ExquisiteLines

The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.

The trite subjects of human efforts, possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible.

Albert Einstein

I’ve moved the site from WordPress.com to my hosted site.

This allows me to have more (full) control of my site and I can use Windows Live Writer to post. That alone cuts my posting time by at least half and looks better when I’m done.

This is a good thing.

I think I’ve got it all working – now I just need to figure out how to redirect my domain name. Until that happens I cleared the posts from the old site and added a link to the new site.

Welcome and enjoy.

Pulled from Permission to Suck,  an exploration on creativity.

Art is poetry when “poetry” is an emotionally rewarded aesthetic banter with our senses. Reduce craft to a one button push, the poetry now includes a lackluster effort to engage – similar to a street passing of two indifferent relations. There is no strength in laziness.

Genius lies in understanding that art involves the consumer’s world view, the context in which it is consumed, the collaborative nature of the work and the commitment of the artist. With his erased de Kooning, Rauschenberg proves that great art works don’t necessarily involve the tools of great skill. Our democratized digital renaissance proves similar; great tools don’t necessarily produce works of great art.

I am still playing around with HDR. Need to keep working with it to see where it fits best in my set of tools.

Here’s a set I did where it made a difference. The scene was a high contrast shot, late morning so the sun was a bit high. But still had some good shape and flow. The HDR added the extra bit of detail and contrast that pushed a slightly washed out image into a interesting image.

I’m still playing with the Detail Enhancer vs. the Tone Compressor. I like the Tone Compressor in my mountain shots – it plumps up the pine trees – a richer green with nicer luminance. Here’s a comparison.

This first shot is the middle image of my 3 shot, 1ev set. I applied base Exposure and Black Lightroom adjustments. I applied a Gradated filter to the sky.

The second shot is the HDR Detail Enhancer version:

The third shot is the HDR Tone Compressor version:

It’s been awhile.

I’m still working with my photography, with a big of ceramics here and there. I’ve spend a lot of time going through on-line Photoshop courses and building that skill set. It’s coming.

I’ve finished some prints that I really like. I’ll drop them in here over the coming days/weeks.

Actually I stopped writing because I lost the vision. I started getting caught up in how to make money with it – going commercial. The same thing that killed it off when I was doing it before.  There’s something in my head that tells me if I can’t make money at something it isn’t worth doing. That kills the creative drive – drives me in a direction I don’t really like. So I had to let that die. I would like to make enough cash doing it to help pay for it. But on my terms.

I’m actually struggling with the whole blogging thing. Is it worth the time? I write it and no body reads it – what is the value?

Why…

• It helps me organize my thoughts, helps me internalize the process
• It gives me a record of what I did and how I got there. Good to review
• There’s the possibility that I could get some constructive input from like minded creatives, if I could make it interesting enough to give them a reason to share their time with me.

That’s good for a start.

I have to keep telling myself that this is a long term project – years, not months.

One exciting development – simple but exciting to me.

I was sitting in church a couple of weeks ago and had a vision of a portrait format I wanted to try out. But I’d need some strobes and a studio.

So I called the friend I’d sold my old stobes to a couple of years ago. I suspected at the time that she didn’t really want them that bad, but I sold them so cheap that she couldn’t pass them up. So I called her and asked if she would like to sell them back to me – and she did.  So I have my stobes back. They are old and probably needs a bit of service work, but they make light.

I learned a little bit more about my cool new Nikon D90. I was going to go buy a cable release. Luckily I actually looked at the camera first and noticed there isn’t anywhere to plug in the release cable. So I had to buy a remote release for it. Actually the price wasn’t bad, probably less than a good cable release would cost. Only thing I don’t like about it is you have to be in FRONT of the camera to use it. I can work around that.

Then I tried to sync my strobe to the camera – looked for the sync on the camera – there isn’t one. Back in my day there were just coming out with remote strobe triggers. I actually tried to make one – it kind of worked. It was light triggered. You plugged the sensor into the remote strobe and the light from the strobe on the camera set it off. It worked, but was never really usable. Now, I had to buy a radio trigger. Cool except more money. I checked out the PocketWizard and the Elinchrom Skyport. The PocketWizard sounded like the best long term choice, more powerful, more flexible and twice as much money. The Skyport is solid too. So I went with the Skyport. Going for the good product, easier entry point. If I need get more serious and need more umph I can move up to the PocketWizard. So far I really like it. Easy to use and flawless in during my first (and so far only) shoot this week end.

I pulled some neat shots. Need to put them together and I’ll share the result.

I signed up on the Kelby Training on-line training site. So far its been a good investment in time and money. It is also why I haven’t posted for a while – I’ve been spending a lot of time absorbing.

But to make absorbing effective, it needs to be followed by some doing. I’ve started trying out some of the techniques and ideas I’ve learned.  I’m liking the results.

One of the first things I tried was a second wack at the tramp composite. The same day I shot the pictures of my daughter, I shot some of my son and his friend. While my 7 year old art critic rejected my effort, my son was more impressed. He asked if I would do one for him and being the good father that I am I obliged. It also gave me a chance to improve on my previous efforts.

Here’s the end result:

For the most part it was a repeat of the first try. My selections went a bit faster and cleaner. My shading went better. Overall it was a smoother effort. The primary difference was in the base image. On the first one I pulled up an image of the girls on the tramp and added other images around them. About halfway in I wanted to move them and couldn’t, because I hadn’t generated an image of just the tramp.

