Anatomy of a Picture

 
This is where it started, with a doodled shape done in Photoshop. I'd had a couple of frustrating hours trying to get stuff down on paper. It just wasn't working so I thought I'd give it one last bash but in Photoshop instead. Nothing to lose.

Stamped that a couple of times and I'm beginning to feel mollified because it's looking the way I wanted it to.

Add a bit of this

and a stamp made of this. Junkyard are great for interesting textures and shapes!
 

Now I was intruiged because I hadn't really expected this combination to work. Like it in black and white but love it in red.

A bit of colour added, more out of curiosity than any real plan, and this is what I ended up with. Now where the hell did that come from? A question I find myself asking quite a lot. I'm crap at on-purpose art but the accidental-oh-blimey-look-what-I-just-did is where I seem to excel. Go figure!

 

Mandala Collaboration - Art that Circles the Earth

This has been the most fun, collaborating with Shana Goetsch as part of her Art that Circles the Earth project.This was the very first piece that she sent me, wool glued to a circle of card.

I really wanted to give those colours a 'pop' so I dug out some bright blue painted card. But I'd also been thinking about prayer wheels and astrolabes so my next move was to cut out the middle and mount the circle so that it could move. Back it went to Shana . . . . .

Then just after Christmas I got this in the post. Gone was the blue card, a round of mosaic like pieces now backed the original circle. I love this process because each time what I got was something so different from my usual colours/style. Bloody brilliant, makes you think a little bit more.

Again I felt that the colours needed a little bit of a 'pop' so I bought a white gel pen and went round the edges and the middle. A bit of silver paint went on top of that to give it a bit of lustre and gold pen to work into the little mosaic pieces. I wanted to enhance them not lose them. Once I'd done that I thought about sticking the two circles together and losing the moveable element. It needed something more . . . . .

Oh yes, it had to be done! Turn that baby round and the eye follows you round the room! It made me laugh which is always a good sign in my book. So off that went to Shana, our collaboration now complete. I told her to let me know when she received it but I knew . . . . yesterday, a funny little bump sensation and she came quite clearly into my mind.

All the collaborative pieces will be in an Community Arts Thesis Exhibition from April 25th so if you are in the Baltimore area then go along and check it out. I so wish I could be there.

My First Holga Photos

I have a new camera. My father left me a little money and I thought it was time to challenge myself . . . . something with interchangeable lenses. Interchangeable lenses means I can do more digital pinhole photography. After my initial experiments I knew this was exactly where I wanted to go. 

After a lot of research I bought a Panasonic Lumix DMC G3, one of a new breed of cameras that has a light compact body but SLR capabilites . . . . delivered by the Four Third system. And best of all Holga does a lens that fits it . . .. lovely cheap shit bit of plastic that makes your high quality camera perform like a toy! Love the irony! The camera itself has so many bells and whistles on it that I lost patience with it and stuck the Holga lens on it just to try and get some pictures out of it.  Hmm, so crummy and dark . . .  the shot above as you can see came out all blue but hey, look what happens when you invert it in Photoshop . . . . .  awesome effect I'm sure you'll agree.

Here's another one taken indoors with some of the characteristic Holga vignetting round the edges.  . . . .

This one I used 'posterize' and then desaturated . . .  lots of fun and lots of possibilities.  The pros and cons of the camera I will post on at a further date. Like when I've finally managed to get through all the millions of ( totally unnecessary ) menus and worked out how to use the damm thing! One thing that is interesting is the aspect ratio . . .  these pictures are roughly 5x4" not the usual 6x4" and there are other settings which I have yet to try but I know one of them will give me a square picture!!! O.K, all I have to do is read the whole of the 208 page PDF of instructions. I may be some time . . . .

