I have a new baby…

December 29, 2009

…the Lensbaby composer. It was a very generous Christmas present from my mom. I took it out for a test run when I went walking in the forest on Bowen both Christmas and Boxing day. I’m fascinated with the design of the lens, not just for it’s tilt/shift abilities, but because of the interchangeable f-stop rings that are slipped in and out of the lens using a magnet.

As you can see, I’ve mostly used the lens for nature shots so far. I want to do a series of test shots trying out each f-stop ring on the same subject for comparison, and I also want to try this lens with portraits. Part of me feels the lens is a bit too gimmicky, but the creative part of me will probably prove that wrong.

Creative Excellence Takes Time

December 23, 2009

The wise words of Ira Glass on why creative excellence takes time. I found listening to this very gratifying, especially the part about self-directed projects and deadlines to work towards, because it’s what I’ve been doing for the past two years with fruitful results. I’m producing the best work of my life (so far) and I’m working hard at it. I am occasionally tough on myself because I feel like it’s taken me a forever to get to where I currently am as an artist. But there would’ve been no other way to get here because all good things take time and hard work. (And hard work takes time too.)

Altered book: Swimming in a Sea of Words

December 22, 2009

As mentioned in a previous blog post, rummaging through my art supplies inspired me to create an altered book with fish. It may just be that I have fish on the brain lately, but rummaging through my supplies reminded me of the gold paper fish I’d bought from Urban Source over the summer. It was high time to use them. I added the red colour to each fish using ink because I didn’t like the plain gold, and now they unintentionally resemble salmon.

I wanted to create a sense of water moving, of waves crashing with the pages, so I began to play around with folding the pages under one another. At first I was only going to do part of the book, but then the more I did, the more it made sense to fold every single page. The Japanese paper I used on the end pages reminds me of the pattern created when raindrops splash into the still water of a pond or lake. The finishing touch of the book was to add the red and white flowers, which were created using a paper punch.

Materials used: Japanese paper, book, flowers made with a paper punch, rubber stamps, ink, and metallic paper fish.

Underneath an Imaginary Sea

December 17, 2009

When I came up with the idea to do a portrait with goldfish swimming around my friend Kay, I realized the only way I could pull it off was to get real fish. I needed to be able to photograph them under the same lighting conditions I would be shooting Kay in order to make the fish shots and person shot match. So I went out and bought a pair of goldfish with the long term plan they’d be a permanent fixture in my home. Luckily Boris was okay with the acquisition of more pets and took it upon himself to name the orange fish “Buri“, while I named the speckled brown fish “Astrid“. (Not that either of them get called anything other than fish or fishes most of the time…)

The above image is the result of many hours of work in photoshop, cutting out multiple shots of individual fish to bring together and playing around with colour. I asked Kay during the shoot to pretend the fish were swimming around her and this was one of the expressions she came up with. It was very cute and perfectly suited to holding her breath under an imaginary sea.

This shot of Kay with the goldfish and bowl was early on in the shoot as we were just getting warmed up. It’s cute but I definitely don’t love it as much as the top shot.

Kay and Betsey Johnson

December 16, 2009

When Kay came over to be photographed for the series a few weeks ago she brought a selection of Betsey Johnson dresses and crinolines with her to wear. They were all pretty specular but I loved this one the best because of the bright mix of colours. I usually ask my portrait subjects to bring a few different items to choose from and wear during the shoot. Part of the fun of inviting women friends over for these photo shoots has been getting to see their clothes.

The funny thing about the shoot with Kay, that I didn’t really think about beforehand, was that it didn’t really matter what she was wearing. I was shooting with a specific idea in mind and her clothing was mostly hidden from view. Towards the end of the shoot I decided the fantastic outfit just couldn’t go to waste and did these shots with Kay seated on the floor to showcase the dress. I love how this gave me the opportunity to try a different perspective from my usual style of portraiture.

Altered Book: Looking for Signs of a Safe Return Home

December 9, 20094 Comments

Things have been busy the last few weeks so I was starting to worry I wouldn’t be able to meet my goal of completing ten altered books by the end of the year. I’ve made eight and this is number nine.

The altered books always take me a large amount of uninterrupted time and quiet space to create. I have to sit and play with lots of different materials and objects in order to figure out the composition, and that kind of time and opportunity has been hard to come by.

