Issue #1 of "VisuaLeigh" e-Zine now available!

I've finished my first issue of "VisuaLeigh" e-Zine and it's up and ready to wing its way to your e-mail box.

Issue #1 runs 29 pages and features these articles:

Composition "Bones": Gisela's Birdhouse
Seeing: What I Saw/What I Made
Photomontage: What's It Made Of?
Composition Anchor or Base: Bubbles
Composition Thought Process: Battery Point Lighthouse
Inspiration for Photomontage: Industrial Park
Composition "Bones": Architectural Salvage Building
Composition "Bones": Half Moon Bay Pail of Pumpkins
Creativity: The "What If" Factor
Bad Photo and Why It's Bad: Leaf Edge
Composition Symmetry: Painted Lady
Seeing: Expectations and Preconceptions in an Aspen Grove
Bad Photo and Why It's Bad: Blue VW Bug

Issue #1
$5.00
29 pages/PDF format

Here's the link to my online store: http://www.shop.carolleigh.net/product.sc?productId=74&categoryId=7

Hope you enjoy this first issue! Issue #2 will follow shortly. Please let me know if you have any questions. This is my first time around and I will appreciate your feedback. Thanks!

Carol Leigh

Indecent exposure . . .

While in Astoria, Oregon, I photographed reflections in water because I loved how rich the blue and gold colors were (top photo).

Glancing to my left, I saw a rusty piling that had some light blue paint splattered on it (bottom photo). The piling was lighter and brighter than the background water. If I metered off the darker water, the piling would be way overexposed. So I metered off the piling, figuring it was better to have the piling properly exposed, not caring if the water went darker. Did it work? Well, yeah, except that I've really lost all the drama in the water, haven't I?

Luckily when I take miserable shots such as this, I can keep them, blithely writing them off as "teaching tools!" Ha! Love this job...

©Carol Leigh

Bad Photos and Why They're Bad: Genoa Leaves

Have you ever taken a quick shot and later wished you'd spent just a bit more time and taken it "right?" That's my situation here. I saw these leaves clustered together in the street, right next to a curb, pointed my camera down, clicked, and then walked on. I figured it was a nothing photo, was in a hurry to get somewhere else, and simply didn't pay attention.

Looking at it now, oh, how I wish I had taken more time. Look at the variety of leaves I have here. Isn't it great? Some good, some dead, some torn, some colorful, some not. And the light's good — light shade. But where, oh, where is the design in the picture? There isn't one.

I should have picked one or two exceptional leaves and placed them lower or upper right, lower or upper left, pursuant to the Rule of Thirds. Why? So you'd have a focal point, a place to begin and end your visual ride around the picture. As it is, there's nothing here that catches your eye to begin with, nothing that moves you from one point to another, no rhythm, no movement, nada.  You don't know what I considered important in the scene and, apparently, neither did I!

What's the solution? For me to fly back to Genoa, Nevada, hoping the leaves are still there? Of course not. The answer is to pay more attention when I photograph, to slow down, not to be in such a hurry.

So although there's a part of me that still sort of likes this picture, it's really a bad one, and now you know why.

©Carol Leigh

Train Scratches

Traveling home from Astoria yesterday, we passed some old train cars. How could we not stop? Here you see the train car that I saw. And here are three examples of the types of things I extracted from the scraped, scratched, and scuffed paint. Woo hoo! ©Carol Leigh

Boat Scratches

Here's what I saw on the docks — scratches on the side of a fishing boat. By moving in as close as I could (without falling in the water), I isolated a couple of abstract images from those simple scratches.

When composing something like this, I think of it as a little landscape, so in photo #2 you see how I placed the "horizon line" down low as well as placing the wider, darker part over toward the right, which gives the smaller bits room to fly diagonally into the frame.

In photo #3 I divided the scratches into layers, into horizontal bands. The black strip up top and the dark blue strip at the bottom "frame" the lighter, airier  center section.

©Carol Leigh, celebrating the ordinary

What the heck was I thinking?

I'm conducting an online class right now, critiquing photographs, and one student, Dennis, posted a photo where I thought the light was too flat and weird and there wasn't any texture in some wooden elements. It reminded me of some of the initial photos I took with my very first digital SLR back in January of 2004. I tweaked Dennis's photo to help illustrate what I was talking about and then tweaked this photo, which looked similar (in lighting) to his picture.

Back in 2004 I put a wooden spoon on a red silk scarf, put something black behind it, and then, either using a flashlight or candlelight, I photographed the spoon. The top photo is my original image, which I thought was rather cool at the time.

