Posie Gets Cozy

Painting

I was going to do a whole bunch of other stuff, like cook and make a potholder and clean the house, but then I just happened to stop by Blair's blog real quick and saw the Glitterizer post, and that's when all Alicia-hell broke loose, and all other activities came to a screeching halt, and I haven't really put down the paintbrush since.

This is not the painting — this is the "glitterized" photo that I used as the base for the painting. Blair's post contains a link to a function at Martha Stewart that turns your uploaded photo into sort of a paint-by-numbers-looking PDF (stop by Blair's to get the link because then you can see GRACIE). You're then supposed to sprinkle it with glitter (there's an article in the November issue of the magazine I happened to run into last night, too). But as soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to paint on top of it, instead. So I chose several of my photos of kids and pets and "glitterized" them then resized the files to about 10" wide or tall, and put the files on a CD. Then I went to Art Media and had some 140# smooth watercolor paper cut to 11" x 17" (and bought some new brushes and artist paints, too, since I just had craft paint). Then I took everything over to Kinko's and had them print the PDFs on the watercolor paper on the color copier. (The prints came out a little dark, but otherwise beautiful, so I'm trying to compensate for that a little bit with the paint.) And now I'm just painting right on top of the printed, "glitterized" images, following the gradations created and mixing colors as I go.

(Phone on work table so I can call all of my friends and tell them about my painting.)

I have painted everything except for the very bright magenta patches, which I can't seem to mix out of the seven colors I have, and her face and t-shirt. I am afraid to do her face and completely mess the whole thing up. Otherwise, I just painted directly onto the paper over each area of color, and there are a million colors in this thing. Weensy brush, steady hand. But I'm sorry people it is so cool. If you've been wanting to paint (and I have, for a long time) and expecially if you've really been wanting to paint by numbers, this is for you. SO. FUN. Seriously. I can't stop. It's difficult for me to stop and write this post, but I had to tell you. I SWEAR I am going to answer the last four days of emails later today, too. I really am. First I hafta run out and get the magenta, though. Should probably eat something, too. No time. Back soon.

Viewfinder

Oaks Park, Portland, Oregon; July 5, 2009

I was talking to Andy yesterday as we were eating lunch in the park about how oddly lost I'd felt the day before, at the Fourth of July parade in Lake Oswego, without my camera. It was one of the few times I could remember feeling that way without the camera — but then again, I frequently have a camera with me, so I don't have to feel that way very often — and I was trying to find a metaphor. Not having the camera was almost like not being able to write. Actually, it was like not being able to explain. I don't like it when I can't show you what I see. This was the picnic table and the tree, with one glowing lightbulb in its branches, on Sunday. I don't have a picture of the tiny little girl in the wagon with the red, white, and blue star painted on her face, glaring at me (I have no idea why), on Sat.

How grateful I am for that freedom, the freedom to try to explain.

Almost there.

Yesterday was one of the big photo shoots I had planned for the book. This was the last big one, the one with my model, Beauty Nicole. That's what I call her. She's also the most patient and the nicest girl in the world. Even though a porch swing she was sitting on fell out of the porch ceiling and she got hit in the head with a two-by-four (from the ceiling) six days ago (I didn't really know this until we were fussing with her hair and had to be careful about where she'd just gotten two stitches removed), she modeled five projects perfectly. I really, really hope she has the weekend off, poor darling. I wish I had baked her some cupcakes to take home, at least.

I get a little anxious about these photo shoots. The "vision" we're trying to translate is such a wily, capricious thing. When I am designing something, I almost always have a vision for it, a specific environment. It's a setting. I can hardly think of anything that doesn't inhabit a very specific setting in my imagination as it's coming to life. Since I was very young I have always designed things this way, whether I'm making embroidery projects or short stories: There's always a place. It often comes first. My friend Andy Greer once said to me after a fiction workshop when we were in grad school together, "Well, I'm not sure what's going on in your story, but I know what all the characters are wearing and what the wallpaper in everbody's room looks like." And I was like, "Oh good! So you got it, then!"

