Art Pain?

Is that what you're left with if you lose images from your hard drive without backing up?  It must be...  Luckily one of my New Year's resolutions is to back up all my data - images, documents, the lot, before I lose precious data.  I recently lost a whole stack of brushes I had made in Photoshop, the "art pain" wasn't too bad, as I know at a push I can create them again or at least retrieve them from the saved .psd images I now have multiple copies of. 

I've had several external drives sitting here, simply waiting to be used, and today I bought even more blank cd's and dvd's so I can burn multiple copies.  You just never know what hardware will fail, so it's best to keep multiple copies and to store them in different locations - ideally off-site would be great.  Next on my to-do list is to investigate online storage of my images, but at the moment I will be content with the multiple back-ups I'm creating.

Before you get too involved in 2009, have a little think - when was the last time you backed-up your images and documents?  This task is really not one you want to put off till tomorrow, as you may wake up tomorrow to find your only copy is now on a dead drive.  And then you'll experience the suffering, the agony, the regret of what it's like to have 'art pain".

"Art/Pain" by Cathie Tranent

Please visit Cathie and buy her work at RedBubble.

New Year, new start...

2009 is here and with the start of the new year comes the fresh outlook we strive for. A new beginning, a time for resolutions. These can be silly, mundane, difficult, challenging, whatever your resolutions may be, let's hope your goals move you forward and allow you to grow.

One resolution for me - to be plain silly. Don't take myself too seriously, relax and have fun, chill out. That's exactly what I did when I shot this image of my Christmas dress in the pool - just a refreshing spot of being silly. I love the colours, the flow and the refreshing nature of the image.

To Delete or Not to Delete Digital Photographs

In part one, we talked about whether “To Print or not to Print” your images, or simply keep them on file. As we continue to embrace digital photography technology, we’re also increasing the number of images we take. So, what do you do with the less than perfect images? Do you keep or do you delete?

Well, I think you fall into one of two categories – the minimalists and the hoarders. Now me, I’m a hoarder. I simply can’t bear to delete an image, no matter how cruddy. There is nothing more calamitous than – gasp – deleting in-camera! Argh! How can you do that?! I recently spent some time with a sports photographer who was happily deleting images in-camera while showing me the images – what if there was a lapse in concentration and he deleted the wrong image? Argh! Obviously, he’s a minimalist as he felt more than comfortable deleting any image that wasn’t up to scratch.

Being the image hoarder that I am, I very rarely delete images, and certainly none in-camera. Rather, I categorise them in various files. As I also like to create image with multiple textured layers, this is where having a collection of images to use as a stock library, comes in handy.





In fact, take this image as an example.

Stock Image by Adriana Glackin

It’s less than crisp, fairly mundane and certainly not the type of fine art photography you hang on your wall. Now, my minimalist friend would have deleted it in-camera (mind you, he probably wouldn’t have shot it to begin with). But with some clever and creative alterations using editing programs such as Photoshop, this mundane image has been transformed quite dramatically into a piece that can be used as wall art and even a greeting card. Why buy someone else’s stock images when you can create your own stock images by simply keeping the less than perfect images on file.

Take a look at the examples to see some clever variations. For even more variations, visit the Grunge Art Photographic Gallery and A Photographer’s Craft and see for yourself why you too should be an image hoarder and not a minimalist!

Ode to Banksy by Adrian Rachele

A Semblance of Yearning by Karri Klawiter

afraid of the light by andreasphoto



A Year of Novembers by Dana DiPasquale


~ autumn collage ~ by Adriana Glackin

A visual feast of photographic beauty

It's been a while - I haven't forgotten about this visual blog.  Life just gets in the way sometimes.  I have all these intentions to journal all manner of things, and sigh never quite get these.   So I give you this visual feast of images found on RedBubble and belonging to photographic artists whose work is brimming with passion and soul.  Each image is a feast not only for your eyes, but your heart.  Of course, I couldn't resist including my image on here as well...

 

On a night like this by Sarah Moore

 

 Touch Me 20 by Alexander Edwards

 

whips and chains by Nicole Goggins

  

faint heart never won fair maiden by algaia b

 

 ~ the colour of my love ~ by Adriana Glackin

 

 

When grrrrinning and bearing it just won't do...

There are just some people in this world that are able to bring out the best and others that are so damned good at bringing out the worst in you.  You know the type.  You don't even need to have offically met them, or even spoken to them directly or even have anything to do with them.  But no matter what they do or say,  they have that ability to just bring out the worst.  Is it the perpetual, cheesy grin they wear on their perpetually sunny face?  Is it the permanent twinkle in their carefree, happy, laughing eyes?  Is it their over-the-top, can-do charm, no-job-too-big-no-job-too-small attitude?  Who knows what it is?  But I know that it's people like that that manage to bring out the Grrrr in me at each and every encounter.  Grrrr to people like that, is what I say.

 

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="397" caption="Grrrr by Chris Wahl"][/caption]