Thursday, March 22, 2007

spring at last or Seeing Grean


i've been so incredibly busy lately and the weather has been so fine, i haven't sat still long enough to write a blog in quite some time! this flower petal isn't even a spring flower! it's from the dead of winter -- which around here is not so dead!

the TV of Tomorrow show last week was FANTASTIC! what fun we had! mostly the techies kept to themselves and the artists kept together, even though we'd never met before. the show was a conference for folks who work in the development end of interactive tv. the idea was to explore the possibilities. in keeping with that theme our art all had something to say about tv and many of us imagined where it might go.

one piece was a robot that was peopled remotely. there was a tv screen with the person's face broadcast live and you could talk to her and she'd talk back. the robot could move around the room because it was wireless. this was created collaboratively by some art students. it became the intersection for the artists and the techies. being so overtly techie as a piece it was easier for the techies to approach.

the was also a student journalist there so i had my first newspaper interview. i wonder if her published anything!

on Sunday i drove up to Petaluma to pick up my art from the Aurora Colors Gallery and had a nice chat with the owner. in the car i switched out frames cuz i hated that Plexiglas and took that piece and two others down to Ben Lomond for the "Seeing Green" show at the Santa Cruz Mountains art center http://www.mountainartcenter.org/

so i will have three rather green pieces there- the show opens friday night with a party and goes for a month. i still have work up at the Frank Bette Center in Alameda. for now it's in their "Green" show and that will be follow by our Alameda on Camera work. all 40 photographer's and our vision of the city!

i'm printing out - for the fourth time - the piece for that show as i write this. it has a great story behind it which i will share when i post the image here. i'm reprinting it to get the sharpening just right. it's very textured and it looked to grainy, then too blurry, and then grainy again.

i ended up sharpening different parts of the image differently. over all used "High Pass", for which you have to make a copy of your background layer because it is a destructive filter and when you are done you blend it with the original layer. I have some of my own tricks that i've added to this hidden gem. i like making the hi pass layer black and white to avoid adding a color cast and playing with the blending modes and opacity.

i made a separate layer for sections of the picture that had unique issues. one part for example, was so deeply orange / red that it was loosing detail when it printed. rather than desaturate (which i'll try if this doesn't work) i put this part on it's own layer and sharpened it in such a way as to emphasize the hidden yellows. this created a more textured look and lessened the orange / red blow out.

it's coming out of the printer now. well i won't decide til tomorrow whether i need to keep working on this image. often the print changed a bit as it dries over night.

Monday, March 12, 2007

matting and framing

matting and framing has been the order of the day! I know it's not exciting but it has to be done! I had to ready 5 pieces foe the TV of Tomorrow show at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. the show opens tomorrow and i dropped off my work today. I finished all my matting and framing before the weekend so i could relax! i continue to improve but i have issues cutting the mats just so, and more now the problem has been a silly math error in calculating the size of the hole! I know how to determine the size of the margin - i subtract the size of the image from the size of the matte and divide by 2. so if my image is 10 by 18 and my mat is 16 by 20 then i subtract 10 form 16, to get the difference of 6, which is divided in 2 because there are 2 margins on each side. and then subtract 18 from 20 and get 2 divide by 2 is 1. well that would be a bad looking matte if it were 3 inches on the sides and only one top and bottom but you get the idea.
I have started using light mattes. i've always used black, but you can't actually get museum quality mattes that are black because the coloring ruins it's archival qualities. It's still acid free and all, it's just won't last quite as long. so people really expect off white. I'm not sure at all i like the way it looks! but i did it for the show. I got wooden frames so i could put the real eye screw things in it and i even used archival matt on the back and taped up the back to the frame! this reduces the effect of pollution. were i to get better at the taping part it would really protect it well, but I'm still leaving tiny wholes so it's not fully sealed. I guess this is boring but artist have to do many things that are maybe not so exciting! however, tomorrow night i go to the artist's reception for the TV of Tomorrow show and i expect that will be very exciting!

Monday, March 05, 2007

yosemite!


i took a day trip to yosemite with three other photographers. it was incredible, getting up at 3:15 am, pouring coffee in my gut and driving down to the park and ride to pick everyone else up and then getting off the peninsula before rush hour, through the coastal range across the valley and into the foothills in time for breakfast! we ate at happy burger on rt. 140. It was still early when we got to Yosemite and it was cloudy on and off (and snowing on and off too!) so we could take pictures all day. we left around 4PM and i was home by 7 at the latest. it was 500 miles round trip.

this image is of yosemite falls taken with my lensbaby without the macro and with the biggest aperture.

anyway, hit the link above and you can see so unedited shots that a threw up on the web.

thanks to Thomas, Lawernce and Jen for being part of the adventure!

Friday, March 02, 2007

Frank Bette Center

I have discovered this great place in Alameda called the Frank Bette Center for the Arts. I love this place! I took part in the Alameda on Camera event last weekend - the show will be in April. And in March starting tomorrow night, I will have a piece in the show called "Green."
the hype:
"The color green and... "green behind the ears," money, lettuce, salads, greener pastures, wealth, grass, parrots, jealousy, new, spring green, green eyes, "eat your veggies," summer green, green eggs and ham, clover, luck, Irish, St. Patrick, Greenpeace, Green Party, bowling greens, Green Bay Packers, field of green, green apples, fried green tomatoes, green hills, green belt, green algae, acid green."

I'll upload an image of the on accepted into the show maybe Sunday! I just saw how late it is so i have to go, but first wish me happy birthday!