Playing with Textures

Every now and then I like playing with photoshop to explore my creative artistic side. I was raised with the great painters - my mother taking me to the museum to see contemporary painters. She had books throughout the house showing the techniques of the great masters. I grew up admiring the likes of Monet and Degas and wanting to paint like them. 

Once I realized I couldn't paint especially as marvelously as they could, I turned to science. But I still held onto my love of beautiful art.

When I turned to photography, it was to capture scientific discoveries, experiments and progression. I studied the technical end of photography and turned to photojournalism for a while so I could capture the here and now, the event and (hopefully) the emotion it carried.

I left photography for a while to pursue teaching but still found a way to incorporate photography into my lessons with storytelling and photojournalism. And I painted (still poorly but I tried).

For the longest time I separated photography from art. My education emphasized photography as capturing the reality of the world and painting, drawing and sculpture captured the beauty of the world inside. Through "art" and artist could create a world that he or she envisioned beyond reality.

Then came along digital image making. I was resistant. Through digital image making one could "create" a scene or image not entirely based in reality. A photographer could create a lie! And that is not what photography is about. 

Finally I was won over by digital and even began playing with my images in photoshop to help recreate the image I saw in my mind as I pressed the shutter. And sometimes, as shown in the image above, a piece of art develops on the canvas of my computer screen, not quite based in reality - two images blended together to make something more than a record of the scene but a record of an artists eye that was never that good with a paintbrush. It may never match the great masters or be an inspiration to future generations, but expressing my inner artist brings satisfaction to my heart.

How do you express your inner artist, How do you bring satisfaction to your heart?

Washington Coastal Clean-up 2013

It's a soul-sucking mud. The type of mud that grabs hold and pulls every ounce of willpower to move away from you. It pulls at you, drags you. And if you are able to free yourself from its clenches, it will still pull something from you - like a boot.

This is the trail to one of the most beautiful wilderness beaches on the Washington Coast - Shi Shi Beach. Just south of Cape Flattery, the most northwesterly point of the contiguous United States. Two miles of beach (and more at low tide), sea stacks, sea stars and quiet encircled by thickly forested hills await the traveler.

But first you must get through the mud.

To be honest, the beauty of this pristine wilderness beach far outweighs the mud. Oh wait, did I say pristine? The only real drawback to the beach and many other beaches along Washington's coast is the marine debris. Tons of it washes up on the Washington coast every year, coming from different sources mostly marine industries, and not all of it intentionally dumped.

And every year just as the tides rise and deposit the debris in the driftwood, thousands of volunteers with Washington CoastSavers come to pull it of the beaches and away from causing harm. Volunteers have pulled off crab pots, rope, footballs, tires, even a jeep buried in the sand had been pulled off the beach. The worst is plastics and styrofoam. These break down into small bits and appear to be tasty morsels to birds and fish. They gorge themselves on these tasty looking treats only to starve when they can't digest it and are unable to eat real food.

It's a tough job. But one that volunteers, year after year come to haul trash off the beach. It's a job we never tire of as we know the debris will continue to wash ashore.

Our mission: to clean the beaches, save a few animals, become a part of the solution.

As we fill our sacks and haul them off the beaches we have a satisfied heart that we did SOMETHING.

And for those of us on Shi Shi, we must return with the bags back through that mud. That soul sucking mud, that we refuse to allow to tear us down.

The above image of False-Lily-of-the-Valley and Sword Fern was taken on the forested slopes encircling Shi Shi Beach.

Looking Back

The above image is on my computer desktop at work, one of several images that rotate throughout the day. It's a happy image taken day 2 of a 6 day backpack around the Three Sisters in Oregon. As I listened to the events in Boston unfold, a sense of dread and sorrow overcoming my work space and day. 

Then this image of Trail Turtle held by 5 fun-loving guys popped on the screen. The image always makes me smile. First just for the pure joy and fun it exhibits in a good trip with friends. Second, that was one amazing trip!

I thought of the people I met along the way. Some of them living a dream by hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Some enjoying their long-time friends. The boy scouts just trying to make it through their trip to get home to their parents. The rangers out getting ready for the incoming thunderstorm and the inevitable fires.

