Been a while

It's been a while since I truly took time off and this summer I took the whole time and didn't really make any new "images." Yes, I took photos, but I didn't "make" any new ones. Starting to worry about it and I finally found a new muse.  We'll see where this goes.

Taking Off...

It's been a really busy year so far...and I'm a bit tired of hearing my own voice, so with that in mind, I'm going on hiatus. The goal will be to have as much input from other sources as I can find. Recently I've felt a sense of change and I want to pay attention to that, to see if it can be listened to and perhaps learned from.  

The bottom line with creativity? Stop listing to the voices in your head that say "you should" or "it's not good enough." It's okay if it's a real struggle to create things you feel nourished by - nothing wrong with a struggle, good things are worth fighting for. Being a creative can be a lonely existence because there's an element of observation embedded into the process, which by definition means you're not completely "in" the group. 

It's also a ticket into another world that let's you see beyond the surface, which makes it all worth it.  

All my best, Ann

Random Idea Generator

I was thinking about my original idea for this blog...which was to find new ways to think creatively and thought I'd try a "roulette wheel" of ideas approach. A very old original inspiration for this idea was the painter Mark Tansey and his "Wheel of Language," a three part wheel filled with words and phrases, that he created to help generate ideas in a more freeform manner. Too often artists over-think the creative process and the idea of incorporating randomness is rather freeing, allowing us to go places we might not have thought of on our own.

Using an online generator, I've created a series of thematic wheels that can be used together or independently to get ideas for what to shoot.

Click on the title links (not the image) to take you to the generator.

Where should I go?

Time: When should I do it? 

What should I photograph? 

Feel like creating your own wheel of ideas? I used "Wheel Decide" and you can easily build your own wheel. 

Searching for a solution

Year before last I was invited to join a group of 15-17 artists who were working on collaborative projects. I missed their first go-round and started in the middle of their current project - which is based on the concept of a Mandala. Each artist started with a piece - the first step of a work and then it passed to the next...and so on, until completion.  You get about 6 weeks to work on each piece and towards the later part of the project, often you'd find that you had to pass on the piece when it got to you because it felt finished. Now we are having an exhibition of the series - and included in the show will be an individual mandala for each of us in our own style.  

The above image was one of my first tries at the individual version...but what it had in symmetry, it lacked in meaning and I just couldn't continue with it. When you're working with a concept, it's important to not be too confined by the literalness of it, or how others have interpreted it. I decided to focus on the idea of four doorways imagining that it was something I could view from another angle. 

This was one of my first tries. The archway came out of a building that I was using in another shot and I loved the light and airy quality it had...but felt the layout didn't really work. Finally, I continued with the idea that I would not make a mandala from an overhead view, but would see it as something towards the horizon - to strive for.

This "room" felt right to me and I loved the dark shadows the front and back curves made on the sand...then came the real problem...perspective for the side curves! When I create constructed images one of the first things I do is draw out all of the perspective lines so I can see how to fit the new objects in from a single viewpoint. The problem was, how would the shadows work on the sides as they connected the front and back surfaces? If this had been a straight rectangle, I would have been fine...but it was the arches that really threw me.

After many attempts to figure it out...I gave up and went to the literal! Cutting out the arches from a photo, taping them together onto a white sheet of paper and sitting them in the sun to photograph how curved shadows moving towards a vanishing line actually look. Having the "maquette" really helped me understand how it worked. The shot I used was taken from a much lower angle to simulate the viewpoint from the photo.

This shot let me know how the shapes work, but the shadow would be way too long to fit into my photograph, so I placed the whole thing onto a large box and tilted the angle to shorten the shadow since I wasn't going to wait for the sun to rise to the correct height.

Finally, I started lowering the camera to get a better sense of how the perspective would change and flatten in my image.

For my final piece I'm still deciding how I want to crop it, whether or not to include the figure...but hey, I have until Friday to figure that out (yes, that's tomorrow). This weekend we install 17-20 works (some ended up evolving into multiple pieces) which should be quite the experience!

