Inspiring ✿ Creative ✿ Artistic

Cats, originally uploaded by Lisa Van Alstyne.

Cats meow out of angst

"Thumbs! If only we had thumbs!

We could break so much"

They make my world go round.

Willow and TK-51 posing for me.

They are my only models who don't complain about always having a camera shoved in their faces >=D

All natural lighting

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Bookend kitty says "Leave me alone!", originally uploaded by Lisa Van Alstyne.

My beloved TK has never learned to give "the look" that my Willow monster has down to a science… you know, the look that just makes you melt and want to go all Elmira on your kitty. That look.. But TK has his perks. He loves me undeniably and would sleep curled up next to me til the end of time if I would just stay in bed with him. <3.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Will be back in a week or so. Monday is moving day! Bigger place, a studio for taking real professional portraits! And hopefully finally my darkroom! Yay!

I will not however have much time to dedicate to the site for the next week or so though so I wanted to leave a link to check out. I have ooohed and aaaahed tons since finding this link. I am so going to try some of these tricks!

Alternative Photography

Enjoy

icon_smile.gif

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Photography is, as Photography was.

You know your a true photographer if you trust in yourself enough to pick up a 35mm and use patience to get… just… the right….. SHOT!

Study the masters, read up on how they got famous, their styles, their techniques. Talk about truly inspiring!

My favorite artist to study is Ansel Adams, even though I do less then half of my photography in black and white, his style still impresses me and he is still a god in the photography world. I view his images and try to put myself in his shoes, imagining his perseverance in waiting, for the exact moment for the perfect image.

Do I brake out my 35mm and test myself? Yes… and will be more once I have my darkroom set-up. There really is no more awesome sound then the click whir of a 35mm as you take a picture.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Or well, any country really. I love Euro photography in particular. I live in America, home of the free, land of the brave. But how about looking through the eyes of someone from another country for inspiration.

For todays inspirational ideas, look outside of not only your box, but outside of your country. Maybe a little spicy Italian, or white washed shabby chic french photography will kick you into high gear.

I have many friends on flickr, from many nations and I just get so inspired by the works of people from other nations. I notice small things that they do differently from what I see from photogs here in the States. I can’t put my finger on it. I *feel* that it is because they don’t have the income that we do to buy every shiny object that we see that we want to use in our photography. They use what is around them, I akin their photography to our high school photogs. Out of the box and extraordinary on so many levels.

One of my favorite artists to watch on Flickr is Lero! She is from Russia and her photography always makes me stop, and ponder. Her works are all copyrighted so as much as I would love to share them with you here… , please head over to her flickr to check them out! Maybe they will inspire you as well. Look around try to spot differences in photo techniques between countries as well and maybe try to incorporate them into your workflow now and then. Doing something totally different can really spice up your art.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

So, I am going to be a mere hour from the next Adobe® Photoshop® CS4 Down & Dirty Tricks Tour with with Corey Barker.

For those of you who are interested check it here Down & Dirty Tricks Tour

I want to beat myself with a photoshopped wet noodle for not getting that NAPP subsription, like I have planned on doing, every time I think about it. (which is almost daily and there are so many discounts that depend on it!) The one thing that sooths this ravaged soul is that Scott Kelby won’t be hosting the party at Phoenix. For $100 I want to see the man, the myth, in the flesh. Not that Corey Barker or Dave Cross are artists to sneeze at! But to lose my seminar cherry is going to require a name I have known to be synonymous with photoshop since I first discovered it.

So, maybe next year they will hit Phoenix again. Maybe next year I will have the fundage to actually go. Maybe next year I will finally remember to join NAPP!

Tour PDF – Redirecting to Kelbytraininglive.com

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Taking this idea from Epic Edits,  I am playing with textures today.

TEXTURE

If texture is a big part of your subject, make it stand out and make it obvious. Match up the textures between your subject and your background. You might even try texturizing the entire photo for additional impact.

Textures have been a very large part of my photography life since I discovered Photoshop and all of it’s abilities. As much as I <3 {OOC} Photo’s and the flair and knowledge that it takes to create un-adultered photos. My weakness is still photoshopped images.

I used the same photo for both of the following pictures to show examples of two different types of texture techniques that I use.

Flower-300×200.jpg

Double layer textured image

This image I simplified by layering a gerbera daisy on top of a texture that I found on the web.

I should take a moment to say, if you collect images that are free to use in your photography, it’s a good idea to either edit the name of the photo with the original creators name or web address, or edit the EXIF data on the image. I have so very many textures and overlays from artists who give away their creations for free with only a request of recognition. This image however did not get the edit info and as such I have no idea who the original artist was .

IMG_0895-300×193.jpg

This second gerbera I went a little out of my normal safety level and used a texture from Graphic Authorities Urban Youth kit. I set the texture to Overlay and then set fill to 54%. I could have taken it a few more levels but I was leary of losing the nice bokeh effect that was still present.

Day 3 proved to be fun, I brought out an old picture from early 2008 not long after I first got my Canon XTi and was learning painfully slow how to use a camera again.

Reminiscing, Inspiring, Learning.

It’s what this is all about.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Yeah right…

So I finally have the gallery up. Kudos to Photogallerycreator on creating a free and amazing gallery for wordpress! I was trying all sorts of hand coded galleries and then stumbled upon the FIAGallery. I am a happy camper now

So now that the site is up and almost to my standards. (Not to sure about the pink frou frou look yet. It’s me, but not sure that I want that to carry over to my photography persona. I found an amazing wordpress skin on a photographers site from Hawaii… I wonder if she would share it with me! Well… after I make a ton of changes to make it more “Me” that is .

So tomorrow starts back up my 60 days of Inspiration. For tomorrow I am going to be going with Textures from Epic Edits blog

TEXTURE

If texture is a big part of your subject, make it stand out and make it obvious. Match up the textures between your subject and your background. You might even try texturizing the entire photo for additional impact.

Photo by Sukanto Debnath

Read and post comments | Send to a friend