We were all out in the wilderness for different reasons, but inevitably touched each others' journey through the woods and through life. Stories were shared over lunch eaten on logs. Kind words spoken in passing as if hatred never existed.

So much passed this past week. But the idea that came out strongest was that as the bombs destroyed the dreams, friends, families of those in the marathon and cheering on, people ran into the fray to help. Each life will be touched by the horrors of that day, but each life will also be touched and remembered because of kindness that poured into the terror to help nullify the hatred.

In the end we will continue to run marathons and backpack around mountains because hatred only wins when we stop dreaming, living, doing.

And as Patton Oswalt said - the good will always outnumber the bad.

Staying Motivated

How do you stay motivated when you have one job to finish for a client but a personal project keeps knocking on your brain? No, really, I'm looking for insight.

Last month I photographed the wedding of a daughter of friends of mine. I usually tell people I will photograph the odd wedding but it better dang well BE odd. But these are hiking buddies of mine and fun to be around. As it turns out, so is their daughter. It was an odd wedding (the mother of the bride, bride, and maid of honor posing in their Spanx should be enough to tell you that.) The wedding was fun and I was happy with the images I made.

Then it came time to edit them - throw out the ickies, color correct, correct exposure, crop, make grandma not look so orange (someone really should talk to her about her choice of makeup).

I also did a short road trip to photograph waterfalls. Then a trip to the beach. Then a couple of trips to photograph the cherry blossoms.

All of these were fresh in my mind and I itched to sort through them and play. But I had weeding pictures to work on.

Oh wait! What a cool game on my laptop. But I had wedding pictures to work on.

Finally, a month later I handed off the finished product. And I wonder, could have I been more motivated and gotten the images to the bride & groom sooner?

So I ask you, how do you keep yourself going?

Pink Duct Tape, a Nasty Wave and Crab Legs

It was a great morning on the beach. Sunrise cast a pink glow on the horizon and the diffuse light began to softly lighten up the tidepools as the Pacific Ocean retreated from the beach. I stepped out of my tent, stretched reached back into the tent for my camera, grabbed the tripod and happily skipped to the tidepools.

Ok, maybe not skipped, but I felt like skipping. It was that kind of a morning.

I spent time photographing sea stars with water swirling around them. I had tried this the night before and thought I might have a good image or two but I wanted to keep working with the slow shutter speeds, sea foam and sea stars  With polarizer on my lens to cut down on any glare and to help lengthen my shutter speed, I went from sea star to tide pool to sea star adjusting the polarizer when needed.

Then it happened, I plopped the tripod and camera into a new position and heard a kerplunk. Looking down into the waves rushing back down the beach, I saw my polarizer dancing in the waters as it went happily out to sea.

F***! I watched in disbelief as my filter disappeared into the surf. I looked at the sea anenomes I was wanting to photograph, picked up my camera & tripod and sullenly trudged back up the beach listing in my head my equipment malfunctions over the past year - broken lens, camera held together with pink duct tape, broken tripod, broken filter, make that 2 broken filters and now a filter lost to the sea. What was wrong with me that I keep breaking my equipment?

I sat on a drift log to eat breakfast ruminating about my bad luck and thought of all the photographers the night before with their pretty cameras, tripods that weren't borrowed, fancy lenses and a supply of fresh filters. Then I looked at my poor little camera, covered in pink duct tape sitting lamely on the tripod I had borrowed from my boss, filterless lens pointed out to the sea. I suck!

The shadows from the trees behind me shortened, lighting more of the beach. I looked up the beach to the rocks and the patterns made by the armies of barnacles. Cool patterns. I need some texture images. And heck, I can still make damn nice images with my duct taped camera.

That's a minor issue - my equipment still works, I just need to work with what I got and this is what I got right now. At least my creativity didn't get swept out to sea. Now that would be a major problem.

So I grabbed the camera off the tripod and walked up the beach to see what I could see. I finally did go back to the site of the filter incident and photographed the sea anemone with crab legs sticking out of it that had originally attracted me to that spot.

The above image? That is the sea star at twilight I had made the previous night . . . with a filter.