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Seeing the strange

The lazy Sunday afternoon I planned on today turned into a nice chunk of creative geeking out time instead — I added some new photos to my portfolio site. I hadn’t done anything new since I put up the site in advance of Eastie’s Open Studios in the fall.

I’m surprised how much as happened since then, and how much I’ve enjoyed having the studio space, despite not spending nearly as much time there as I thought I would. Turns out I spent the first couple of months getting ready for open studios: deciding what to print, getting stuff printed, matting and framing (which I’d never done before, and it was mind-boggling how long it took to do) and most horrifically difficult of all, putting price tags on my work.

The first thing that happened, and it happened right away, is that other people started referring to me as an artist and I stopped cringing, correcting them, mumbling apologies, etc. I’m not a professional artist (photography doesn’t pay my mortgage) and I’m not really looking to be one. I’m looking to spend more time and energy on creative pursuits, to give myself permission for that to really mean something to me. If folks want to buy one of my photos that makes me really happy, but it’s not because of the money (nice as money always is to have) it’s because it makes me happy to think someone enjoys something I made that much. I’m happy every time someone leaves comments on my flickr stream. (Though it is true that I am not a fan of the big or blinking cut-and-paste group invites.)

The second thing was I got new camera, a Canon 40D, for which I will be eternally grateful. For the first few months I was quite happy with just a nifty fifty; now I have the lensbaby composer too. I figured I’d get a macro lens in fairly short order, but now I’m thinking I may want a wide or ultra-wide lens instead. Turns out I’m not shooting nearly as much indoors — not setting things up in my studio space — because I’m out walking around with the new camera instead.

I’m also messing around more with photoshop.

Not so much heavily post-processing individual images, but combining them. The images in the above triptych are pretty much right from the camera, I just put the three of them together. I’m playing around with composites, too, like the one to the right.

I used to shoot macro all the time, because I love the strangeness of small details rendered larger than life. And probably because my Canon S3 was very, very good at macro shots. I guess now I’m finding the strangeness on a larger scale.

Hi, Jenny!
I looked at your 365 photos again because after a long break I’ve started up my 365 project again– which was inspired partly by yours but has turned into an “I’m-going-to-take-self-portraits-when-I-want-to-for-365-days” project, which suits my sputtering self better–and want to tell you how gorgeous and inspiring all you photographs are. They make me think maybe one day I will bother to figure out how to use my camera… or get a camera that can do more things… Anyway, thanks for the lift.

Fresca, thank you so much!

I learned a lot about my camera (which wasn’t all that fancy – a Canon S3) and photoshop doing my 365 project. I’m glad you started up again, as I think your SPs are fun and I enjoy them on your blog. It will be interesting to see how long a 365-taken-as-often-as-I-felt-like it project takes to complete