Painting through a lens

Standing up for what you believe in

2009-08-08T21:52:00.003-04:00

I'm on Flickr under two separate accounts. On one of them, I had posted a photo of a polychromatic wood sculpture of Joan of Arc that I found on my travels. Recently it was given an award by someone, together with the information about the Flickr group that I could also post the image to. I joined the group, posted the image, and then read the group information. What I read runs counter to my ethics; I removed the image, quit the group, and posted about why I was refusing the "honour."

Yes, I want a large audience for my images, and want to spread info around about them. But I cannot use, and will not permit my images to be used, to support ideologies and beliefs to which I am ultimately opposed.

Someone to watch

2009-06-14T15:29:00.004-04:00

Ranjit does beautiful things with a scanner and fresh farmers' market produce.
Some of my favorites:
eggs and radishes
greens and onions
tomato, mushrooms & greens
alliums

And he photographs, too:
Death Valley

OK, have 4 skin designs up.

2009-05-10T14:29:00.003-04:00

More work than I expected! Each skin for a different player/phone has a different template. Each template has a space for the skin and for the desktop artwork, and so requires placing and scaling of two images. And then each template must be uploaded separately!
I have done 16 skins (for iPod touches and iPhones: 4 different variations):
Blue Lagoon, Iceland: show what a worldly traveller you are
Stoney Creek Vineyard: for the oenophile in you
Golden Pear: one of my first still lifes
Venetian Still Life #2: Masks, music, romance.

More to come!

Being a professional is about making money

2009-05-08T08:03:00.002-04:00

Tonight, I'll be working with various images and templates to arrange to sell some of my photos as skins to be applied to iPhones and music players (iPods and Zunes) at Stickstickbangbang.
Have just downloaded the 14 different templates I need for the different devices.
If nobody knows ya, how can you sell? Promotion is most of the biz.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

2009-03-24T19:05:00.003-04:00

I told a number of people at work today that it's Ada Lovelace Day, to be greeted with blank looks and shrugs by many.

Today I took the women on my team to a restaurant called Le Petit Dejeuner.
I was going to take a photo of us out for lunch, and alas, forgot.

One user experience specialist, two technical communicators, and me. We work in a software company. There are seven women on our floor, and 35 men.
Most people are young enough that there is no overt sexism. For most people, there is probably no conscious sexism, either. There's just a terrible lack of women.

Really, there aren't that many more women than there were 20 years ago. This is unfortunate. Where do the problems lie? I hear from my good friend and technical hero Sandy that there weren't many more women in the engineering class she lectured within the last 10 years than when she was an engineering students.

We had one woman at work who left to pursue her PhD at MIT -- very smart woman. But I wanted to throw her in front of the streetcar when she self-deprecatingly said she'd probably never use her degree, and would likely end up "just a housewife." I'm not putting down housewives, but if you're going to get a PhD in math, why not use your brain for the betterment of many? Your children will become independent people in spite of (because of?) your brilliance in motherhood, and then what will you do for the next 25 years of your life?

I know some brilliant women in technology: Sandy. Lynn. Julia. Christine. Alice. Susan. Veronica. Yet somehow we seem not to be hitting a critical mass that is resulting in an equal balance of men and women in the work force.

I cannot but believe the questions we raise, the problems we choose to solve, and the directions we would take as corporate citizens, members of the public, and 51% of the population would change the world.

But I don't know how to get there. I hope we'll find our way.

I want to say positive things to the women in technology I know who are also photographers: there seem to be a lot of us. I raise a glass in celebration and point back to Georgia O'Keeffe, who knew her way around that technology, and used it to inspire her paintings.

Recent news

2009-02-21T11:52:00.002-05:00

I sold a print of Golden Pear shortly before Christmas; I've been asked if some of my images can be considered for use in a calendar. If one (or more) is chosen, I'll let you know about the calendar and where it is available for sale (I'd get a photo credit, no money).

Prints are now for sale!

2007-10-08T19:11:00.000-04:00

Since 2004 I've been getting my images printed at Finer Works in the USA.
They now have a program that enables me to sell images through their site -- so click on over to Finer Works to get one of my prints. I'm offering a selection of 13 -- and I'll be adding to the collection over time. Currently for sale are a number of still lifes, seascapes, and one photograph of shutters I took in Provence two years ago.

Edited

2006-12-09T18:22:00.000-05:00

I chose a yet-different image (I had moved the chequerboard mask) and masked out the background on this to darken it slightly and to bring out the green values in it.
You can compare it to the image that's below it to see the editorial changes.

Venetian Still-Life #2

2006-11-23T21:41:00.000-05:00

A variation on a theme.

This weekend I want to find a globe on a stand in one of the antique/junk/collectibles shops in my neighbourhood. To take still-life pictures, you've gotta have props (some might call it junque, but beauty is in the eye of the photographer :-D )

I need to do some serious editing on this: the more I look at it, the more I realize that the gold on the mask and the mottled green of the background fabric are too similar with the lighting in this image. So I want to mask out all the objects, and darken the fabric.

I can do that: I've done more intricate masking jobs for competitions over on Worth1000. It will just take a little time, that's all. Time, and some good jazz music, and a glass of pinot grigio from the Venezia region, just to put me in the mood.