Today, older and wiser, I brought that same photo into Photoshop and applied a Topaz Adjust 5 effect called "Detail Strong" to the photo. Using a layer mask, I allowed the effect to come through on the wooden spoon only, not on the scarf. Why? Because I wanted texture to show on the spoon, not the fabric. You see the effect in the second picture.

But it's still too yellow (due to the bizarre lighting I used), so I desaturated the yellow color in the picture (using an adjustment layer) and then applied the Topaz Adjust effect "Detail Strong" to just the spoon. This looks (to me) more natural.

As for the red silk scarf the spoon's sitting on? Well, that's just weird! Dramatic, but weird!

©Carol Leigh, eight years older but not nearly as wise as I should be . . .

What I Saw/What I Made

Making something from what might appear (at first) to be nothing is what I take especial delight in doing. And yesterday, at a boat yard (my playground), I found a lot of nothing to shoot. Here are two examples of what I found "hidden" on a boat's rudder. I've also included a shot of the rudder so you can see what I saw.

You know, it's like macro photography on a larger scale. When shooting close-up, we find something small to fill our frame, something extracted from something larger. Here I zoomed in on just part of a larger whole, making what I think is a pleasing design. Ah, but then it's also like landscape photography, isn't it? Out of everything that's laid out in front of us, we extract from a larger whole, choosing which mountain to include, which grove of trees, which barn, etc. Taking this to the absurd, it's like celestial photography, isn't it? We select out part of a larger whole, creating compositions that are pleasing to us... And on it goes.

Anyway, this is what I was doing yesterday. And now you see what I saw, and you see what I made.

©Carol Leigh, seeing the big picture in a very small way

Passion and skill

State of the "art"

Just to update you on what I'm doing: I have decided to publish this sort of information in the form of an electronic magazine, or e-zine. My goal is to have three issues done and available by November 1. Each magazine will be about 50+ pages in length, containing articles (and lots of illustrations) about seeing, composition, line, design, movement, thought processes while shooting, creativity, and inspiration. They'll be available as downloads in PDF format.

So I've got 150 pages to create between now and November 1. I've already prepped 44. Just 106 more to go! Wish me luck!

©Carol Leigh, who is beginning to see the value of using VERY LARGE PHOTOS on her pages!  :-)

Composition question asked and answered (I think)

In a previous post -- "Bird-Watching in the West" -- Linda H. asked the following question regarding a collage I'd made (left):
 
Ok, I get that, once you point it out, my eyes will forever move in that direction when I see this piece of yours.
 
My question is, are you thinking to yourself ahead of time, "Ah, I need something in this corner to create movement! What will create that?"? Or do you see AFTER you'd dotted in those dots, realizing, "Oh! I'm a genius! I just created movement for my viewer's eyes!"?
 
Silly question, I know. Just call me dense about this stuff.

Linda, you're not dense about this stuff — it's so tricky, so elusive, and so subjective. Approaching making a collage is, to me, very different from approaching a subject to photograph.

In a collage yes, I'm thinking, "it looks empty here" and I look for something to place on the paper. Or, "I need movement across the piece. How can I create it?" It's the same way when I create a photomontage. I'm looking for balance, for contrast, for flow. Composition is more of a left-brained, analytical element for me when creating collages and/or photomontages.

Naturally, when I discover how well I created the movement then yes, I tell myself what a flipping genius I am! (Not really. But I'm delighted when I discover it!)

When composing a photograph, it's different. It's easier for me. In photography, I always ask myself, "What caught my eye? What do I like about what I'm seeing?" And then I attempt to fill my frame with just that. I look at something, figure out what I like, then begin creating the composition. The subject determines the composition.

For instance, a couple hours ago I was photographing a little piece of bamboo (you can see it above, second photo down). When I clipped off the piece during my walk, I thought I was going to photograph the way the new growth looked butted right up against the leaf. When I got it home, what caught my eye (and my heart) was a little swirl of leafage below the larger leaf. I knew I wanted the smaller leaf to be in focus. I knew I wanted a high-key look. And I knew I had to incorporate the stem so the leaf could swirl from something.

It was obvious to me that I should put the stem over toward the right so that the larger leaf could reach over to the left and the little swirly guy would intersect the larger one. I made sure the little leaf was in focus. I made sure I was overexposing by two stops to get the high-key look I wanted. And I made sure that the stem was standing perfectly vertical (I used masking tape to affix the stem to a can of spray paint). For me, this is relatively instinctive now and isn't nearly the same challenge as making a physical collage or even a photomontage. (Well, there are lots of challenges, but composition isn't the main one. Like, how do I keep from kicking my tripod?)

