S&E: 4 (SOOC)

This week's prompt:  Red.

Found while wandering around my neighborhood taking photos.  Right before this one, I was taking photos of a door with my husband yelling "He's watching you!  Keep moving!"  Real subtle.

Which makes me think about how difficult it is to take photos in the city.  Every time I saw something I wanted to capture, I realized that someone's private space was inches away, or that someone was watching me and trying to determine what I was up to.  Something I didn't quite realize when moving to the city, that private and public space are so much closer together.   So we take great pains to protect the private, and often use public space to extend our private space. 

I prefer taking photos while wandering.  I love taking photos of cities.  Often I feel uncomfortable, and a bit dweeby.  But I think taking these photos is a necessity.

S&E: 3 (PS)

Yikes, I'm having a hard time this week pulling myself out of the winter blahs.  I come home and just want to go to bed.  Perhaps this week's prompt was too tempting...

Here was my SOOC for the week:  Good Night

SOOC

With edits

Playing with actions (Vintage - I'm not sure where I grabbed it from, I'm sorry!)

SOOC

With edits - maybe too bright?

With an action called Rosy B&W - I don't know where I got it, it might be part of my PS

So, I'm digging the actions, but I'm having some trouble.  Here are my current dilemmas:

1.  How do you decide what edits to make to a photo and which direction to go?  There are so many options, and I want to do them all.

2.  How do you organize your work flow?  I'm trying out Lightroom and storing my photos there.  I do some minor edits and then export them.  Then I open them in Photoshop, and make more edits.  Then I save the file as a .jpg file to put on here.  Shew, its getting overwhelming.  Plus, what files should I keep, and what ones can I trash?   I need a better system.

3.  Is it possible to over-photoshop?  I'm finding that I like my SOOC shots, and I can't get my edits to retain some of the something that the original has.

Oooh, and I have my photo for Red already!

Edit:  I just realized I missed the first half of the tutorial on reducing noise.  I'll read up and try to figure all this out.  And I'm adding a fourth question...


4.  I can't open RAW images.  I'll have to track down a video...

ABAW:4

Another book that's been languishing on my bedside table, half read.  I rallied last night, and finished it up so that I could have my book for the week done. 

There is a big movement in mental health that incorporates those with lived experience into positions of consultants, peer mentors and clinicians.  At one time, therapists were supposed to be omniscient experts, perfect bastions of mental health.  I can't remember who did this, but I am always thinking about the story of a psychologist who quit the field because she originally entered it to learn more about herself, and felt that was wrong.  I disagree. 

I'm a big believer in the concept of the wounded helper - I think we are drawn to the field because our early experience makes us develop finely tuned intuition and a sense that we are supposed to be helping.  This is not enough:  a good therapist needs to have a strong theoretical orientation, ethical and legal knowledge, be current with research, have well developed clinical skills that are based in practice, not just what feels right.  But I also think we're all there to learn more about ourselves as humans as part of the human condition.  And a good clinician should constantly be in supervision to challenge this. 

What scares me is those who are still ill, who don't see when they are not doing well, or who struggle to look or think past their own thoughts to see our clients and offer well grounded support.  Or, really the system we work within that seems to encourage us to be ill and narrow minded. 

I was thinking about this and Kay Redfield Jamison's other book, Touched with Fire (also in my pile), while waiting for the elevator this evening.  In one of the apartments, a young woman practiced her violin, her strings echoing a deep, resonating ache that reminded me of dirty red-browns and tiptoeing up to periwinkle blues.  I thought back to college, late nights at the photography studio, my actress roommate, perpetually auditioning, singing, dancing.  I miss that.  The intensity of learning and practicing a craft.  Being surrounded by a passion that thrives and grows by being around itself. 

S&E: 3 (SOOC)

Yikes, I just realized that I don't know how long this challenge will continue!  I'm just starting to get into it!  Please keep it!

Here's my SOOC for the week:  Good Night

 An obvious answer, I love my bed.  Fresh sheets, and my quilt.

I'm not so sure about the focus on this image now that I look at it again!  Had to share it anyway - I've been coming home from work and really diving into art making, which makes me ridiculously happy.  This really shows that I had a good night!

creative Therapy: one word

Seriously, I'm having a blast with all this art making that I am doing.  I'm following creative Therapy's monthly prompts, and putting them in the same altered book I am working on for A Year in the Life of an Art Journal. 

The prompt:  one word or focus in 2011

I never seem to be able to follow the rules so I chose two words.  That's okay, right?  I first chose the word Adventure, because I wanted to throw myself into doing and living without overthinking or overplanning or worrying myself out of it.  Things don't need to be a "right way."  (I'm even fussing with this blog post because I'm not sure if this is "right" or "good"!)  I also found that the word shows up a lot when I'm thinking about something I loved doing, or something I'm looking forward to doing.  It makes good, fun sense.  And for some reason, saying Adventure! to myself seems to work. 

I've also chosen the word Hope because I have been struggling to hold on to it.  This week I realized that I was struggling with this when I said "I don't know why I even bother to be hopeful" - referring to my clients (and my office, and our resources, and our pay).  Nonetheless, shameful, and unacceptable.  I chastised myself as I sat with a client, and realized that sometimes I have nothing but hope to hold onto and I cling desperately to it, because he needs it.  And deserves it.  And, I realized I've given up hope for some things that are very important to me, but seem unattainable.  I don't think its time to let those go.

