Beyond Layers Color Week ~ Red

Phew! This week made me tired! I loved every bit of it... but I should never have committed myself to so many pictures each day! LOL, I do it to myself, I know.  Here's RED.

Beyond Layers Color Week ~ Blue

Beyond Layers: Color Week ~ Pink

Beyond Layers Color Week: Yellow!

Beyond Layers ~ Day 16 B&W

So... this is good, we learned how to adjust to B&W in the ACR - Adobe Camera Ready editor - plus, I'm loving shooting in RAW, I think it makes a huge difference.

All the B&W shots I've shared earlier this week, I converted using Pioneer Woman Actions or with Nelly Nero actions... or combinations of actions. This one, I only followed Kim's instructions. I like it. I may go back and put an action on it too... at some point because I'm loving the magic of PW's actions. They are just so moody. (OK, update here: the actions don't work if you convert to B&W in the ACR... so... I had to mess around on my own trying to make some magic... maybe I did, maybe I didn't, but a gradient helped in the second one, and the last two have a gaussian blur layer at a couple of different blend modes.)

I've also decided I really only like B&W if it's dramatic, lots of contrast, lots of dark. Of course I may change my mind at some future date... but that's what I think today.

and one last one, to compare to yesterday's moss photos - I really, REALLY, love this new control I have over all of it! Wow!

Beyond Layers: Black & White

It was just too rainy to go outside and play today... so I didn't. But I did go through some photos looking for something to play inside with, to turn b&w. I don't hate b&w. But I'm really into this photography thing for the color.

Beyond Layers Class Day 17: Fear

Today we are supposed to list the fears we have faced, and the rewards of having pushed through them.

Ug. That feels really personal. Why? I have no secrets. I guess that means there is some shame in having fears in the first place for me. Something to think about. Or ignore. 

I'm good at ignoring. I like to push on through, like a stubborn bull, just get to where I want to go. Or sit and wait for a chance to flit through, like... a scared rabbit? No, like a busy bird, maybe. One or the other, it depends on the situation. But either way, I don't like to reflect on this kind of thing, or the past, or how I got to where I am. I'm always, always, looking forward. It feels much better for me. Sometimes, I manage to be in the moment, but usually, I'm looking forward. Onward. Away from.... maybe. Probably. 

It doesn't matter, as long as I'm not in that place of not being able to move forward. I've been there. Of course I have. There are things in my past that are hard and could have ruined a life forever. I don't think about them anymore. There are other things that were hard, that I'm so grateful we survived, like a preemie baby with vision and speech issues, who is now an amazing boy who reads a new book almost every other day and never stops talking. And autoimmune disease, which, thankfully, after too many years, is under control now that gluten is out of our lives. (It is amazing, actually, how much fear was released with the gluten. There is a whole new brain buzz of happiness and contentment, and serenity and peace and possibility that happens when gluten goes away. It's chemical. You should try it. No, really, you should.  YOU. I would shout it to the world if I could, it's that amazing.) 

There is the usual stuff... job losses, and other illnesses. Deaths in the family, so much pain, dragged out, fear that it would only get harder before it was over, that it would wreck the lives of the care-givers in the family... family issues and relationship issues. People you miss. People you wonder if you will ever see again. Major world events that can suck you in and make you afraid to cross a bridge or travel or drink the water. The best thing for that is to filter the news of course, and figure out what the agenda behind the fear message is... so much manufactured fear in the world that we could do without. Imagine what the world would be like without all *that* kind of fear being spewed at us daily?

And then there is Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's. There will always be Alzheimer's. The big elephant in our closet, maybe. We've got it on all sides... 4 direct links on three branches of the family tree. That's a big fear, especially knowing personally what it is and what it does to a family. But we deal. We donate money whenever we can to research. We take our vitamins, we eat right, we hope for the best. Create new memories every day. Because sometimes that's all you can do. The best you can. 

The most freeing thing? In recent memory... was when my grandmother died. It's sad. I miss her so much. I wish I'd been able to visit her before she died... but not having to worry about what was next, how much worse was it going to get? To know that she was no longer is sick, it was a relief. And I immediately started creating again. In her honor, at first, and in mine, now as I keep going. She was an amazing artist, and she was always busy. Busy busy busy. Until she wasn't herself any more. So hard to watch. Much better to live as much and as well as you can, while you can. 

