I really needed this…. to get out into the fall weather and into the magnificent colors.  I wish I could have stayed out longer, but I’d forgotten that since the end of Daylight Savings time, it gets dark earlier than it did a week ago.  So, it was getting dark, there were quite a few clouds - the lighting wasn’t perfect (as on Friday when I didn’t have my camera), and the batteries died after about 5-10 minutes, but here’s a bit of what I was able to capture…

I always feel grateful after I’ve had a chance to walk a bit in nature.  Its intricate and exquisite beauty reminds me of the hand of God in my life.  I feel renewed, more grounded, and I am able to more fully appreciate the simple things… simple, but meaningful and inspiring.

Creativity Question: I’ve asked before what inspires you.  This time, the question is, where do you go to renew your soul?
For me, there are several places - but nature is probably the place where I feel the strongest, simplest, soul-stirring feelings of gratitude, and at the same time, refill my creativity cup (and I can’t possibly capture it perfectly through my camera lens).

I know, I know - it’s been a while.  I really didn’t intend to wait an entire month between posts.  I’ll try to do better this time (again).  But, don’t think for a second that I haven’t been doing anything…

A program for my niece’s baptism (click photo to enlarge).  I shot the photo, created the graphics in Illustrator, then the layout in InDesign.  I’m happy with the way it turned out - that was a lot of information to fit on a half a sheet of paper, plus the photo.   A lot of design is about organization of information. (Wish my house were so well organized!)

I wanted to make something special for my niece, so I made this necklace.  Actually, Hana strung the beads on there for me (I was really short on time, so she helped), and I made the initials “CTR”  (Choose The Right).  It’s a little reminder of her baptism promises.  I probably made about 6 of them poorly before I got a decent one.  She likes it, and that’s what matters most.  Copper wire with glass beads on plastic-coated jewelry wire.

I have also started a new encaustic painting which has been taking up a lot of my time.  But, you’ll have to wait for photos on that - I am hoping to have the painting done by the end of next week, and then post soon after that.

Creativity Question:  Do you allow yourself to say “no” sometimes so you can have time to fulfill your own creative dreams/goals?

This is a tough one, isn’t it?  We all want to be helpful to those in need and do what needs to be done.  We don’t want to feel like we’re being selfish.  But is it sometimes too much?  Should we really stretch ourselves that thin?  The words that keep going through my head are “you can’t draw water from an empty well”.  It is true of wells, and it is true of our souls.  We need to take the time to re-fill them, replenish them and nurture their desires for creativity, or else how can we truly help others? 

Ok - so I love to experiment as you’ve probably guessed by now… I’d been wanting to try something that I saw done by a talented photographer on Etsy. She takes photos with her digital camera, shot through an old camera - the kind you can’t get film for any more. When I saw what she’d done, I was really excited about it because I had purchased several years before an old Argus Argoflex Seventy-five at an estate sale in NJ.

I thought it was such a cool old camera - it even came with a leather case. But, I was sad that I couldn’t get any film for it. Needless to say, I was excited to try shooting through it with my digital camera. So, when a few weeks ago, my mother in law brought me some dried thistle (I think that’s what it is) that she found in a field behind our house, I was really excited to try. It’s a bit tricky. The first shot was just for fun to see what would happen.

The black edges and black dust-looking things are from the old camera. This is the kind of camera where the viewfinder is about 2 inches wide and you look through it from the top… so, tricky, as I said, to get the shot. In order to even get one decent chance at a shot, I had to tape a piece of heavy art paper in a tube shape around my camera’s gobo and place the tube over the entire flip-up opening to the Argus viewfinder. This was to keep the glare off. The glass of the Argus’s viewfinder is convex, so glare is a real problem. Also, it was necessary to use the manual focus because auto-focus would get confused.
After experimenting a bit outside, I decided that the background (my backyard) is far too busy for what I was wanting to do, so I thought I’d try indoors. Wow! It worked better than I thought. I didn’t use a flash, and the lighting was terrible, but somehow I was still able to get a couple of decent photos. It’s too bad I cut off the top of the better one - I guess I need to get a second tripod. One tripod for the Argus and one for the digital. It has to be positioned just right to get the whole viewfinder (that rounded rectangle), plus I was having some camera-shake issues.

My photos don’t hold a candle to the photographer who inspired the idea, but they turned out ok, and really, it was just good fun! I love how it instantly gives that vintage look, and I didn’t have to apply any Photoshop filters, textures, or color effects.. these are untouched aside from cropping out all the extra black and changing the size for the web.

Creativity Question: Have you experimented with anything interesting lately - I mean, creatively?
Me? Within the last year: Wire sculpture, encaustic (since it’s new to me), camera through camera, and shadow puppets.