Join us the following weekend for the Opening Reception:

Saturday, May 9th, 5:00pm - 9:00pm
The Mandala Project
SCA Project Gallery
281 S. Thomas Street, #104
Pomona, CA

If you're on Facebook, here's the event page.

Be Your Own Critic

A few weeks ago we went to the Sacramento area for an exhibition and during my off time, we took a drive around the neighboring areas. A small town really caught my eye and as we were driving through one of the older areas, we saw a real estate sign in the yard of a very sweet home...and the door was open! I couldn't resist and ended up taking a few images inside. Working with real environments is a great way to bring memory and emotion into your images. I was also taken with the beautiful spring fields filled with swaying tall grasses (although the whole allergy thing made me eventually regret that). 

Starting with two types of images - this is where I ended up. Doing the first "sketches" really starts me on the road to seeing how images will work together and if they create the feelings/evocations I'm looking for. This one did...so after some work, I made a print and I wanted to share that part of the process with you. 

My process is to make a print and start drawing all over it to remember the items I wanted to change (I created this graphic for this blog post only).  Overall: I like the "first look" but it had items I wanted to change (removing flaws, straightening the tree) and broader issues I wanted to reconsider, such as how dark should the wall image be and how to make the tree on the left side feel more dimensional.  

Images evolve. After I'm happy with this one, I'll probably move it to the side for a few weeks and then come back to it and see what I think at that point. For now, I really love this room and the sense that time has grown into the room while it waited. 

Bored and Brilliant.

This past week I participated in a project called Bored and Brilliant: the lost art of spacing out - a project that challenges us to look at how (much) we're using our phones and what the impact might be. Turns out that boredom is an important element of coming up with creative solutions - and I am always on the hunt for new ways to boost creativity. Two years ago I wrote about taking a social media holiday, but this is focused on the use of cell phones.

Here's my experience so far:
I signed up a few weeks ago - big irony, I found out about the project while checking my phone - and immediately found I was more conscious of my usage. As an experiment, the last day of PhotoLA, I resolved to clamp down on my phone-checking. It was a bit odd to just stand there while everyone else was on their phones...but it did give me a chance to be more in the moment. I also worked on awareness. I feel like I've lost some of my ability to concentrate - I used to be a huge reader, and now, not so much.

Monday: Each morning there's a mini-podcast - this one asked you to turn off your notifications and just leave your cell phone in your bag, or someplace that's not touching your body.  The average individual starts at 7:31am by checking their email and Facebook while in bed. Daily use is over three hours...and some of us check our phones almost 1500/week...is this possible? Yikes! The phrase that stuck with me from this morning's pod case was "phantom cell phone" which is when you think you hear your phone ringing. Yes, during the day it was hard to break that automatic habit to reach for the phone, but it's a good way to start.

Tuesday: Photo-Free day - as it says, today was a day without photos...which is not as hard for me as you might think. I'm not really snapping pix of my morning coffee (unless it's fab), so today wasn't so bad. An interesting tidbit - taking photographs of an event can actually dim your memory of it. Hmmm...

Wednesday: Delete that App, is as awful as it sounds. My fav was Flipboard, which takes up a good hour or more of my evening. As I write this now, it's been a week and I still miss it. But, it could be worse...I could be an Angry Birder!

Thursday: well...I liked to say that I stuck with it all week and did all the exercises. However, such is not the case - but Thursday, I just didn't feel like following directions any more and kinda felt the point had been made.

So...what is my take away a week later? I do spend less time on the phone and have really started to just sit and observe. My husband and I went out to dinner this weekend - sat in the bar area of a restaurant and had a great time people-watching. It was kinda sad how many couples we saw where one of them was just on their phone the whole time. But, sitting there, really taking in the energy of the place, watching the fab job the bartenders were doing slinging drinks, watching the "first-daters," the families, the couples...it was fun.

Did it make me more creative? I dunno...I did make two images this week and I actually started a new book... so who knows?! Anyway, you have the links and the podcasts are still active, should you choose to start the process yourself.

Constructing an image - allowing time to figure it out.

