Yay for chicken wire

December always feels like such a down time for art.  Lots of clouds and a definitive lack of awesome plants to shoot.  Always the month where I consider packing it in and moving back to the area I grew up in or heading for the coast.

This December at least there's glitter in the form of the holiday ornaments I've stapled to my living room ceiling.  Yay for chicken wire.  Only six weeks to go before the flowers start to get interesting again.

Applied again for Cherry Creek last week.  I noticed this year they've moved to allowing people to submit up to 20 applications... At $40 a piece...

Such is the price of hope, although lets be honest here.  Allowing people to submit more than 5 apps is just preying on people's hope, and frankly most of us don't have a large enough body of work to have 80 unique and amazing images.  I restrained myself and only put in two apps.  Fingers crossed.



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Out of the Blue Blue Sky

Soul Of The Moon

Inspiration is a funny thing, especially lately, and art is something that defies a formal definition.  Flowers are as always a calling, an inspiration, almost an obligation; they call to me to show the world how they see themselves.  Spent some time yesterday chatting with a local floral store.  They had some particularly amazing dahlias and also a possible opportunity to photograph their upcoming set of arrangements for their site.  Yes, please.

Sometimes the flowers are impetuous, demanding to be captured in their self conception.  Such was the case of the dahlia to the left.  A specific idea the moment I saw her.  Other flowers prefer to be more free-form.  Some moments of inspiration I seek out.  My new stand-alone wedding photography site (www.idledaydreams.com) is up and running; I've already received a booking request.  And other moments of inspiration sometimes swoop in from left field, out of the blue blue sky.  Stood on the roof of the parking garage at a downtown hospital tonight after dusk and wished for my camera to capture the sky.  Next weekend perhaps.  And then there's my most recent acquisition. 

It all started Friday night with plans to make cupcakes with a friend after work.  At 8:30p we were at the local import store looking for sugar skulls to top the cupcakes with, and at 1:30a I rolled home with an orange geometric-patterend pillow, a mushroom-toned square chair, and a tiny side table, a six pack of my favorite beer, and a 20lb pumpkin.  Cause sometimes that's how I roll.  Okay, its usually how I roll.


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Aftermath

The dreaded art show aftermath. The part no one ever sees. After the tent is shelved and the remaining work is re-inventoried, after the rental van is returned and the dust settles. After the sales are tallied and the loss is calculated. Then the disappointment sets in and the bummedness. I ask myself questions about my inventory, about my price points, and about occasionally why I'm bothering. All the complements in the world don't mean anything if they're not translated into sales dollars because in the end, as much as I don't like it, art shows are a business. And as the "I'll be back" and "we need to measure the walls" turn to unfulfilled promises the grouchyness deepens. And I still have to get up and head in to the day job to fight with undocumented networks and unstable wireless systems. I keep telling myself that at least I have the alternate income source; an annoying reality when it's at the end of another eleven hour day.

And yet as down as I am about the whole thing, about the dearth of people who promised to be in touch, topped off by my gallery invite being quantified by "oh we don't allow giclees except as bin work" I know that next weekend I'll be at it again crazy person that I am.

Maybe eventually I'll wise up :-/


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No Do-Overs

 Picked up a book during lunch a couple weeks ago by Jay Maisel called Its Not About The F-Stop.  I bought it for the pictures, browsing through it at the Tattered Cover.  Turns out its sort-of a how-to, which I in my typical fashion didn't actually read until 10p one night after my day job got done pummeling me.
 
Normally I'm not a fan of how-to books, being very much a proponent of learning-by-doing.  The author does make what I feel to be a couple relevant points amid photos of trees and people and scenes from around the world - if you see something that inspires you, stop, and take the shot.  With photography there's no such thing as "I'll come back..."

This morning's firecracker lilies embodied this nicely.  Beautiful at 7a in the morning sun; tonight withered.

Its really all about the pictures :)

As I sit here a conversation with a long-time friend of mine comes to mind.  After dinner one recent Sunday she mentioned that she didn't feel my recent work was as inspired or as powerful as my older work - like four-years-older, that the newer work was more staged and the older more impulsive.  I somewhat agree and disagree.  Yes, my newer pieces are more thought-out and less shot-from-the-hip.  But I also get into more art shows now than I did four years ago.  I'm coming to truly realize that different audiences are inspired by different things.  For my friend she appreciated the less practiced approach where perhaps the lighting wasn't quite right or the proportions were off.  The show judges and my sister seem to appreciate form and function and proportion.  Thinking I'll keep a mix and not worry about it. 


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What's Logic?