So to answer your question, yes, I'm consciously analyzing my composition when making collages because the process isn't second-nature to me yet. If an area looks too empty, I have to consciously figure out what I can put in there that adds to the look and that seems right (too often, it just looks stupid to me).

To give you an example of that, here's a physical collage I made yesterday. It's 5" x 5". And I don't especially like it. (So I shouldn't even be showing it to you, but . . .) All the elements in it are rather linear — the Japanese calligraphy, the blue rectangle of paper, the tree, so I thought I'd add a curved piece of paper (a coffee filter). But the lower right quadrant looked too empty, so I put a shiny silver circle there to add more curves. Not enough. So I cut a blue circle and put it slightly under the silver one. Why? To fill the space and to continue the concept of a half-moon that the coffee filter created. Hmmm...  Maybe I should cut out some small silver and blue dots and sprinkle them around three sides of the "moons!" That might just do it! When in doubt, add dots . . . Kind of like in photography: When in doubt, f/8!

Too much information? Too much rambling? Too confusing? Too many examples? Did I answer your question? I don't even remember your question at this point!

©Carol Leigh 

"Tropical Dream" Duo

Both of these photomontages began with a photo I took of brown paper on which I'd wiped some white gesso.

After I photographed the paper (which is the third photo in this set), I used it as the base of the physical collage you read about in my previous post -- "Bird-Watching in the West."

Because I'm a collage artist as well as a photomontageur (!), I can use and re-use these sorts of things with impunity.

©Carol Leigh, photomontageur extraordinaire who wishes she could speak French ...

Composition: Bird Watching in the West

This is a small (4" x 6") collage I made on watercolor paper. It's the size of a postcard. I'm not saying it's a good collage or a bad collage; it's just something I quickly put together one morning without really thinking about it. There are some compositional elements to it, however, that I find interesting.

First of all, I began by gluing down a piece of brown paper that I'd used to clean my paintbrushes on, so the slashes of white in the background are white gesso. I also painted the little white dots in the lower right.

I had an old newspaper on my counter (from 1959, I believe) and I tore out a fashion ad because it was so retro and humorous (to me). And then I had a broken-down book I'd gotten at a library sale called Bird Watching in the West. Remembering that back in the 1960s some Brits referred to girls as "birds," I found that humorous and pasted it down on top of the turban-topped woman.

I had a couple of black and cream-colored circles on my counter and, seeing how the dark black circle echoed the dark black turban, I pasted both circles onto the collage.

The piece of masking tape had fallen off some cardboard, so I glued it on and then, because the tape looked kind of plain, I glued on a torn piece of the newspaper ad, a piece that said "Special Purchase."

Finally, I added a bunch of smaller circles, all cut out of the same newspaper ad.

When I analyze the composition — what I used and where I placed it — I see I've created movement. A lot of movement. But how?

1) Notice how your eye moves from the woman's dark turban down to the dark circle and back again. Voila! Diagonal movement there on the left side of the picture.

2) Your eye makes a connection between the dark/light circles on the left, the circles in the lower left, the painted white dots in the lower right, and again in the upper right. Our eyes recognize patterns and similarities, and whether we realize it or not, they (and our brain) make a connection between all those circular forms. As a result, your eye moves all around the frame, going from circle to circle.

3) And because the small circles, the "bubbles" if you will, run along a diagonal line from the lower left corner to the upper right, your eye automatically follows that subliminal line. Your eye moves diagonally from bottom to top, from top to bottom. In addition, her arm runs along that same diagonal line, which adds to the feeling of movement.

Whether we're designing a collage, a photograph, a quilt, a painting, these elements of pattern recognition and eye movement play an important part. By becoming hyper-conscious of what we're doing and why we're doing it, our compositions will improve, will become intuitive, and will become second-nature, without our even noticing it.

©Carol Leigh, running in circles all the time

The greatest value of a picture ...

"The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expect to see." — John W. Tukey, "Exploratory Data Analysis" 1977

Thanks to Elena and Marianne . . .

Elena Nosyreva, thank you for suggesting an alternative way of making my boat stand out more, and thank you, Marianne Skov Jensen, for giving me the specific workflow.

Early this morning we went up to the docks in Newport and I took a photo of a boat that's similar to my photos in the previous post (overcast light, but the clouds weren't quite as cool). Instead of creating a new layer, filling it with neutral grey, and then using a dark/light brush to lighten and darken what I wanted, I used an adjustment mask, lightened the image (via Levels), inverted the mask and used a brush to let the underlying lighter boat come through. (I may have described that improperly, but I've been up since 4 and am a little loopy at the moment.)

What I like about this method is that it's fairly simple, and I don't have to build up the lightness or the darkness X% at a time, where if you accidentally overlap, it looks awful.