One of the difficulties about constructed images is figuring out the composition. I have always been very interested in the space between painting and photography....so, perhaps what I'm doing these days is closer to photo-illustration than it is photography.  When a painter does a "photo-realism" painting, technique seems to overwhelm the viewer. The internal discussion is about the painting technique - how amazing it is that the painter made such a realistic copy. 

When a photographer creates a photo-illustration, the questions are also about technique (and I'm learning to minimize that dialog, since it's not really the point of the image). But, what's kind of cool is that, since it's a photograph,  we still get to include an assumption about "reality" which makes the discussion more complex. We bring to each photograph the assumption that this is real...or might be real. So, that's probably our most effective tool.

With that in mind, my biggest issue is the composition: what am I trying to say, where is the best location for the object, how big should the environment be relative to the object? Back when we shot with film, there was an automatic visual "buffer" built into the system. We evaluated the result usually a day, week or month after taking the image. There was the joy of discovering discovering an image you just didn't remember taking.

Compositing/Building images is a different story - you're faced with the choices as soon as you make the object - which is why you almost have to create a "waiting" or "maturation" period for the image. With this image, I started with the Melody Apartments - a local personal landmark. My idea was to take this "art work" out of its busy location and place it somewhere on its own...so we could really see it. I knew I wanted an "empty" space - but that opens a new can o'worms, since empty isn't actually empty, if you get my drift. My first choice for a location was fairly sparse (I actually made it more so) and there was a single soft set of mountains in the background, which I felt could work as a balance for the subject. I experimented with placement and objects...but it just didn't quite fit. So I waited a week or so and came back to the image.

Looking at it after that week I changed to a different location with a softer light and more color because it had a strong sense of "magic"...how's that for a technical term? It felt like there was a resonance between the soft colors in the structure and the soft light and textures of the new location. 

The intensity of the sky bothered me a bit, it clashed with the softer tonalities I was trying to work with. So I tried it with a sky tonality that seemed more in keeping with the overall feeling I wanted the image to evoke. 

And finally, without the tree...not sure which I'll go with...so it's back to time and maturation. Allow the image time to find itself.

Patience and Courage

Today is the first day of Photo LA and I have been fortunate to be curated into Sarah Lee Projects @ Photo LA 2015 with three other amazing photographers (more on them to come). The upside is that I've had the chance to work with terrific people and hopefully find the 4 day event rewarding, exciting and fun. The potential downside is it exposes me to everything I normally try to avoid in my everyday life: gobs of people and selling myself. It got me thinking about how often I find myself on scary paths.  

Truth is, all goals have difficult steps. Actors want to have an audience, so they have to hit the talk-show circuit ("what if I sound stupid"), writers want someone to buy their book so they do book-signings ("what if no one shows up")...we all have the same issue of doing the crap we're not wild about to continue doing the stuff we can't exist without.  

I've had students tell me that "I just want to make the work, that's what important, not if anyone sees it." My response is usually: "well, let's think about the difference between therapy and art. If the work is therapy...then I agree, that an audience is not important. But, if you're striving to make art, then art is a process of communication and part of your responsibility to the work is to find it a place in the world." Yes, it's excruciating to bare one's soul (or even to bear one's soul) to the world...but if you can somehow pretend that's not happening, or focus on your end goals, it can help you find the courage to move forward. 

I believe that once you've created a work, it has its own rights and it needs to find its place in the world. Sitting in your studio/closet/drawer isn't enough. What if no one wants it? Well...every creative has worried about that from year 1000BC...maybe not those early cave painting guys, let's face it, they had a captive market. Ok, let's say no one wants the work. It could mean multiple things.  Maybe they're idiots. Maybe it's crap. Maybe it's too personal. Maybe it's the wrong market. Maybe it's ahead of its time...who knows? Maybe it's really just a step in your process of becoming a better artist...and you'll realize that in a few years and that takes patience.  It's important to remember that making 2015 the year you get better will mean doing some of the crap that makes you crazy. 