So on try #2 the first thing I did was generate an image of the tramp without participants.  I found two images where the jumpers were not overlapping. I stripped the jumpers from the base image. Then I did a Photomerge of the two images to align them. Then I dropped a layer mask on the second image and simply erased the hole away. It worked very nicely. I had a clean picture of the tramp and I was able to position the jumpers more easily.

From David duChemin on his blog at: PixelatedImage.com

He discusses the question we often ask before we commit to an endeavor: ‘Am I good enough?‘

To often we forget to ask: ‘Do I love it enough?‘

It takes both. Maybe more of the second than the first.

He closes with the following:

Whatever the next step for you is, take it boldly. These are not times for the timid;
there’s no reward in tiptoeing through life only to make it safely to death.

Wow, in half a sentence he states what I’ve been trying to incorporate into my sense of being, into my way of living - to step up and LIVE life, not just exist.  To do – not just observe.

The artist who is only a painter may well become intimidated by his degree-bearing brethren. Under the charmed light of their MA’s, their PhD’s, their accumulated honors and designations, the scholars speak of art in terms of class and category, and under headings of which the artist may never have heard. While he himself may have read extensively about art – and I think that most artists do read a great deal about art, and know a great deal about it – while he may have looked at scores of paintings, have dwelt upon them and absorbed them, his interest has been a different one; he has absorbed visually, not verbally. The idea of classifying such work would never have occurred to him, because to him the work is unique; it exists in itself alone. It is its distinction from other art, not its commonality with other art, that interests him. If the work has no such distinction, if it does not stand alone, he has no reason for remembering it.

The Shape of Content, by Ben Shahn, pg 18

I have a young friend who, through most of  his high-school years, was given to writing poetry. He is now entering his junior year in the university. The other evening I asked him what sort of verse he had been writing, and whether I might read some of it. He replied, “Oh, I’ve stopped writing poetry.” Then he explained, “There’s so much that you have to know before you can write poetry. There are so many forms that you have to master first. Actually,” he said, “I just wrote because I liked to put things down. It didn’t amount to much; it was only free verse.”

Perhaps my young friend would never under any circumstances have become a good poet. Perhaps he should have had the drive and persistence to master those forms which have defeated him – I myself think he should. But I wonder whether it was made clear to him that all poetic forms have derived from practice; that in the very act of writing poetry he was, however crudely, beginning to create form. I wonder whether it was pointed out to him that form is an instrument, not a tyrant; that whatever measures, rhythms, rhymes, or groupings of sounds best suited his own expressive purpose could be turned to form – possibly just his own personal form, but form; and that it too might in time take its place in the awesome hierarchy of poetic devices

The Shape of Content, by Ben Shahn, pg 19

Scholarship is perhaps man’s most rewarding occupation, but that scholarship which dries up its own creative sources is a reductio ad absurdum, a contradiction of itself.

The Shape of  Content, by Ben Shahn, pg 19

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
— Erich Fromm

I’ve been telling people that my next career will be as a high school art teacher. I don’t know if that is where I’ll end up, but it does give me something to work toward that requires a broad range of skills and a solid understanding of the creative/artistic world. And I like to teach. I was a teacher’s aid in College and taught community ed photo classes for a bunch of years, among other things.  I really enjoyed that. I learn better when I have to review and organize the data well enough to teach others. I enjoy the give and take. And, though I’ll never admit it, I like the feeling of respect/admiration/look-up-to-it-ness that is available if you are a good teacher. And I’m pretty good.

And at the moment, I have 3 built in students I can teach, indoctrinate and expose to what I think is neat and fun – my kids.

R is 12 and we share altogether to many shared hang-ups. One of our basic challenges is the need to do everything, try everything. While she does well at everything she tries, she isn’t becoming amazing at any one thing. She doesn’t give any one thing a chance to really develop. She’s always been a pretty good with a pen, maybe just a little better than average, but she hasn’t spent a lot of time with it. This year she is taking art and doing well and really liking it. I’ve been impressed at moments of real creative thought. Maybe this one will catch her interest more than the half a dozen other things she’s got going on.

This is from a quick sketch that she did years ago that I liked and stuck in a book and found a while ago.

A few weeks ago her class had a contest where they had to design an environmental Google logo. I was impressed with what she came up with.

A is 9 and is naturally good at everything he does.  Art isn’t really his thing – he doesn’t sit down to do it for its sake. But when he is forced to sit quietly he’s pretty good with a pencil and paper and with a hunk of clay. He likes creating his ‘creatures’. Some day he plans on creating a comic book full of them. When ever he gets some clay he’s taking to sculpting them. He created an entire army of them:

K is my dedicated artist. She spends hours drawing and coloring, cutting and pasting. When she was learning to write she came up with her own method of holding a pencil/pen with the tips of her fingers – looks stange but it gives her very tight control. From the beginning I was always amazed at her control and detail. Plus I just love to watch her do her thing.

R started a pottery class where they learned how to make little pinch pot creatures. We’ve had two previous pinch pot lessons at home so all three of them know the concept. I had R teach us how to build the creatures. She is a natural teacher (she feels the need to be in charge and teaching provides that) and she did a good job. They all made their own creature and R made tounges for the other two and they all came out very fun. I like mine, but I’m a little jealous because I didn’t do a tounge - but my nose it cool. Did the Karl Malden thing. I’ll drop pictures in when we’ve painted and fired them.

They may never be artists, but at least they’ll have the opportunity that I never had to explore and see if they like it.

Plus I just like the natural sense of beauty that comes out of their young minds and fingers. It isn’t based on years of education and critical reviews. It just a natural effort that is fun and natural and pure. The gift of childhood.