Moving forward. Every day. Sitting around worrying just makes you sick. Makes me sick, I know this. Worry is a killer. I come from a family of worriers... and I remind myself often: "Worry is just focusing your attention and energy on what you don't want."  It's much better to think what you DO want and reach forward to that with your thoughts. Moving forward. Always. Eventually, anyway, even if you have to throw yourself a little pity party for a day or two...or longer if you can't help it... but you always get back to the moving forward bit. You have to, otherwise, what is the point?  See, I don't like to think about this stuff. It just is. You get through it. Or you don't. But you can't dwell or it sucks all the life out of you. It's a choice. But the more you live, the more you know what you have control over and what you don't. That changes things too, doesn't it? Just knowing? 

Some quotes on fear I've collected that ring true to me:

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do. 

Eleanor Roosevelt

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

Eric Hoffer

I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.

William Allen White

Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out.

Karl Augustus Menninger

Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.

James Stephens

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

Dale Carnegie

Try a thing you haven’t done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time to figure out whether you like it or not.

Virgil Thomson

The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but, it is fear.

Gandhi

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark, professionals built the Titanic.

Unknown

"Life is like a good black and white photograph, there's black, there's white, and lots of shades in between." 

Karl Heiner

And here is a photo to go with, looking back in the dreary rain, kind of fitting for the above post? In black and white. We will be working on black and white photos this week. 

Beyond Layers Day 16: Whisper

OK, wow, when it comes together easy and wonderful... it's so much better when you just keep trying and tweaking and trying and it still doesn't work. I tried to use Kim's recipe for whisper on a couple of shots... but I just didn't like it for my close up shots... I think it works great on her photos where a lot of the image can be blurred out but I didn't love it on big florals which is all I have right now... and then I happened on this, and I feel it has the same whispery feeling, and I love it... so I'm stopping here and moving on. I think "whisper" is also one of the lessons in The Art of Texture Secrets class, so, two birds with one stone here. Yay!

Two layers of KK's Happy Heart, and one of Embrace, a pioneer woman's action "Soft and Ethereal", and that's really it, aside from shooting in RAW and tweaking it in there to get the colors to pop first. You can see the popping one in yesterday's blog post below. Thanks for looking!

Beyond Layers Class, Day 15

Resistance... and "Whisper"... that's what Beyond Layers was about in yesterday's class... getting past the resistance, what stops us from making art, from being... ourselves...whatever.. and a prompt to create around the word "whisper"... Well, I thought all day about "whisper, while telling myself that I was actually doing pretty well about getting past resistance... lately... and then, the moon came out, with wispy clouds... and I thought "Hey!" and went to shoot it... only to be disappointed once again about the stupid bright circle on black that I always get when trying to shoot the moon.

Duh. Why keep doing the same old thing, expecting different results? So I looked it up: How to Take a Great Picture of the Moon? and there it was... the thing I'd been resisting... learning to use the manual controls on my camera. So, I figured it out. Sort of. But then a cloud came through, bringing snow... and this was as good as I got. It's my "Whisper" image for class... Thursday Kim will have some new "whisper" recipe for us to try, I'm looking forward to it.

Beyond Layers Class, Day 14

Last week's lesson was actually two lessons. The first was a video showing how to convert a photo to black and white and then add back in a pop of color. I did several. Of course.

The second lesson was how to make brushes... and how to save a set of them to share. I decided to make some brushes from some old vintage public domain images I've found. And I'm sharing: just click on this link to get them!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/65470702/PamShareVintageBrushes.abr

and then there was this image, I made a brush for this too, but then lost it before I saved it. Oh well!

Beyond Layers ~ Day 13: Simple Truths

Today, Kim asked us to list 10 Truths about ourselves, along with a picture. Here's the truth about me, I have trees in my hair. Oh, wait, that's not what she asked for. Truths, not fairy tales.

1. My favorite colors are jewel tones, the colors of the sky at sunset.

2. If I could live anywhere in the world, it would be somewhere with more sunshine than Seattle, but all the beauty of the Pacific Northwest on a sunny day. Plus, there would be water and a kayak with my name on it.

3. I homeschool my kid, which looks an awful lot like regular school half the week and unschooling the rest of the week. He's growing up to be an amazing person, but I worry about him getting into college. I try to tell myself that all mothers have the same worry, no matter what school they go to.