And the two feel like they go together.  They keep me balanced. 

*please excuse the tabs at the top!

A Year In The Life of an Art Journal: Musical Musings (Jan 15)

I am loving this follow along, and actually finished this one last week.  

The first prompt was Starting Now, and asked to incorporate (or think about) John Mayer's Waiting on the World to Change and the technique was to use a foot photo.  The foot photo part cracks me up, but it makes a lot of sense.  There is no better symbol for action or movement.  And, I admit, I'm not a huge fan of Mayer, so I dug the idea but didn't incorporate any of his lyrics. 

I have a stack of images found from magazines, so I borrowed liberally from it.  My intent right now is to be actively creative and make more; my own images will begin to show themselves and take over soon, I hope.  But for now, I lean on that stack of images for inspiration.  I found this incredible image of a woman jumping, and so she became my center.  Around her, I incorporated images of balance and movement, using techniques of image transfer and liberal paint smearing!  I added words and journaling, and soon began to see a theme emerge. 

I am realizing that I know what I want and need.  But trusting myself and then going out and finding it are difficult.  One, I need some of it to come from within, but two, I also need mentorship and guidance.  When I have it, I flourish, and that's what I'm hungry for.  I'm still feeling restricted in some parts of my life.  I wake up ready for what I need and want to do, but then find there is no place for that.  And to carve one out makes me find myself more deeply entrenched in restrictions instead of lifted up, buoyed, doing my best work. 

So each day it is up to me to do my best work, and to lift myself up and to keep myself balanced.  But good mentorship would be fantastic.  How do I find that?

Shoot and Edit: Week Two (Edits)

Before

After

I did all the edits suggested by Ashley except I couldn't figure out the black and white adjustment layers.  I'll research them and figure that out another night.  The high pass filter rocks, the handle of the cup really does pop.  The shape of the cup is nicely defined with a good gray scale, plus a good color balance (I wanted to keep the blues of the cup and winter while getting some warms of the morning and balance the tea plus tag).  And I'm digging the textures of the wall and the cup.  Overall, not too bad?

I was able to figure out how to do a layer to just adjust the red of the tag - although I want to figure out how to just select a space like the tag to do the same thing.  Is that possible? 

A Year In The Life of an Art Journal

Just when I thought I couldn't over commit myself more...I stumbled on this incredible challenge.  The truth is, I followed it all last year but never did any of the prompts.  For some reason, I got inspired and spent all weekend making my altered book to serve as my journal.  And, extra cool, the book divides up really nicely to fit each of the prompts.  I'm still working on the first one!

The book is a children's non fiction book about Christmas.  I sanded the front and put a layer of gesso on the cover.  Then I covered the front with yellow paint in an attempt to do a transfer technique that didn't work.  What did work is using old gift cards to spread paint - it looks so great.  I added images from my massive magazine image collection, stamped words all over that are important to me.  I finished it with a strip of duct tape on the binding, and a gift card spreading of gold paint.  Its bomb, if I do say so myself. 

I did do two transfer techniques that always work awesome.

1. Packing tape and magazine images.  Put packing tape over image, burnish it, and then toss in a cup of water.  Rub off the back of the image and voila, you have a shiny image that is slightly sticky on the back.  (The image of the person in the tunnel and the girl are both done this way)
2. Gloss medium and magazine images.  Paint over image with medium 3+ times, let dry thoroughly.  Give the back a quick sandpaper, and then wet your fingertips.  Start rubbing off the backing.  This creates a more crinkly skin like image that is fairly transparent.   (There is an image over the middle figure that is done this way, and the ocean image at the bottom). 

Front

Back

And get prepared for this one too!  Sign up starts Jan 21st.  Only must:  make one thing every day in February.  Hmm. 

ABAW:3

My mom likes to get me randomly subversive books and books about energy healing.  She also tells me to be good, obey the rules, and find a stable job with health insurance.  Mixed messages, that lady.  Thanks to her I am a confused mess of a non-conformist attempting to squish myself into a square box world.  All I want to do is take that square box and turn it into a shrine.  Or a shadow box.  Or a secret place to put cool things into.  Oh! Or a fort!

Anyway (which she says a lot), she got me this book for Christmas.  I think she feels bad that I'm so miserable in my stable job, desperately holding onto my health insurance and praying for retirement (with my $0 retirement funds). 

Reading books like this make me think one thing:  AUGH.  I gotta do something.  But I never know what.

So then I got to thinking about this here blog, and how I have no idea what I'm doing here.  And how for some reason, it has become a place for all the things I love.  Maybe somewhere here I'll figure out where the heck I'm going (yep, I just wrote heck).  I do know that I need to get a lot clearer about what I want and take some scary leaps to get there.

What if we paid off all of our debt?  What if we didn't buy a house and traveled the world instead?  What if.  What ifs bring up lots of "hows?"  Its the hows that are tricky. 

Shoot and Edit: Week Two (SOOC)

Eh, well my SOOC shot is so-so.  Prepare to be dazzled after I get to mess with it a bit.  Every time I remembered I needed a shot that said "Good Morning" it was late afternoon. That is why I strongly feel that at least the subject of my image is spot on: I desperately love my tea, every morning (and later in the day too).  Meaning, I need it to function.  And I like the little pop of red on all that white.