I'm getting more relaxed about photo shoots in general, I think, which is good, in general, for the almighty blood presure, but good aesthetically, too. I've been involved in enough of them now to know that holding on too tight just squashes the sponteneity and naturalness right out of anything. I "know" this, of course, but it still takes a conscious effort for me to remember that letting go is Good, not Bad. But you gotta let go at just the right amount, and that's the tricky part. It sort of feels like doing a triple axel (as if I could even stand up on ice skates, but we'll just say) — you let go enough so that you can lift off and spin, but not so much that you can't land it. And maybe even attempt a teensy wrist flourish: Ta da! [There. Skate on.]

Part of what contributes to the intensity is just the weirdness of working alone for so long, only getting to talk to editors and art directors on the phone, usually in abstractions and generalities, and then trying, when there's only that one day to get it right (since, trust me, rescheduling a photo shoot is not something anyone anywhere ever wants to have to do), to get something that pleases all of us equally, not to mention pleases our future audience. It's ultimately a collective vision and I feel a great responsibility for that, since a lot of people and a lot of time and a lot of effort (and money) is involved. Part of it is just simple performance anxiety, which has always plagued me. And part of it — maybe even the biggest part of it — is just something that comes with experience, I guess. Is that right? Because all of it, not just the phototography but everything about making a book, has been so much easier and so much better the second time around. I think I'm surprised I had the capacity to enjoy myself this much.

Anyway. These are just the things I think about, now that I am almost there, and almost done. Just two more project photos to go now. But I'll be far away from needle and thread, camera and computer this weekend: I'm digging in the dirt. If the weather holds out.

An Experiment

We are learning so many new things in my digital photography course! As I mentioned last week, it is a little bit overwhelming. It all makes sense in class, when my teacher is explaining it, but then when I get back to my computer at home, I blank out and can't remember what seemed so cool in class, and can't really make sense of my notes. Possibly because the annotated version of my notes look like this:

"Curves."

Or like this (even better):

"Phottoshop."

Yes. Brilliant. But we have gotten so much good information to start practicing with, and I have remembered some of it, so I thought I'd do a little experiment.

This one's called "Untopped, and unPhotoshopped." It is what comes straight out of the camera, before doing any color correction.

This one's called "Once Topped, and Alicia-Photoshopped." On this image I performed my typical process of color correction in Photoshop, tweaking white balance, curves, and levels, and then sharpening.

This one's called "Double Topped, and Class-Inspired Photoshopped." I worked on this image in Adobe Camera RAW and then Photoshop, tweaking white balance, exposure, color, burning in the curves on certain parts, adding an unsharp mask, and I think that's it.

It's seriously fun. I am having some color issues with my new iMac — the color in Photoshop and Adobe Camera RAW does not look the same as it does in Bridge, or when viewing the same photos on-line (on the same computer). I have wracked my brain trying to fuss with this in Color Settings and been on the phone three times with the techs (who told me three different things, none of which worked) and still, something's off. I even used my Mad Skillz in Creative Profanity and still, nothing! Can you believe that??? First the global financial crisis and now computers are not responding to crazed and desperate swearing! What is the world coming to!!!

Photography Class

I spent yesterday at my photography class. It's the second of four five-and-a-half hour classes I've been taking at PNCA. It's the first time in, WOW, fifteen years since I've taken a class in anything. My ability to sit in my seat for several hours at a time seems to have greatly diminished, if nothing else. By the end of the class I am freaking-out anxious to get up.

The past couple of weeks have been so overwhelming! I won't really complain about or bore you with the details, aside from the fact that I haven't really left the house at all during that time, have been on a steady diet of CNN and other financial- and election-related news pretty much all day long (can't seem to turn it off), misread the book deadline I thought was coming up as the 15th of October when actually it's the 1st of October (double-take, whiplash, scramble), and my internet connection is still not working and we will now, after two weeks, need to switch companies completely, and start over. My new iMac is sort-of hooked up, though not really, since I have to wait until our internet service is restored before I finish all the registration and stuff, and the color on it seems to be in dire need of calibration. I think.

So I guess I am actually going to complain AND bore you with the details. Yawn.

