A friend on Facebook just posted this today. I watched it in total AWE and AMAZEMENT! What a wonderful artist this guy is… enjoy
Delight in Beauty
Quote of the day: “Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” – e. e. cummings
Winter has definitely arrived in Minnesota. Temperatures are now reliably below freezing and a light snowfall coats the earth. Since I didn’t feel like braving the cold yesterday, I decided to head out to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum for an indoor photography adventure. The folks at the Arboretum do such amazing seasonal displays. There is also a small conservatory that is delightful to visit. Here are some of my favorite shots from yesterday.
Adventures in printing – and office re-organization
Quote of the day: “All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
I got a new printer last week. It’s an Epson Stylus Pro 3880 — a big step up from my little old (but very productive and useful) Epson Stylus Photo R300 printer. My new printer can print photos up to 17 inches wide and has archival quality ink.
While many friends and clients were surprised by the quality of photos my old printer produced, I was feeling the limitations more and more. It could only handle up to 8 1/2″ wide sheets of paper, and the ink was dye-based, not archival quality. I’ve been wanting to make larger prints more frequently and found that I want complete control of the process that printing my own photographs gives me.
I tried several different online and local photo printing services, but sadly, the colors were good on some of my prints and awful on others. Just when I thought I had the color profile down, I would send in a different sort of print and be highly disappointed with the results. On the first order I received in my Etsy store (opened in September 2011), I sent the digital files to a local photo processor for printing (where I had done several test prints that had turned out exactly as I wanted) and was totally disappointed with the results. The prints were unusable. So, I sat down and printed them on my own printer getting exactly the results I had envisioned.
In the Fine Art Printing workshop I took several weeks ago, our instructor, John Gregor of Coldsnap Photography (http://coldsnap.com/), said that in most cases it is important to perform at least one proofing print for every photograph you print. Often you need to make adjustments and do multiple proofing prints before you are satisfied with the results. When I began to understand how the human eye sees color, versus the colors available in various color spaces, versus the color space on the printer I realized how true his advice was. Because of differences in exposure, mood, color, light, paper, etc., color profiles will not work for every single print you want to make. While color profiles have improved greatly from the early days, they still will not work for every photograph. I highly recommend John Gregor’s The Fine Art Print workshop to anyone wanting a strong technical basis for understanding fine art printing.
Ok, back to my new printer. Here it is before I removed all of the shipping tape:
It doesn’t look so big in this photo, but compared to my old printer, it’s big! Before we could set up the new printer I had to find space for it! Not such an easy task in my little 10×10 office/meditation room/exercise space. I wish had had the forethought to take before pictures so you could see my office before I re-arranged everything (duh!). I only grabbed my camera when the rearrangement was well underway, so I can’t show you the cozy, cluttered way it used to look.
Yesterday, I moved my meditation chair into the master bedroom. (Actually this was a good thing. Since I’ve been working more and more hours in this room, my mind goes into work mode when I enter the room, not meditation mode.) Then Jon, my sweet and ever-lovin’ husband, did most of the rest of the heavy lifting and moving (twice, since he had a better idea today than yesterday, so he moved everything around again).
First go round –We moved my desk in front of the window and added a table to the left for the printers. Hmmmm… not quite right
I didn’t like blocking my window view with the computer and desk “stuff,” and when Jon moved in a second table we both found the setup of the room wasn’t working. So one more try…
Now my desk is on the side wall where I can look to the right and see the lovely view out the front window. I’ve got room to work at my desk, both printers handy beside my desk and I have another table for matting and framing photos.
So that’s how my office is set up now and so far I like it a lot. Now to work more on the wall and window decor and figure out better storage organization in the closet.
Stark Winter Views
Quote of the day: “I’m concentrating on staying healthy, having peace, being happy, remembering what is important, taking in nature and animals, spending time reading, trying to understand the universe, where science and the spiritual meet.” – Joan Jett
I’ve been hoping to get some winter shots to use on Christmas cards that I want to send out soon! But so far, Minnesota’s weather has produced very little snow. Last Saturday we got maybe 2-3 inches of snow, so Sunday morning I went out to one of my favorite places to take a few photos.
The photo above is one of the photos I took on Sunday. Here are two more:
After doing minimal edits in Lightroom I brought them into Photoshop and played. First I used a texture from http://www.kimklassencafe.com/thecafe. If you’re a photographer and want to learn more about using Photoshop and textures to get the look you want in your photos, then go to Kim’s website.
I learned a ton from her blog and free videos on her website. Every Tuesday Kim posts a free texture you can use in your photos along with sample photos where she has applied the texture.
I also learned about http://www.gettotallyrad.com/products/radlab/ from Kim’s blog. After applying the texture to each photo above I used RadLab software to get the look I wanted.
A couple of these images are stark, but I think I like them. They don’t look like traditional Christmas card photos though. What do you think? Would you enjoy a Christmas card that looked like any of these photos? Which one is your favorite?
Gratitude – Day 30
It’s day 30 of my 30 days of gratitude already! What a lovely month of gratitude I’ve experienced. A great way to enter the holiday season with grace and peace. I’ll begin writing regular blog posts again, now that my 30 days of gratitude is complete. Thinking about undertaking a 365 day challenge beginning January 1. Stay tuned for more on that.
Quote of the day: “This is my wish for you: peace of mind, prosperity through the year, happiness that multiplies, health for you and yours, fun around every corner, energy to chase your dreams, joy to fill your holidays!” –D.M. Dellinger
Word of the day: Holidays
Gratitude – Day 29
Quote of the day: “Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.” – Andy Goldsworthy
Word of the day: Snow
Gratitude – Day 28
Quote of the day: “Cultivating the good means recovering the incandescent power of love that is present as a potential in all of us.” — Sharon Salzberg Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness
Word of the day: Incandescent
Note for today: I couldn’t choose just one photo today. These lovely plants that were still green and amazing even after a snowfall, fascinated me. I know “incandescent” seems an unlikely word for these beauties, but their life force seems to have an incandescence that transcends the ordinary. Photos taken at Lyndale Peace Park in Minneapolis on December 1.
Gratitude – Day 27
Quote of the day: “Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.” – John Lennon
Word of the day: Peace
Photo details – I combined two photos I took yesterday at the Lyndale Peace Garden along with a texture to create this photo.
Gratitude – Day 26
Quote of the day: “I exist as I am — that is enough; / If no other in the world be aware, I sit content; / And if each and all be aware, I sit content… I am the poet of the Body; / And I am the poet of the Soul.” – Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass
Word of the day: Enough
Marilyn Lamoreux Blog 