4. I'm kind of a geek. I like my gadgets, I like to code in HTML, I am so enjoying deconstructing layers in Photoshop, I spend way too much time on the internet. I've been known to have the laptop, the kindle fire and the iPhone all going on at one time. Sometimes you just need multiple screens!

5. I'm a craft supply hoarder. I have a whole studio in the backyard devoted to melting glass and jewelry making. I have a whole basement full of yarns, clay, fabric, paints, brushes, gel medium. I have a whole *basket full* of gel medium. And a wall full of beads. And another wall full of glass rods. I have two sewing machines that I don't know how to use. Also, I create more art in my head than ever sees the full light of day.

6. I bought myself a guitar, but I don't know how to play it. It sits in a stand in my living room mocking me.

7. I am a bit of a political junkie, a progressive dreamer, a feminist, equal rights, a free-choice, peace-loving, live and let live kind of person. I do not wear tie-dye.

8. I'm a food freak. I'm all about home-grown, local farmer grown, seasonal, humane, non-gmo, organic whole foods. Plus coffee. Espresso, really. I can't eat gluten anymore, and so I don't bake much anymore, something I've always loved. I have planted 6 fruit trees in my front yard and have 4 raised beds in my back yard. I love to pick lettuce right out of the garden for salad, and the strawberries? O.M.G. there are no better strawberries than the ones you grow yourself.

9. I love books. My guilty pleasure is vampire and werewolf and shape-shifter stories. I read history books for pleasure too, though admittedly, they help me to fall asleep. There are piles of books all over my house, art books, garden books, chicken-raising books, bird books, school books, cookbooks. And magazines. Way too many magazines.

10. I am blessed beyond belief with an amazing husband who spoils me, a beautiful child who makes me laugh and makes my heart ache with love, a big dopey happy dog, and a possessive cat, and a coop full of happy chickens who give us fresh eggs and a whole lot of entertainment.

Beyond Layers: Getting Painterly

Well. Painterly is what I'm mostly always going for, so I was thrilled with this week's lesson. Painterly in a mixed media kind of way though, not a fine art kind of way... which is how I feel the tulips came out... and maybe the gull too? I don't know. I was tempted to brighten the flowers, add some script or something mixed media-ish... but I refrained. Probably because I kind of did that yesterday and had lots of fun already. How many ways can I alter that tulip photo? That's a good question, I bet I could do a different treatment every day of the year. But, don't worry, I won't!

Here are my finished images, the tulips and the gull.

and here are my source images so you can see the difference. I think the best thing I learned was about sharpening the image ahead of time to get a more painterly feel out of it. 

 

Thanks for looking :)

Beyond Layers Class: Time Capsule, Part 2

Well, look at that. Kim did have a magic trick for making these. Easy-peasy. (For those of you not taking the class, she did give us a free resource for some nice templates - Check out Gingerpixel - and I'm sure there are more on the web too.)

For this one, I couldn't resist adding a texture layer to bring it all together. I used Kim's "Evolve". Thanks for looking!

BTW, that's Pippi, the Buff Orpington, and Lulu, the Cuckoo Maran. We have two others, Daphne and Bella, I'm sure they will be featured at some point.

Beyond Layers Class: Time Capsule

This is my homework for the Beyond Layers class - a time capsule, series of pictures that show a moment of time in my life. This is today. Outside. With the girls. I'm looking forward to seeing how Kim suggests making the collage (though of course I couldn't wait for her instructions) - I bet she's got a trick to make lining them all up evenly much easier. Also, I didn't add any texture to these, though I was very tempted.

Beyond Layers: Week 2 Part 2

I made this using a combination of these two photos of mine, one from a lake in Oregon, the other, a bird in Florida. Plus, Kim's Plaster Squared texture, and a Flypaper texture.

 

Beyond Layers, Week Two Part 1

Six Word Memoir (Story of My Life):

It looked better in my head.

What's yours?

Beyond Layers, Week One

I signed up for Kim Klassen's Beyond Layers class this morning. I was so excited... it's a year long class all about photography and PhotoShop and creativity... should be fun. But first I had to catch up, I'm about a week and a half behind, I guess. Do-able.

The first assignment was to write your creative story, which as it turns out, I kind of did yesterday... at least my creative story as far as photography goes. So, check!