But back to the digital photography class. We are learning SO MUCH. It's incredible how much I don't know, and how far I feel I have to go. Our teacher wants us to shoot everything in manual-mode, and, although I understand the concepts of aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and white balance in theory, it's kind of like starting over, since I usually always shoot in aperture-priorty mode, and let the camera control most everything else. But I know I must learn how to understand and be responsible for all of these aspects if I ever want to get better. We are also learning how to shoot in RAW, and using software like Bridge and Photoshop CS3 which are both new for me. I am so behind that I think I have been using Photoshop 7, which doesn't even allow you to look at RAW images. So I feel insecure and quite far behind the curve, and that's never been more clear to me than it has these past two weeks.

Sorry. It's still boring. This really is how boring I am anymore. It's awful. We're all sad about it.

Yesterday in our class, we were supposed to go out during our lunch-break and take photos of familiar things and try to make them look unfamiliar. I was so focused on trying to get my settings correct that I wouldn't say these images are particularly inspired, or as abstract as I think our teacher was wanting us to shoot. But I love assignments like this, where you are really very consciously trying to change your perspective, and perhaps even photograph things you wouldn't otherwise think were worthy of being subjects. So I tried to do both: practice seeing something in a conceptually interesting way while really focusing closely on my technical settings. Or maybe I'm being too ambitious and I need to stick with the settings only until they become automatic, and I can see interestingly again. I did manage to shoot all of these in manual mode so that was one thing, at least.

I will say that it is so incredibly exciting to finally have the time and wherewithal to take a real photography class. I feel excited and nervous and overwhelmed and just happy to be learning all of these new things. Isn't the technology astounding? It kind of blows my mind. And we are constantly having to stretch out of comfort zones (and buy a bunch of new crap) to move along with it. This is so hard, but frequently so rewarding. But hard. And expensive. I try to remember how shaky I felt last year when I first got Big Black, and now that camera, or at least what I do with that camera, is as familiar to me as Small Silver once was, and it's funny how that just happens automatically, with time, even though you just don't think it will. You get there. One day at a time.

But then again, I never, ever thought that photography would be something that I would grow to love, or even care about. I never thought that it would become another language for me . . . another way to say it . . . another way to speak. I hope I get more confident. I hope I have the patience to deal with the computer, too.

Pretty Pictures

My friend California-girl Leslie Lindell takes such pretty pictures.

"Through the Curtain"

"Patchwork Love"

"The Pink Tutus"

She recently opened an Etsy shop, where you can buy prints, printed with archival ink on photo rag fine art paper — I swear the print she sent me of "Patchwork Love" looks 3-D.

She has a professional photography portfolio as well. I seriously love this one. I wish I had formatted my blog to show photos off at larger dimensions, 'cause this one is beautiful larger. I keep toying with changing the format but then it seems like all the old posts would wrap text really weirdly and I don't even want to deal with it. But photos like this make me almost change my mind. She says it's the beach house where she spent her birthday.

She shot some photos of kids for me for me last summer so I could use the images in one of the projects in my book. She has a way of quietly capturing people. How lovely is this little feather-eyebrowed beauty:

Miss Leslie, you are so very good at this.

First Flowery

These frothy delights are the first flowers I am seeing in my yard. They are Camellia japonica 'Ave Maria,' planted haphazardly by me maybe five years ago now, too close to the house but as such bursting forth with these prom-night poufs immediately outside the dining room window. February 25th — wow. That's a nice winter treat.

To take this photo, I used natural light in my kitchen, which is fairly dim in the morning and gives me this lovely, moody luminescence. I put the camera on my tripod (I always use a tripod for anything that's not moving), and set the 2-second timer. I almost always have my camera set to the "A" setting for Aperture-control. I open my aperture as wide as possible (this one allowed me to go down to f/4.9) and zoomed in on my flowers with the lens (meaning, the lens was pushed out all the way out to 300mm). Using a wide-open aperture and a zoomed-in lens will give you the shallowest depth of field possible — so the flowers will be in focus, but the chair in the backround, which is actually about eight feet away, will be blurry. To zoom in on the flowers, you actually want to pull the camera and the tripod back — I think I was probably four or five feet away.

To focus, you first want to make sure that your auto-focus is set to allow you to choose what the camera focuses on. If, when you hold your shutter halfway down, you see one little rectangle in the middle of the frame which beeps of turns solid when it has finally found its focus, you're in good shape. Use this little rectangle to focus on the spot in your composition where you'd like the focus to settle, but remember — this does not have the be the center of your final photo. To focus on that most forward-facing flower, I hold my shutter down halfway (mine beeps when its ready) with a small part of the petals of that flower within the boundary of the rectangle. Continuing to hold the shutter halfway, I recompose the shot, shifting the flowers a bit to the right. When you've got things where you want them, then you push the shutter down all the way. The timer takes over, and two seconds later snaps your photo, using a shutter speed of its choosing.