So thank you both for (a) being so smart and (b) for taking the time to show me a different way of doing something.

©Carol Leigh

Thought Process and Technique: Fishing Boats

Over in my daily blog, I posted two photos on August 1, photos of fishing boats in Newport, Oregon. Linda H. commented, "Have these been "cleaned" or something in Topaz? Or something similar? They look so pristine." Here is the link to that day's post.

My response is that yes, I did tweak them in Photoshop to bring out what attracted me to the scene in the first place. Here's my thought process along with what I did:

I liked the overall quiet and peaceful feeling at the boat docks that morning. The sky was overcast, but there was an interesting texture in the clouds. The water was still and reflected both the boats and the sky beautifully. Because of the overcast lighting, the blue color of the fishing vessel "Caremi" really glowed. From a different vantage point, I liked how the F/V "Finn" stood alone at the dock, reflected nicely in the water.

I was working with a 24mm-85mm lens on a full-frame camera sensor, so I wanted to show some openness, vastness in the scene. I liked being able to fill my frame with the whole string of boats, from the blue "Caremi" all the way back to the white "Finn." 

Notice that now I've identified exactly what I liked about the scene. Clouds. Reflections. String of boats. Solitary "Finn."

I used a polarizing filter to reduce reflections in the water and in the sky so that the texture of the clouds would show through. (A graduated neutral density filter would have been appropriate, but I can't use a tripod on the docks -- they're too narrow and they move.) I also underexposed by a third of a stop.

In the first photo, you see my original image. All I did was adjust Levels, which helped bring out some of the texture in the sky. The clouds didn't look quite as texture-ish as I wanted, so I brought the image into Topaz Adjust 5 and applied a "Photo Pop" setting. (Photo 2) Nice clouds now, nice reflections. And the scene lightened up a bit, as I knew it would.

But the boats still looked rather dull and murky, too clumped together. And the blue of the "Caremi" didn't look as dramatic as I remembered. So I dodged the boats, applying the effect just to the places I wanted to perk up. (Photo 3)

My last step was to then burn the sky just a bit, to give it a little more drama so that the boats would stand out even more, sandwiched as they are between sky and reflections-of-sky. (Photo 4)

I followed the same routine with the photo of F/V "Finn." You see my original version (adjusted Levels), then added Topaz Adjust 5 "Photo Pop" to pump up the clouds a bit. (Photo 2) Then burned the sky a little. (Photo 3) Then dodged the boat to make it pop more. (Photo 4)

There are hundreds of ways of accomplishing the same thing, and maybe you've got a tried and true way of enhancing your work that's better than this. If so, I would love to hear how you would have handled this situation. I'm no Photoshop guru, as you know, but I like sharing how I work and I am open to new tips and tricks. And Linda H.? I hope this answered your question.

©Carol Leigh

Thought process behind "Planetary Shift"

When I begin making a photomontage, I usually have no map, design, or plan in mind. I'll often start laying down various textures or elements in my photo stash to see how they begin working with each other (or, more likely, fighting among themselves). Gradually something comes into view, a little "aha" moment that leads me on to something else.

Invariably I'll make a "mistake" that turns my piece another direction entirely and, for me, that's a huge part of the fun.

In this case, before I put the "planets" on, and the strings, I was thinking about the long, ragged "tear" I've got running the length of the image. I was thinking "fault zone," "rift," and "aerial view."

But the piece looked too empty. It needed some sort of focal point.

The concept of "aerial view" made me think of outer space and so I thought maybe I'd put a planet or a moon down toward the lower right. I used a piece of metal to create the round form. I drew the strings to sort of rein it in, to anchor it.

But where does the eye go from there? If there's nothing else in the piece (especially in a piece this tall), the planet is kind of lonely by itself and our eye tends to glance upward, see nothing, and then move back down to the moon/planet.

So I put two more round things in the upper left corner. I also drew some strings to hold them in place.

The strings make me think of orbits, maps, and movement. The smaller "moon" in the upper left makes me think of it orbiting the larger "planet" right next to it. Thus the name of the piece, which I call "Planetary Shift."

So what do I have now? I have a number of vertical background elements that encourage our eye to move up and down. I have the three moons/planets that catch our eye and that become focal points. Their shapes are the same but their sizes are different. Their patterns are similar, but different. Our eye recognizes patterns and shapes, so our eye now flickers diagonally from lower right to upper left.

By using strong vertical elements, I've created movement. By using strings, I've created movement. By using similar shapes in two different parts of the piece, I've created movement. My viewer's eye has places to go and things to see, and now you know why.