Portrait Photography

Beautiful sunny morning  . . . . cameras all over the table . . . . my husband was showing me how interchangeable lenses work. Such lovely chunky old cameras, two Prakticas and a Canon . . . . analogue cameras, not a digital button in sight. I'm just sorry that film and developing is so expensive because there is something so straightforward about these cameras

Grabbing my digital I fired off a couple of shots. I have a new camera and thought I'd grab a couple of pictures to go with a blog post about it.But these pictures of my husband turned out better than I thought. See the previous post for the other picture . . .  I may never take a better photo than this.

I'm still trying to work out the millions of menus and options that come with my new camera plus the card I got for it won't behave so sucks-boo to that. I do have a Holga lens for it so when I do get it to work it's going to be amazing.

Simply the best photo I've ever taken

Straight out of the camera . . . . . . spur of the moment and simply the best photo I've ever taken.

Self Portrait Photography

 Fooling round with the camera trying to get a picture of my new haircut . .  . got two mirrors so I thought I'd try it that way first . . . .  mostly what you get is your camera and not much else . .  . .

a bit of positioning . . . I'm pretty short so I've got to make sure I get myself in the picture . . .  changed the camera setting because the sun went in . . .  a cold blueish white balance and gave the exposure a bit of a pop . . . . . defintely like this. Nothing done to these now except cropping

and then I began to be intruiged by the idea of this . . .  " in the moment" as my brother Achim Friederich ( v talented photographer ) says. Can I capture a moment of truth about myself here? I can do this when photographing other people but is it possible to be open and honest enough to do this with yourself? Or will the very fact that I am trying to do this spoil it? Can you catch your shadow or a glimpse of your soul?

Maybe I didn't quite but i had a lot of fun trying . . .  the one below is my favourite . . .  there's mischief in that beady eye!

  

Then try the other mirror . . . .  yes, I do know how to work the camera but I'm trying to see what I'll get while at the same time taking the picture. I love the restrictions of things like this, working within that to see what you can achieve. God, I look just like my Dad in this one . . . . I  simply desaturated this one, nothing more.

A bit more tweaking with levels to bring out some contrast but actually prefer the one above . . . hmm, need to think . . .  how to get better pictures, or rather more interesting pictures, how to get that honesty?

Whitney's Weird Stuff Print Giveaway.

I suddenly got bored of tasteful muted colours and let rip with something a little punchier. My favourite word to describe  in-your-face kind of colour. This one was built ontop of something else I did a while ago. Taking the idea of making things specially for Photoshop stamps from sewn paper bits to maybe something more 3 dimensional . . .  grabbed a small box and an old roll of exposed film along with a letter from a dead keyboard (  we never throw anything away in this house!). I like the idea that I can use and reuse various components .  . . expect to see these again then in different combinations.

This is called Angry Red Thing 'cos I was in a bit of a fractious, bored stroppy sort of mood. I get these restless period where I need to just be spontanous. Sod whether it works or not, sod whether I've got too much else to be starting something new. Just got to do it.

Strop over I decided that I really like that red . . .  oh yes, could eat that off a spoooooon. This is all about the pain . . . . another reason why I was feeling fractious. There is, after all, only so much I can bear and be cheerful.  Too much pain, too many drugs for the pain which after a while become some kind of variant of the pain because they make you feel like shit. The worst of that episode is over, thank god and I'll be back at the gym before long.

Now we could call this one 'Good Year for the Roses' or 'Splash' both of which would be crashingly obvious but then sometimes you get a title inspiration and sometimes you don't. Suggest a really good title for it and I'll send you a print, A4 or smaller  . Leave me a comment and I'll pick the one I like best in about a week from now.

Oh well, here I was chucking in everything but the kitchen sink which is a great thing to do because you do end up with some pretty random combinations and you get to learn what works and what doesn't. For me this works. It is called ' I will love you forever' though with that eye it seems more like threat than a promise. I've been trying out a thicker scribble line, the black lines are just the standard round brush but thicker than normal. It works but I'm not 100 % happy with the way it looks so I think I will try and come up with something else that can make that kind of mark but not look quite so . . . .  digital I guess.