Next up was a creative assignment to "keep it simple" - we were given a background texture and told that "less is more". Well, if you know me, less is never more. So. I started getting grumpy. I mean, really. White is not a color! I had just gotten through complaining about the latest "Country Living" magazine that is all about neutrals. The whole issue is WHITE. What fun is that? Give me color, give me texture and I'm happy happy happy. You can only imagine how hard this was going to be for me now, right? Keep it simple, less is more, lighten up. Gah! <-- that's me pulling my hair out!

Sigh. (See, this is what I was afraid of when I signed up for the class... Kim's pictures are all soft and pale and pretty and delicate and romantic and so different from... well, everything *I* make. I was hoping it wasn't going to turn out to be a class learning how to make our photos look like hers... and I'm still pretty sure it's not going to be that... because she has skills! Mad skills.... skills I might learn from and use in my own way, that is actually one of the things that excited me - she doesn't have a style that I'm at all tempted to copy - not that her photos aren't drool-worthy - but they aren't *me*. If I can figure out how to take those skills and do things my way... then.... it will be ok...)

So. I went through my old photo files. I looked at some of the creations I'd made in the past few days and thought, huh, I guess this might be what she means by over-done. I could try again and do less.... I guess. Or, not. I grabbed a few items from around the house and went and shot a few photos in my lightbox (which felt like work and made me even grumpier.) I went back to my old photo files. I moaned and groaned. And finally, I went outside to see what the yard had to offer. That was much better. The bird feeders needed filling, the chickens all came around and chatted at me like they hadn't seen me in days... it wasn't raining... it wasn't white! A lot of brown though. And green. But, not much interesting. I walked around... I snapped a few photos. I came back in and made myself a smoothie... and then I sat down and said, ok, keep it simple, Pam.

And this is what I made. (You can click on the photos to see them enlarged.)

First up, an old photo, a very old photo... a magnolia blossom. Kim's "Awaken" texture, at 50% opacity, overlay.



and the original file:



(OK, so that didn't hurt... but it's not very exciting.)

This next photo got an "oh, yeah" from me when I was surveying my memory card haul. So... why not. It's not light or bright, but if you think about it, less is more here... it's still beautiful, even as it fades and decays. Right? My interpretation.

Texture layer at 60% overlay.



And the original:



So far so good. But in the back of my mind, I kept hearing a little nagging voice (complaining?) that Kim had used her texture file at 100% opacity. How did she do that? My photos kept getting crazy bright and ugly when I tried that. But... I wasn't going to give up... I was going to figure this out. And on this photo, I made it work.

100% Opacity; Soft Light. Yes! To me, this one needs... something more, I don't love the composition, though I do like the subject. And I like what the texture at 100% did for it. So, I'm stopping, because less is more. Maybe. Maybe... sometimes.



and the original:

Texture Tuesdays

(Edited to add: I just started Kim Klassen's Beyond Layers e-class - a week or so late - and the first assignment is to write our creative story. I think this can be mine... there's more to it of course. Glass bead making, jewelry making, fits and starts with painting... trying different things at different times. Waiting for time and freedom to create until I about burst and just do it. Lots of that. Lots of waiting. Too many projects started and never finished... supplies, supplies, supplies. And of course mixed in with all of that is parenthood, and healing from illness, and life. It's probably not that much different than anyone else's story.)

The story:

Once upon a time, there was a girl who took lots and lots of pictures. First she filled shoe boxes up with prints and negatives... and as time went on she filled her computer up with them and plastered the internet with them, and she was happy. Then she started taking pictures of her beads, in order to sell them online, and photography became "work"... and she stopped taking pleasure in it and started only using her nice camera for that. Everything else was shot with the iPhone.

One day she saw that a bunch of her blogging friends were doing a year long iPhone photo challenge - one a day - and she thought "Oh, cool, I can do that!" but a few days into that she got bored. So she downloaded some fun photo editing apps and went to town. But then she thought, "how much better would it be if I had more control over this process?" and so she bought a book, which is what she always does when she wants to learn something new. The book was beautiful and amazing and turned her on to layers and textures.

One Tuesday, this Tuesday, she saw that Jen Worden posted about Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesdays. That sparked an interest! So, she got busy, downloading textures. Playing around. And made something.

This is really only the beginning of the story, because the girl is in love with photography again.

The End.


The original photo, a mermaid from Friday Harbor:



The textured photo, using Kim's 'Simplicity' and 'music lovin' textures:



A few more things I've been working on over the past couple of days:

Thanks for looking :)