Patience and Courage. 

xxx from the front!

p.s. if you go to Photo LA, come by and say hi...

Anatomy Of An Image

Where do we find inspiration? Sometimes it's by getting an "inside" view on how an image was created. With that goal in mind, I've created a You Tube Video showing how this image went from the  original on the left to the finished version on the right. The video is on my YouTube channel, which has additional tutorials on Lightroom and Photoshop. I was inspired both by the travel posters (see below) of the 30's and 40's as well as my love for vintage Los Angeles architecture.  Here's a link to the video. 

Tiny Town & Marwencol - Obsession and Creativity

This week I'm featuring two amazing examples of obsessive creativity...people who worked outside of the "art world" and are excellent examples of creating your own world.

Tiny Town was the 68 year obsession of Charles Moshinskie's dad and grandfather. His dad worked on it for 68 years, creating playgrounds, swimming pools, dances...all of these little scenes play out in this construction with over 21 states depicted. Looking at what he created I'm humbled by the intensity of his conviction and imagination. 

I recently watched this documentary about another artist who also found his life's passion in creating his own world. Marwencol is a film about Mark Hogancamp who had been left brain-damaged after an attack and created his own World War II town that he then photographed to create an evolving storyline. If you have Netflix, you can watch Marwencol online!

We often call this type of work "outsider art" which always leaves me feeling just a little bit pretentious - as if there's an inside and outside to crativity. Actually the term isn't really about creativity...it's more about business, or the business of art. What's always interesting to me about outsider art is its purity and the connection you feel with the artist...a vulnerability and truthfulness that cuts through all of life's crap.  

Get Out!

I remember having a conversation many years ago with a student about what art-making is - what its purpose is. The student was very involved in her new experience of making imagery but she hadn't realized that just making the work isn't enough to be an artist. It's very easy to get confused between exploring your creativity and actually trying to be a working artist. What's the difference? 

4th Street Bridge, Multiple Viewings

Bringing creativity into your everyday life is a valuable way to make each day more meaningful. You find yourself surrounded by a world full of wonders and questions...and that's a worthy goal in and of itself - but being a working artist is different in that you're creating something that must find its place in the world. Making art and then just hiding it in your room/closet/studio isn't enough. Art is a commentary about the world/time/space we live in and you owe it to the work to bring it out into the world. Additionally, you don't really know the work until you've seen it in a different environment. 

This week I'm stepping out in two very different venues. The first is part of MOPLA which is a month long celebration of photography in Los Angeles. I will be participating in a group exhibition at a "pop-up" space presented by OFFSITE Projects. The exhibition features the work of five photographers all exploring Los Angeles and is called LA Story.  I'll be showing work from my Multiple Viewings series which explores the iconic spaces in LA. This is a collaborative effort and we're all pitching in during the four day run of the show. It is located just a block away from Paris Photo, an international photography fair, so we're hoping to get traffic from there as well. 

At first I only saw the trees, Razor's Edge

The second event is Connect 2013, The Palm Springs Photo Festival, which starts on Sunday and runs for the week. I'll be bringing a new body of work - Meditative Spaces Found While Traversing The Razor's Edge - this will be its first real journey into the world and I have no idea what to expect. My work (all the different series) has always been about the experience of living, who we are, what we leave behind - but it was always fairly subtle. This new work speaks to the experience of living in a much more solid manner. The images came out of my meditations dealing with change, life, age, fear, joy...you name it...I'm trying to illustrate the human condition. As I said before, it's not enough to just make the work, you then have to bring it out into the world to start to fully understand it - so this is my first step at that process. 

LA Story, April 25-28th, 660 N. Larchmont Blvd, Los Angeles

Connect 2013, April 28th-May 3rd, Hyatt Regency, Palm Springs. Come by this Sunday from 2-5 for an open Portfolio event. 

As Time Goes Bye...

Today my neighbors are having a massive garage sale...they're leaving the house they've lived in for over 50 years and we're all heartbroken about it. On either side of me, I've had the same neighbors since I moved in twenty years ago. One set is ten years older than me and the other is twenty, so I've been able to have interesting and vibrant "previews" of what life has in store for me. But this change wasn't expected and it's been a wakeup call for us as we try to see what lessons we can learn, and the biggest ones seem to be about recognizing change and responding to it. 

