How you frame and what you include in your composition (and lighting) makes a big difference in what you see.
Amy
Creative Journey | Photography
Clip, tear, and glue your way to your own, creative reference and inspiration book.
Finding photos, taking photos, and creating a reference book of photos or magazine clippings.
Oh no! Yesterday was our middle school robotics group’s first competition. All the other schools at the event were high school level, so we went knowing that it was “for the experience” and, possibly, to open their eyes and to inspire them to what is possible in robot design. It was my first time seeing… more…
Everyday Matters #1 – Shoe But before the shoes… I am sure it seems I’ve completely disappeared. It feels that way at times, but the truth is that the site, the podcast, the blog, the journey… none of it is ever far from my mind. I had good intentions for something in June around… more…
Monday. Last week was a week of highs and lows, of milestones and reality checks. There was a celebration for 60+ fifth graders, kids that parents have marveled at over the last six months as we approached the end of elementary school and realized how they’ve transformed before our very eyes. But on the day… more…
Wednesday afternoon. These look much more like it, right? As we got ready to leave school, I told the kids about my sunflower dilemma. They have been along with me in the last few days as I’ve driven around searching for a sunflower, so I was surprised when one said, “How about the school garden?”… more…
In a rare twist of art and science, I worked recently on a piece about Van Gogh’s sunflowers. I’ll be posting it this week at Science Buddies, and I thought I’d use an original photo with the post. I went out of the way the other day to drive by a flower shop where I… more…
I was trying to test my camera, post cleaning, and so I snapped a few of my youngest yesterday in the late afternoon light against the window. My testing raises some concerns. Still, despite the obvious flaws in the photo, this shot captures changes I’ve been noticing in him, visible signs that he is… more…
Saturday. A somewhat better look at their Hunger Games T’s, (a la Rachel @avgjanecrafter). This was our first time trying a bleach stencil of any form… and we weren’t able to find black shirts when we decided to make these a few weeks ago. We didn’t go store to store looking. We just compromised on… more…
Tuesday. After a complete system failure, I finally have a new system up and running. Eventually I’ll see if I can figure out how to pull my old hard drive, plunk it into another system, and get to my data. Right now, I’ve got my hands full getting the new system functional with all the… more…
Wednesday night. Late. Spring Break Week. A week at home working with the boys isn’t always easy, but we’re making the best of it. The sun peeked out today, and just before we headed out for the afternoon to roam the Exploratorium, the youngest showed me a very rubber-banded deck of Magic the Gathering cards…. more…
Monday. Tea break after a free-for-all tears break. I know it means I’m at my own brim, my own breaking point. I found myself trying to explain to an 11-year old the other day about “fate”… how sometimes you meet someone or something happens for a reason… How it might not have been the choice… more…
Mid-week. It’s raining today, rain that is long overdue and seems to have settled in. I’d explain to you that two weeks and a day ago, I planned to record 170, but it seems I end up saying that every time. The show is ready. If I can stay awake tonight, I’ll record. It… more…
Sometimes the creative process looks just like this! On the final day of Opal’s visit here, I finally sat down to plot out the measurements for a large commissioned project. Our work is by its very nature so completely free-form that measurements are rarely an issue. We work until the piece is done or… more…
Day 13 – A Monday. Today was the end of the visit. There was a flurry yesterday of business to attend to and loose ends to wrap up, a special dessert made (I have no clue who will eat all of it that remains!), new roses to refresh the old, some lessons in sourdough… more…
Day 12 – A Sunday. I am a few days behind. Today is the last full day of this collaborative working visit. There has been a lot going on, a lot of routine, a bit of drama now and then (including a toe accident that sort of dictated the pace of several days and kept… more…
Amy
Creative Journey | Featured | Photography | Quilting collaborative, orange, patchwork, quilting, sewing
Day 6 — A Monday. A busy day. Back to work for me, and one boy was home with a gnarly toe injury. Late in the afternoon, we took a quick trip to a favorite flower shop, grabbed a coffee, and then back to work on the roosters.
Day 5 – A Sunday. The school auction happened at the end of Day 4. With only a few weeks before the deadline, we started working on a collaborative donation. After much debate about which colorway to use, we settled on what felt safest, the one we felt might draw the attention of “this” audience…. more…
Day 4 – A Saturday. After time blocking out remaining issues with the purple quilt, rearranging, filling in, and getting it ready for the final long seams, we made another color shift. Greens came out. A bit of an experiment ensued. It’s unfinished, but it was a good diversion before the shift to another project… more…
The day began with a bit of finishing work on the food piece. It looked done, until we realized the pieces for an “appetizer” were ready and waiting to be added. It was a good decision. A bit of disassembling of some unused parts, and we filled in the left edge. There’s a full on… more…
There are rocks… and then there are rocks. I’ve been thinking about rocks… and about maps… and about topography… about the lines that connect and guide… lines that lead forward and trail behind. Much of that will hopefully find its way into the next episode of the CMP–even as it informs a 2012 yearly project,… more…
It’s taken more than a week since recording to edit and push this live. Much changes in a week! Even so, here it is, 169, and the first of 2012. Gonna get faster. As I type in these show notes, knowing I’ll have to come back later and fill in what’s missing, there are a… more…
Somewhere I’ve jotted down notes on the fact that art doesn’t necessarily mirror reality… that what we create isn’t necessarily a reflection of where we are. It seems obvious, right? But there’s a lot to this, and two sides of the coin. There is, of course, art that is tightly tied to what is going… more…
Friday afternoon. Looking back. It’s been unusual week. Just five short days… and yet each one has had its own flavor, its own thread of reality–or un-reality, as the case may be. By “day,” I mean the span of hours between 1:50 and maybe 5:00 PM… the “day” that happens after school and before dinner…. more…
I finally pulled photos off my camera tonight, a medley of photos chronicling the collaborative visit. There were two of us using the camera during those days, and so there are a hodgepodge of perspectives and personalities and degrees of exposure. But always it is interesting to see what is captured. The above photo I… more…
This tree caught my eye at the park the other day. What you can’t see clearly in the photo is that there is a building right behind the tree. The tree curves beautifully up and away from the building, never touching it but running straight up and then gracefully bowing outward as it parallels the… more…
We outran the fog and chill this afternoon by driving about a mile the other way to play tennis at a park we don’t often visit. After some touch-and-go tennis moments, we pitstopped for a few minutes at the playground. It’s been a long time since we were at this playground. I remember the slide in… more…
He almost cooperated with me in this moment, which was right before we left the fields. I ended up with very little in the way of photos from an early-release day trip to a pumpkin patch out in Half Moon Bay. When I looked through my photos later, I wished I’d had the camera out… more…