If, when you hold your shutter down halfway, you see several rectangles (gathering exposure and focus information from lots of places in your composition), you need to consult your camera manual to figure out how to turn that off. I prefer to control where my camera focuses, and from which places it reads the light. Once you get used to it, you'll find that this is a lot more fun. Don't be scared.

I try to explain camera stuff in a non-technical way because the technical jargon tends to make me start panicking. And again, this is just how I do things (or rather how I get the camera to do things), and what works well for me — and that's typically always changing as I learn more stuff, or as my habits and interests change. Mostly, I've found taking photos to be something that's best learned by doing. If you're unsure, pick one thing and learn a little bit about it — concentrate on that one thing for a while, playing around until you think you get it. A professional photographer told me recently that he shoots every still life at every aperture setting — then picks the one that works the best from the contact sheet. I love that idea. I also Photoshop all of my photos, and I can tell you about that too. But not today 'cause I gotta finish about four half-finished smocked things.

Also meant to say that if you know of any other photography tutorials that have helped you, please leave them in the comments, definitely.

Shootness Cuteness

Is not this the cutest crew you've ever seen? Also four of the nicest people in the universe. I had the best time yesterday, which was so great, because going into it I really felt (and looked) like a dried-up mushroom. (That was before the makeup.) But I think it was my favorite photo shoot ever. That's Andy with Stephanie the makeup artist (she got my hair reeeeeeally straight), Andy the stylist (Clover misses you), and Jake the photographer (genius). Jake is a genius. At one point on Wednesday I looked into the kitchen and it was so dark — pouring rain, late November, Portland , 4 p.m. = dark dark dark — I could barely see the guys. But there they were, happily taking pictures of a crocheted tea cup in natural light. Is that cute or what? You guys are awesome. Thank you so much. (I'll let the rest of you know when it's coming out :-)

Clover Meadow Hooligan Paulson was part of the photo shoot, but was already behind bars (not because she was naughty but because four-legged shorties are not allowed in the studio with very expensive cameras on tripods) by the time I shot these photos toward the end of the day. Clover M. H. Paulson has taken to sitting at my feet and barking sharply at me whenever I'm apparently doing something that she doesn't want me to be doing. Like, I don't think she wants me to be writing this post right now. Well, that's life, my little clover meadow. She is awfully loud for a clover meadow. I can't even hear myself write. It's the loudest barking clover meadow I've ever heard.

By the way, I know it seems like only I could've named my dog Clover Meadow. But I didn't name the dog. Andy Paulson named the dog. See, and you thought you knew me. I only vigorously agreed with the names he picked, which is different.

We are due for a corgi portrait around here, aren't we. On it.

Fish Pie and Stuff

Comfort food: Tessa Kiros's Fish Pie from Apples for Jam. I've never had fish pie before, believe it or not. I suspect fish pie is supposed to be a rather humble casserole; this one was fancy — halibut (under there somewhere), shrimp, white wine and mushrooms, ringed with a frothy halo of mashed potatoes. I think this, with a big green salad and some crusty bread, would be fantastic for a Friday-night after-work dinner with friends in front of the fireplace. Especially if the weather is bad, I can't think of anything better.

I forget how hard it is to blog about dinner in the winter — it gets so dark so early that the finished-dish picture just looks like a solid block of yellow. It sort of looked like that in real life, too, but it was absolutely delicious. Tessa Kiros is 2-0 around here. The pastitsio and now the fish pie — win, win.