You'd think that change would be easy to spot a mile away...but often it's a bit of a slow moving glacier. You don't miss the big changes: deaths, births, job loss, heartbreak - those hit you in the face and demand an answer. But it's the sneaky ones catching you by surprise that really seem to make the biggest impact on life longterm. I think that's what happened to my neighbors - over time, their life and business was changing, demanding they change the habits of a lifetime and I think they missed it - and they're not the only ones - it happens to us all. 

Right now, as you read this, your life is changing. The relationships around you are different than they were even a month ago, your work/school/life environment is morphing and you may have missed it because you were coping and coming up with short term solutions. How do we prevent this? I don't have the full answer but I do know that it's really important to assess your life and choices on a regular basis. Ask yourself if your current solutions are working? An easy way to assess this is to see if you're having to face the same issue over and over again - or better yet, do your solutions really address the root of the problem or just the symptoms? Are you challenging yourself to change and grow on a regular basis? Are you doing things that scare you (no, not robbing banks...) on a daily basis, getting you out of your comfort zone?

At the core of it, I think that's why I've been so interested in creativity. It's not just about creating new art, but rather it's developing a way of approaching life that remains surprised and striving for new solutions. So...what is it for you? What could you do today that would shake things up? 

One From The Heart

One of the best ways to set the mood in the studio is to turn on music...often I listen to energetic stuff, especially when I'm stuck doing the endless masking that this new series involves. However, there are times where I really need something that removes me from this world and places me into my fantasy world. What seems to work best are movie soundtracks...and I guess that makes sense since they are created to partner with images...and I find instrumentals are best in that they allow me to continue with my own inner dialogue. 

This is one of my all time favorites...Tan Dun, For The World from the film Hero. I listened to it a lot a few months ago when all the drama was happening at my school...the sadness helped me find a larger perspective and what's interesting is I think I can see its influences in my work months later. This soundtrack has the beautiful violin of Itzhak Perlman which, when combined with the orchestration, feels like a person standing in that beautiful landscape. I've created a cd that features several from this film and others and I use it often when I want to create imagery that really comes from the heart.

Give Yourself a Photo Assignment

A few months ago I was up in Northern California doing something I enjoyed - helping my mom out - but it left me a bit cut off from my usual sources of activity and after a couple of days I got a little bored. I soon realized however that if I'm bored, that's my problem so, I decided I'd take charge of my life, go explore a nearby town and give myself a photo assignment. When I worked commercially, that's how the flow of my life worked...I went from one assignment to another. Every once in a while, it can help to "pretend" you're on assignment.

In this situation it turned out to be a good way to add some structure (and control) to my life, and half way through my project idea I realized there was a better one staring me in the face... and this is it - the Homes of Oroville. Oroville is one of those towns that time left behind. You can tell it was once a vibrant place - but over time its fortunes have changed. I see it now trying to make a comeback, starting with a very interesting series of downtown structures that are surrounded by beautiful, gracious homes. 

After I was done I had a better sense of the town and had even met some very interesting people there. Consider giving yourself a photo assignment this week...plan it out, schedule a day and head out. Good luck! 

Morning Time

Everyone has their own unique "mental sweet spot." What's great about identifying yours is that it has the potential to be your optimal time for creativity. One of the problems with having the world in your cell phone is that it's way too easy to wake up and reach over for that phone and see what everyone has been up to...and that will immediately shift where your energy is going to go.

I'm suggesting that you find a way - if mornings are workable for you - to put off attaching to the outside world, because one of the elements of creativity is really learning how to make your own world. Ideas sometimes can flourish when there's space left for them.

A very productive process for me, has been to introduce a physical activity, such as walking, that I can do first thing in the morning and I take along a recorder. Many of these postings, and my ideas, have started life as a recording. I also have included the process of transcribing by hand - there's a part of the brain that is activated by that physical act - and I've found it very productive...plus it takes a bit longer, which gives the ideas more time to mature.

