting the steps as you dance and moving with the music...

Direct Light & Snoresville

The subject plant is the same in these two photos but one was forced and one wasn't.  And I have no idea what the plant called beyond something provided to me by the owner of Babylon Floral out of his yard :-)

With photography I've often found that if you go into a session or a shot with the intention of capturing a specific image you've already missed it. Granted you may capture a technically correct photo, but the essence, the soul, the je ne sais quoi will be markedly absent.  You might call it a downside to working with natural light.  Because you can't adjust the sun.  And because the light is the difference between a boring shot and one that steals your breath.

 This morning's photo session was an especially good example.

Peony Before Squeaking Kitties

I picked up some great peonies from the grocery store yesterday on my way home from work and was attempting to capture the light on the petals.  Imposing an idea, a shot, and then starting to get frustrated because what I was seeing and attempting to capture didn't match what the camera was recording.  The lighting wasn't right.  Frustrated when dealing with camera equipment and top-heavy containers full of water and flowers is never a good thing.

"Mmmm.  Salad..."

Enter Maggie, who decided to get friendly with one of the Gerbera Daisy plants sitting off to the side of where I was working...  Evidently they smelled like salad.

And since Max had tried to snack on them the night before I wasn't about to take any chances that her intentions were benign.

Peony After Squeaking Kitties

And then I got distracted by the light on the daisies...  And forgot about what I was trying to do with the peonies.  

And by the time I went back to the peonies after dealing with squeaking, unapologetic kitties and daisies, the light through the willow tree branches had adjusted to a better angle.

Impatience with a situation tends to come from trying to impose my own desires on that situation instead of stepping back and letting it be.

Flowers lit by light through the willow tree.

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Living in the Moment

Freckles

Working with live flowers and natural light in a house full of helpful kitties truly emphasizes two things.  1) Live in the moment.  Act on impulse, on instinct, on inspiration, instead of listening to the little dictatorial voice that says "Concentrate on the subject you're working with now.  You can take shots of that other flower later..."  And 2) to not take anything too seriously.

I found a bunch of peony tulips at Whole Foods earlier this week and snatched them up.  Buying flowers in wrapped bunches occasionally yields up fun surprises.  Sometimes bundled in with the standard flowers are blooms of a different color, shade, and pattern.  And such was the case this time.  It took a couple of days for them to open, and when they did I had this amazing peony tulip in shades of purple and pink.  It simply said "Freckles" which is what I named the shot.

Aftermath

With tulips I always like to wait for them to open as much as possible.  It makes the shot more interesting and gives it depth.  It also allows the light to play with the petals.  The downside to waiting is that a tulip at is fullest opening is also at its most fragile, right before the petals fall.

One minute you have an intact flower at its peak...

And the next you've been visited by a helpful curious kitty and you have this...  A pile of petals and a lot of squeaking.

And if I'd listened to the dictorial voice instead of being impulsive and swapping flower subjects I'd've missed the shot entirely.

Link to the higher resolution photo ::

• Freckles

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Pretending To Be Butterflies

Climbing Lilies & Buddha

Sometimes inspiration strikes out of the blue.  Lunch at WaterCourse on 17th on a Saturday afternoon led to  finding stopping at a florist's just down the way.  Babylon Floral.  And among the multitude of other cool things there they had a flower in the cooler that I've been looking for for months and months.  The climbing lily, which I've only seen in Instagram posts from the Far East and in plastic form.  I'd actually resorted to buying the flower in bulb form six months ago and have been waiting for them to come up in the yard.  Anyways, patience has never really been one of my, ah, virtues and here they were. 

Butterfly In Red

Even with this afternoon's cloud cover the lilies glowed.  And sometimes flowers pretend to be other things.  They were butterflies with glowing wings against the sea of green that is the tree in the backyard.

Link to the higher resolution photos ::

Butterfly In Red

Climbing Lilies & Buddha

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Tiny Swamp-Dwelling Iris

Iris Neomarcia Longifolia

I know storms in spring are normal for Colorado, but the clouds this morning are incredibly frustrating.  The problem with using only natural light for my photos is clouds first thing in the morning are a sighing offense.  The traitorous thought of "Gee I could've slept in" pops up.  (A morning person I am not.)

I picked this particular plant up from Tagawa Gardens a couple weeks ago.  The label on the pot calls it "Iris Neomarica Longifolia".  I call it "The Tiny Swamp-Dwelling Iris That Only Blooms For A Single Day".  Granted I didn't know the "blooms for a single day" part when I bought it.  I just liked the tiny speckled iris flowers.  Surprise and not in a good way when I brought it home and the next day there were no more flowers.  Here's the link to the Wiki article on the plant. 

Anyways, finally after weeks of waiting, I figured out how much water and light it requires.  Finally a flower... That will last for a single day before dying...  And its cloudy...  Argh!  Maybe if I hide it in the basement for the day, where its dark and cool, maybe the flower will last until tomorrow morning's sun...

 

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