All this month I have worked on reshooting photos and finishing sidebars and all the dozens of details that didn't make it into the originally submitted manuscript in September. I am tired, I have to admit. I was hoping to do a small line of Christmas stuff for the Posie web shop this fall, but I honestly don't think it's going to happen. Book proofs come December 15 and I have to return them by January 4 — so, right over Christmas. Before then, I am definitely needing a break. My sweet friend Megan interviewed me for the Design*Sponge guest blog last week (I just popped over there and see interviews from Susan and Amy — whoot! go Team Portland! — are up now, too) and I talked a little bit about trying to balance things. I see the light at the end of the tunnel here, maybe even really finishing this week, but the past five months have been intense. In real life I'm sure anyone who has seen me hasn't been able to miss the too-frantic tone in my voice and the wild look in my eye, like I'm being chased. I will say that I really had no idea what doing the photography for a book entailed before I did it. Ignorance made me brave. Or not "brave" but at least like, "Sure! Cool!" Now that I've done it — submitting close to 150 photos for the book — I have a completely different appreciation for what goes into product photography. I can't even get my mind around it yet, I don't think. I'll never look at it the same way again. Even more than it did before, it really seems like magic to me now. It seems like it should be the opposite, but, strangely, great shots feel like even more of a mystery than ever. What can I say. Backwards. I'm more than a bit intrigued. And a little hooked.

Back on the Horse

Thursday then, eh? Already?

The last few weeks have been a blur, and seem to have gone by in a flash (like a fast blur). I have dozens of personal emails to answer, several voicemails to return, and many thank-you cards to write. For I must say again, until I can get to them, thank you — thank you for all the little things, the bubble bath, the chocolates, the sweetest notes and cards, all of the sweet little things. I'm touched beyond words by the donations to animal organizations that have been made in Audrey's name. I'm really . . . wow. People. My heart is so soggy. I have so many feelings about the last month. It's hard not to believe that everything's going to be alright when you know there are friends like you all, all over the place, little Swiss dots of love, sprinkled down everywhere. Look how that helps. Thank you. For helping me feel like that again.

The reality is that the book is getting finished, fast and furiously, as I enter the last month, the homestretch of my steeplechase, for it has felt like a steeplechase, thrilling and too fast, hooves pounding, mud and sticks flying. Many, many times over the past few months I've thought I might just ride the horse right off the track and out into the forest — Goodbye! Goodbye! I can't do this!

So when I look at my desk and see the huge stack of paper that is the almost-finished manuscript and its giant companion-pile of projects I feel liquefied with relief. My technical editor on this book is my former boss from years ago, when I worked in publishing myself — I was able to hire her to work with me and I am so grateful that I've had her expertise to guide me throughout this summer. Ellen has worked in the industry for almost thirty years. I was hired by her and became her protege when I started as a production editor myself. We worked together for three years. She taught me everything I know about how books become books — we are both traditionalists, and I loved being trained in the old ways. I always wanted that. It is a small miracle that we are here, exactly ten years after our first meeting in August of 1997, working together again on something that means so much to me now. I have learned a million things in the past few months, and at times the lessons have been painful! Some days have been great, some days have been impossibly hard.

But when I am working on this book I am transported to that time years ago when I sat in my little office with my green banker's lamp and proofed page after page of manuscripts and layouts, sentences and paragraphs and photos that would become books about bush pilots, wild birds, the medicinal herbs of Alaska, and felt like I was in heaven. I was so excited when I got that job and I loved it so much when I was there. Sometimes, over the past seven years since I left, I've thought that I'd like to be there again, back in the office with my friends, a pile of chores where I know just what needs to be done and how to do it. But working on my own book now, after all these years of sewing and not thinking about books very much, has changed my life. I see now that it is exactly the right thing for me to do, weaving up both those sides of my life in a seam that feels exactly right. And I almost never feel like that.

The draft ms. is on its way to being finished, the projects are almost finished, the photo shoots have started, the kids are passing in front of my camera, populating the special little world that the projects inhabit in my imagination, making it real-ish. Turns out, photographing kids is, oh, a million times harder than I thought? A billion? Of course, it's also a billion times more fun, but Oh! you cross your fingers when you look at those thumbnails, I tell ya. I don't have as much experience shooting people as I do shooting jars of cloudberry jam. If the project is in focus, the kid has his eyes closed. If the kid looks cute, the project is upside down. If the kid looks cute and the project's front and center, it's all unfocused because someone was laughing (could be the kid, could be me). My great reward will be shooting still-lifes. I didn't know how easy we had it, me and my crochet, my sock pups, my quilts that just sit there for hours and hours, patiently waiting for me to get what I want. But you know I wouldn't have it any other way, giggles and dog-and-pony kisses and all.