So...on your day off - grab on to that morning space, when you've just woken up and your defenses are down and the dream state is stronger. Take that time and use it - or if your life is not morning oriented - grab some time and use it as a "cool down" from work. Get out - hole up in a coffee house somewhere, and start dreaming.

Day Twenty-Eight - Where Did You Go?

Thursday, February 28th: Telling Stories

Thank you so much for taking this journey with me. I hope some of the prompts have worked for you. I'm not sure why creativity has always been such a passion with me - part of it is my love of novelty but it's also about the quest of being an artist.  This week I heard the "task" of being an artist summed up brilliantly in the film Brief Encounters, a documentary that covers ten years in the life of photographer Gregory Crewdson. Towards the end of the film he had a great take on what being an artist is all about:

"I feel very strongly that every artist has a single story to tell," he says, "the struggle is to tell and retell that story again and again in visual form and try to challenge that story. At the core the story is the same. It is the defining story of who you are."

The fates were generous with me in sending this film my way the day after I received some sad news. It helped put things into perspective in that it sent me back to my core. My task for you this last day is one of review and reflection. Look back on the work you've created (or maybe just thought about creating) during these 28 days, see if you are finding your story - or finding new ways to challenge it - it's in there somewhere.

At this point, I'll be returning to my weekly post date of Thursdays and so I'll see you next week with a new post. Once again, many thanks for joining me. I'd love to see some of the images you created during this time - please feel free to send me some! (small jpgs!).

If you've just joined us, February was a 28 day creativity challenge with a new "prompt" each day to get you thinking in new ways. The goal is to just have fun, don't try to control too much, feel free to use a cell phone or any camera that's easy for you. Don't worry about the end results. With each prompt you can take it literally or not, you can wing it, google it, ask for people's opinions...whatever you want to do is perfect. Bottom line - it's supposed to be fun, there are no right or wrongs.

Day Twenty-Seven: Random Moments

Wednesday, February 27th: Timing Life

Today you're going to take an image every "x" amount of time throughout the day. Set your timer to beep you every 10, 15, or 30 minutes and you must take a shot when that alarm goes off. At the end of the day, review the images. Did it free you up to just "have" to take an image without thinking or planning? What does it say about your day? Do you see patterns or themes? Did you take them all from the same viewpoint...change them up? If we didn't know you, would we know what the order of the images should be? Were some of those taken in embarrassing situations? Did you take them anyway? Do you wish you'd taken more? 

If you've just joined us, February is a 28 day creativity challenge with a new "prompt" each day to get you thinking in new ways. The goal is to just have fun, don't try to control too much, feel free to use a cell phone or any camera that's easy for you. Don't worry about the end results. With each prompt you can take it literally or not, you can wing it, google it, ask for people's opinions...whatever you want to do is perfect. Bottom line - it's supposed to be fun, there are no right or wrongs.

Day Twenty-Six: Typology Tuesday Color

Tuesday, February 26th:  Red and such

Red is such a sexy thing and for photographers its a bit like "shooting fish in a barrel" because it has such power. Today's typology is about color - feel free to use red...or choose your own. Think about color, how it's used and how you relate to it. Are there cultural or age components to color? How does it change when it's new, old, saturated, pale, darkened...you pick only one hue, but it can have many variations. 

A typology is a collection where everything is the same type of thing. Think of it like a collection - that collection could be shapes/objects/places/parts...you name it. The only rule is that you compose each shot the same - so the "type" fills roughly the same amount of space in each frame, and is located in the same position. 

If you've just joined us, February is a 28 day creativity challenge with a new "prompt" each day to get you thinking in new ways. The goal is to just have fun, don't try to control too much, feel free to use a cell phone or any camera that's easy for you. Don't worry about the end results. With each prompt you can take it literally or not, you can wing it, google it, ask for people's opinions...whatever you want to do is perfect. Bottom line - it's supposed to be fun, there are no right or wrongs.