So my nifty website hosting service provides this totally addictive tool that lets me see which pictures people click on, sliced and diced in many different ways.

Its ended up being both a blessing and a curse.  If I'm having a bad time at the day job and kick over to the photo site to get a pick-me-up from my photo stats and they're bad for the day (or the week) well then its not super helpful.  And when its good it make me crazy because I've never been able to determine a correlation between what people click on and pretty much any action I take.  I mean sure, I see a spike before and after a show.  But sometimes on a random Tuesday I'll get a couple hundred hits.  And they're almost never for my most recent pieces.  Because what's logic got to do with it.  Sometimes they're not even for my classic pieces that sell well.  Hello random tulip photos from three years ago on a random Wednesday.  <shakes head>  The order I arrange the photos into in a gallery doesn't seem to affect the pattern.  Posting on social media doesn't seem to affect the pattern.  It frankly makes me batty because my other world of geekdom and computers is all A-B testing and clear cause-and-effect.  (Well unless the firewall crashes for no reason anyways.)

Bookmarks maybe?  Perhaps one day someone will walk up to me and mention that they've concocted some master evil plan and have bookmarked all their favorites on the site so they can find them easily and my mystery will be solved. And as a bonus hopefully a sale :)
 

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Not my story but a version of theirs...

Painted Lady

Most people are funny / frustrating. Whenever I talk about my artistic process, about instinct and balance and Zen they seem disappointed, like the fact that I didn't struggle against a conformist society (enter irony) or live in some broken down shed while finishing upteen years of school or live hand-to-mouth working menial jobs makes me somehow lesser.

This romanticized idea of an artist's journey...  It's like the idea that everyone is amazing in their own way of they'd just get out of their own way is somehow anathema.

Granted I'd probably sell more stuff if I'd shut about about Zen and light and be vague as all fuck about it all. 

Other artists also don't want to hear it but in a different way. They want to hear struggle and education and the battle against the man, the fight to find self. Again no to balance. To justify their own struggle perhaps. And I guess I can see why some chick with a nice car and a good day job rambling on about balance and the idea of art-through-directionless-intent would be frustrating. That thought line of "wait... you mean I didn't have to suffer..."  

What neither group seems to understand is that finding balance and flow was its own battle, evidently a battle not meant to be shared. Like satori - one gets it or they don't but asking misses the point.



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"Expires June 2016"

Some days I worry my sister's worry that I'll soon be too old to start anything new in my life, especially a new relationship. The rest of the time I simply enjoy the silence. This idea of some invisible bar code stamped across my forehead "Expires June 2016" baffles me.

Sometimes to invite growth into one's life a space has to be opened, and over the past 18 months Ganesh has definitely shaken things up. My relationship, most of my friends, my house, and most recently my job at the awesome start-up.

An opportunity to redefine myself without color commentary from bystanders it definitely is, and I've recently taken the opportunity to add shades of begonia to my wardrobe. At the same time I keep having to remind myself not to fall back into old patterns just because they're comfortable. I'm no longer the heavy. No longer the mean IT person. No longer an accessory. And it feels, well, weird.

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Two Versions Of Me

Tides

More and more lately I've been feeling like there are two versions of me.  Well more than two versions but two primary versions.  There's Sam-the-Network-Admin who runs a department for a growing company and her daily trials in the corporate world, and there's Sam-the-Artist who's prepping for the summer show season and scheduling wedding shoots.  Of the two I think I'd rather be friends with the second Sam.  She's less serious and more outgoing, quoting haiku and Leonard Nimoy, wearing rain boots with smiling whales on them.  Lately I've been working on bringing more of the second Sam into the first.  The first has some hold overs from my childhood, from too many serious college classes - Linear Algebra and Principles of Materials.  I see echos of my family's ongoing angst in her, and find that it's angstyness without reason.

I'm also pushing up against society's (and my family's) definition of what happiness is.  The idea that being alone makes one lonely.  The fear that even though I'm content today in being alone that one day I'll wake up too old to find someone.  That stockpiling money into savings leads to happiness. 

Artist-Sam brings her own conundrums with her.  Is the addition of another haiku tattoo and teal hair streaks a natural extension of personality or is it that I feel the need to outwardly express the lack of inclusion in the "normal" that I feel every day to a greater or lesser degree?  Teal hair will eventually fade, but tattoos are forever. 

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Persistence!

Got called off the wait list for the Downtown Denver Arts Festival today.  Super excited and dancing about even though there's no one to see. Of course after the dancing finishes the budget crunching and strategizing begins.  My crazy life.