©Carol Leigh

P.S. If you'd like to see this image much larger, and if you'd like to see parts of it at 100% resolution, you can do so here at my art website: http://carol-leigh.artistwebsites.com/featured/planetary-shift-1-carol-leigh.html

Composition: Isolating "the Good Stuff"

My uncle Fran Leigh was a commercial photographer in Trenton, New Jersey. His clients were AT&T, Lenox China, and Lawrenceville School, among others. I wish I'd paid more attention to his work as I was growing up, but I just wasn't interested in photography then. When I "discovered" photography in the late 1970s, I remember him saying, "there isn't a photograph that can't be improved by cropping." This was a rather broad statement, and one could argue the point, but it hit home.

I interpret his cropping comment by thinking about what's in the frame. What am I including in the shot, and why? And then, what doesn't need to be there?

Here's an example. I show you my original image of the fluorescent orange fender (bumper) hanging off the side of a complementary blue fishing boat, the fender reflected in the water. I composed the image as a vertical so that I could include the reflection and so the fender would have "drooping room." I purposely didn't include the area above the fender because it was busy and didn't have anything to do with my subject.

However, I think the bottom third of the photo is rather empty (no color, no fender reflection, just ripples) and so maybe if I squarified the image it would be tighter and bolder. I would be filling my frame with just the "good stuff," the side of the boat, the fender, and the immediate reflection. You can see how I've marked up the picture to show you what I think is the "good stuff." And then you see the resulting image.

But what about the dark bit of rust at the far right? What does that have to do with my concept of blue boat, orange fender, and reflection? Nothing! So I cropped even more (still keeping the image a square), and now the photo is more concise and more about what I initially liked about the scene.

What about your own photos? When you take another look at them, ask yourself, "where's the good stuff?" and then see what you can crop out, what you can remove, to focus our attention on exactly what caught your eye to begin with. By analyzing the photos you've already taken, you'll find yourself being more careful about cropping in the viewfinder before you click the shutter, automatically making you a better photographer.

©Carol Leigh, who misses the clever wit and charm, generosity, and photographic skill of her Uncle Fran.

2011 Projects for 2012: Journal

What I Saw/What I Made: Rock Abstract

There are certain beaches here with large bluffs rising above them where, at certain times, under certain light, the rocks glow a beautiful, warm orange color. In these two photos I show you what I saw and then what I made.

The first photo is an overview of the bluff face, rising up from the sand. See the big swath of orange? Moving in closer, I focused on just a little section of that rock face. The bluff is maybe 30 feet high and the orange rock area is around eye level.

My talent — and my downfall — is that I rarely see the "big picture," but I'm good at finding little things to zoom in on. This is an instance where I forced myself to take more of an overview so that you could see what I was seeing. Click the images to see them larger.

©Carol Leigh, who is now trying, for the purpose of this blog and subsequent eBooks, to take overviews

Concrete Texture

I show you here a composition that I don't know if I like or not. I've tried analyzing it this way and that, and I still don't know. Let me talk it out and see what you think.

Chris and I were wandering around a little town in Washington called Concrete. There were some buildings that seemed semi-abandoned, lots of weathering on them, lots of interesting architectural elements. I spotted this door, the downspouts, the remnants of downspouts, and was immediately drawn to it.

What I liked were the colors. There's something about that clear, Santa Fe-ish blue that just sucks me in, as well as the faded, weathered salmon color of the door. I also liked all the abstract lines and angles I was seeing. And then there was the overall texture. So, I knew what I was drawn to, now, how to fill my frame with just that?

Here's where I wish I had an overview of the entire scene to show you, but no, I have just this one composition.

I knew I wanted the downspout on the right. And I knew I wanted to incorporate some of the door. Looking at my resulting photo, I see how I balanced the dark element of the downspout with the dark element on the door. Those two dark "things" echo one another and create eye movement as your attention flickers back and forth between them.

I also liked the repeating forms of the horizontal lines running across the frame, from the horizontal blue element to the blue/salmon lines on the door. Good repetition there. Same with the vertical elements.

In fact, the entire photo is fraught with vertical and horizontal lines, which are broken up by the strong diagonal line of the downspout and the less-strong diagonal line of the door mechanism. Good repetition there.

So, bottom line, what have I created? It's an abstract image of strong, repeating, straight lines. Adding a bit of interest are the two areas of diagonality. I love the lines, I love the colors, I love the movement. I just don't think there's enough content, however, for this love affair to last. Like a few old boyfriends I've had, the attraction is immediate and exciting, but long-term? It's just not a solid, lasting relationship.

©Carol Leigh, wishing you a few fun-but-fleeting connections with your pictures, but even more longer-term, solid relationships