After the butterfly book I knew I had to make one with birds, and now this book will eventually lead me to an altered book with fish. It makes sense if you start looking through my art supplies, as going through my materials is often the source for further ideas. The birds are glued onto the same resistors I used in the centre of the butterfly book, and all three of them are different types of Swallows. The title is inspired by information I found when I googled, “symbolism of swallows“. Apparently swallow tattoos are rich in symbolism if you’re a sailor…

Materials used in this book: book, metallic paper flowers, resistors, paper birds, rubber stamp and ink, and glue dots.

Green Balloons

December 7, 2009

It’s been a few weeks since I shot this portrait with Siobhan so I can no longer remember where the idea came from to use balloons as a prop. There is a store around the corner from my apartment that sells about a million different things including balloons that you can get filled with helium, which was lucky. I really enjoyed buying the balloons for the shoot. Walking home with them looped tightly in my hand I felt like an excited little kid and I wanted to run and skip along the sidewalk while laughing out loud. I’m glad balloons can still feel so joyful even though I’m a grown up.

Siobhan was an excellent model and working with balloons made us both laugh a lot. I decided to scrap the original idea I had in mind for this shoot – Sio standing on the chair and floating with the balloons – because I didn’t want to go all crazy and photoshoppy. Also, despite the fact that the ceilings in our apartment are about 12 feet high, I STILL didn’t have enough room to compose things in camera that way I wanted.

I’m having a lot of fun inviting lovely female friends over to my home studio to pose for me. Everyone has taken to my invitation with enthusiasm so far, despite any misgivings about feeling unphotogenic. For this shoot I put together a flickr gallery of balloon images take by other photographers. You can check it out here. I really like using the new gallery feature for inspiration.

Burn for no reason, like a lantern in daylight

December 2, 20092 Comments

From the Free Will Astrology Newsletter:

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): “I burn for no reason, like a lantern in daylight,” writes poet Joseph Lease. I think that’s a succinct formulation of one of your central issues, Leo. Burning for no reason, like a lantern in the daylight, can be the cause of either failure or success for you, depending on subtle differences of emphasis. This is how it can be failure: When you’re mindlessly and wastefully burning through your prodigious reserves of fuel without any concern for the benefits it may provide you and others. This is how it can be success: When you are exuberant and self- disciplined in shining your light and radiating your warmth just because it feels so good and so right and so healthy, and without any thought about whether it’s “useful” to anyone.

How’s that for a kick-ass weekly horoscope…?

Altered Book: Bears Never Dream of Running Away to Join the Circus

November 27, 20094 Comments

It’s really frustrating when I spend a lot of time working on something and when I’m done I don’t feel happy with it. That’s how I felt about this altered book Wednesday afternoon after spending most of the day on it. I felt the composition was too busy and I’d managed to completely de-emphasize the book part of this altered book because pages and bookish elements are mostly hidden. I stepped away for awhile and was able to look at it with fresh eyes later. Now I like it. It’s very different from the other altered books I’ve created so far.

I’d been trying to come up with ideas to make further use of the bag of wooden animals I picked up at a garage sale. I used a tiger and rabbit in a previous work, and chose the bear this time with the thought that it’s posture resembled that of a performing bear. I went looking for a rubber ball for the bear to balance upon and then remembered I had a set of circus-themed paper dolls from the specialty doll review site I order from, in my stash of ephemera. And with that, a circus book was born!

Materials used in this book: book, tissue paper, recycle paper bag, wooden bear, rubber ball, stars, circus-themed paper dolls, thread and needles.

Last Colours of Autumn

November 22, 2009

My friend Kai was the second out of town guest in Vancouver during the month of October, and of course I made sure to take her portrait for the series. Kai has a red winter coat just like I do and I wanted to include it in the shot. I hadn’t intended to fill the whole scene with red, but with coat, umbrella and Japanese Maple tree all in gorgeous shades of my favorite colour, red ruled the day. (As it should.)

The Japanese Maple I had in mind for this shot wasn’t fully turned at the time, so after I took a few shots and wasn’t satisfied with the results, Kai suggested another spot with red trees. She’d just happened to be in the Queen Elizabeth Park area a few days before and noticed a whole street with them. This turned out to be the perfect spot to shoot what I had in mind and it was wonderful to see so many Japanese Maple trees covered in red leaves all in a row.

Canvas to the Imagination

Rachael Ashe – Art | Craft | Life