This year marks the fourth summer I'll have been participating in art shows.  Somehow it seems both longer and shorter.  Four times I've applied to DDAF, and four times I've been wait listed.  This is the first time I (or anyone I know) has been called off.

Also had a great time shooting engagement pics for Addie and Jenn this afternoon at Wash Park.  I must admit I missed one of the best pics of Jenn's boxer Yogi because I was laughing so hard I couldn't stand.  He had the most resigned "are we done look...", just like a little kid stomping his feet and laying on the floor in the grocery store.

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This Is My Why...

In the tradition of great masters Leonard Nimoy's last thought [Twitter - the vessel of modern day Haiku] put words to my world view quite nicely. “A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory…” 

 

As part of my day job I oversee a book club for the managers of my company.  My most recent find that I'm inflicting on my cohorts is a Ted Talk by Simon Sinek called "Start With Why".  I'm sure the talk has many great insights that can be applied to my geek-gig, but I'm finding it more impactful in thinking about how I message the photo side of my life. 

Sehnsucht

Through my camera’s lens I’m constantly striving to collect reflections of those perfect moments, that fleeting sense of stillness when all the to-do lists and should-dos fall away and all there is is the holding of a breath and a silent moment of awe. 

Sehnsucht ... a German word meaning the longing to be somewhere one's never been, homesick for a place one's never seen, yearning towards something unknown and unrealized.

Google is awesome!
  

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Nostalgia

Mom's camera strap

This evening I came home to my most recent eBay find - a vintage woven camera strap circa 1975.  Ebay's a super dangerous place for me to spend any amount of time because they have freaking everything and with enough time I can usually find the exact thing I'm looking for.

Back story ... A couple of weeks ago when at an art get-together (ie we met via social media, everyone brings something to work on and drinks way too many mimosas) I saw a camera strap sent me down memory lane.  When I was a kid my mom had an older manual 35mm Nikon with a strap just like the one pictured.  And it was that camera where I truly first became acquainted with photography in a non-point-and-shoot way.  As many of us experienced, in the 7th grade we were expected to create a bug collection.  Being the softy that I am I simply couldn't bring myself to kill a variety of bugs and impale them on pins for something so trivial as a school project.  Well that and I didn't like the noise / feeling of the pin crunching through the poor sad bug.  So my science teacher, who was well versed in my eccentricities, having taught tutored me in advanced math two years prior, and I came to a compromise.  I would make a collection but not of dead bugs.  Instead I trapped subjects, took scale photos of them, and covered my bug-board in pictures.

Anyways, seeing the camera strap sent me hunting through the vaults of eBay until I found a purveyor of vintage camera straps.  Not bad for $12.   Unfortunately this story, like many of those involving anything to do with my family has a somewhat sad slant on it.  In my excitement to share my find-and-buy I told my younger sister.  Her response was "Oh good!  Now I can use the strap Mom gave me without feeling bad about it!"  Reminded once again of my place in the family hierarchy.  Check.

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Absurdly Random Happy Moments

I'm sure all the people on the train, on the streets of downtown Denver, who saw me smiling at the sky, running through the snow, the pom bobbles on my panda hat bouncing thought I was crazy this evening. Something about the city at night, snow glowing in the street lights, the sky pale lavender and peach makes me absurdly happy. The stillness of it all even while the scene is in motion. And of course the soundtrack of cello and violins on Pandora just adds to the whole experience.

Its like the clouds and the snow and the silence give my mind permission to ramp down, to breathe, and while everyone else fights traffic I watch clouds at the train station.  I do find myself wondering how many other people give into society's idea of what a bad experience is - outside walking on a snowy February night.  How many aren't present, who don't gaze at the shine of the falling snow in the glow of the street signs, who simply huddle in their coats and think longingly of home and whatever TV show they're missing.  

My personal philosophy is that absurdly random happy moments of stillness should be embraced.  They're few and far between, although I seem to be stumbling into them more often of late. And I can't help but compare this February with last, where I would've been driving 60+ minutes in the snow to a house full of everything except that silent stillness I find so soothing.  Its true that sometimes you have to know bad before you can appreciate good. 

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Stillness and Balance

Sometimes, out of no where, there'll be times of deep stillness, like the silence after the ringing of the bell. Times when the inner voices with their lists shut down, when Pandora plays violins and the sound of passing trains. And you just breathe in the stillness.

Lately life has been like that point that you sometimes hit when you run. Where it's easier to keep moving faster and faster. Where to think or try to slow down is to fall. Where your center of gravity is perfectly balanced and you can spin all the parts of your life around it.

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