...pat.

Taste of latest photo session

2006-11-20T21:33:00.000-05:00

Here's one.

I borrowed a couple of violins from co-workers, and pulled together some still life images using them, some masks I got in Venice, some sheet music I printed off the web, and other bits and pieces of things I've got around home.

I still need to finish going through my Peggy's Cove pictures and choosing the best of those, and making a CD for retailers, but sometimes you've just gotta take pictures...

Hey, hey: new camera.

2006-11-20T00:06:00.000-05:00

New camera. 10+ Megapixel Rebel. Same lenses, but over 10 megapixels instead of just over six.

Took over 50 photos this weekend, mostly of musical instruments and Venetian masks and glass. Still have to sort through them and figure out which I like and which I don't. These images will be part of my new library/livingroom series of stil lifes (as opposed to the food images, which were kitchen/diningroom).

Meantimes, here's my new headshot. I photographed into a mirror, and then flipped the image. It's not as easy as I thought it would be:
First, check for your image to be reflected in the camera lens. Then, look at the aperture. I think. Difficult figuring that one out. Seems that it might be the midpoint that must be focussed on: i.e., the mirror. Must play around with this some more.

Woven photography

2006-11-01T19:31:00.000-05:00

So first, let's look at the original photograph of the David Austin "Abraham Darby" rose:

As you can see, the open blossom is quite pinkish, and the two closed blossoms are yellower: more of a peach colour.

Black's Photography offers the ability to upload a picture to their website (.jpg and maybe some other formats: it barfed on .tiff, which is my favorite format, due to being lossless). They offer a number of ways to use the picture: as a photo, on a mug, or a mouse pad, or a tee-shirt... or woven on a Jacquard loom. That sounded interesting to me, and I also like the idea that computer punch cards were based on the punch cards used by jacquard looms, and now the jacquard looms are creating digital images... round and round we go...

So I copied the picture up. And checked it out on the blanket/tapestry, and thought it looked pretty good! 3 weeks until delivery. I kept my fingers crossed, hoping it would arrive before the technical update session, when I was talking about digital photography for gardeners.

Alas, no such luck. The tech. update happened on Saturday; I got a call on Tuesday or Wednesday (I forget which: it was the last week of a software update), and wasn't able to pick it up until Friday.

I think it turned out quite well, although the open rose isn't quite as pink, and the buds aren't quite as peachy. The color range is limited, after all: these are woven yarns.

It looks better from afar than from 12" away: gets almost a high-pass-filter kind of look when examined up close.

I think the next time I do this (and I most likely will) I'll choose something with more flowers, in bright contrasting colors, and smaller. A rose is truly overwhelming when it's about 36 inches across. It would be better to reproduce an image at close to a 1:1 scale, instead of doing a huge macro like this.

I also positioned the large rose really close to the top edge of the blanket: it would be a good idea to leave some background to frame the image, I'd say about a 6" margin all the way around.

Live and learn!

More steps

2006-10-22T12:00:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I delivered an hour-long lecture on digital photography for gardeners to the Master Gardeners in Ontario's zone 6. I'm glad to have it over, as I put quite a bit of pressure on myself to deliver a lot of information in a short time in an interesting manner (I had 70 powerpoint slides; 40 of them were images illustrating points).
It was well received, and I've been asked to create a follow-on presentation for our local Master Gardeners group that deals exclusively with the post-production process (after you press the button and take the picture).

One side-effect of the seminar for the Technical Update session is that I've added a PDF to my website, which is a free download: a composition guide and checklist for garden photography.

To use the composition guide, print the page (landscape mode) onto a transparency.
Look through the grid at your composition: try to position straight lines at or near one of the lines on the guide. Or, if you've got specific points of interest, try to position them at the circles where the lines intersect. Make sure you check out both landscape and portrait orientations of the grid. Once you've got a composition that you're happy with, notice where the edges are, and use your camera to capture the composition.

I brought some of my canvases to the seminar, and showed them at a table (had a folder with proofs of the whole set of still life images, with finished canvas size and price marked on each, and postcards with my email address and website).

I was hoping to show a jacquard-weave tapestry blanket of three David Austin roses, but it wasn't ready on time (it will be ready on Monday: figures, eh?).

At the seminar I met a designer who may contact me to display some canvasses at a charity design house she's working on: this could be an opportunity to show some images in the sort of setting they'd be used in. We'll see what happens.

That was a busy day: I need to take a few days off, because I've been working 60-hour weeks at work, plus pulling together the seminar.

I've got a week of vacation coming the first week of December. If not before then, I'll use some of that time to convert one of my spare bedrooms into a photo studio, so I don't have to cart everything down from the third floor to the dining table when I want to do a photo shoot.

Getting things accomplished

2006-09-26T22:26:00.000-04:00

Between Sunday and today, I

revised my price list, created a PDF of it, and linked it on my web page
created new gallery stickers for my canvases that will be showing at The Commissary
created a hanging diagram to show how the images should be hung
also ordered a sample of 10 mini-business-cards with photos on (thanks, Sandy!)

Now I've got to

create and print stickers to go on the backs of my postcards to get some eyeballs looking at the canvases
order more ink and a roll of canvas from Epson
get that darned CD for retailers finished
get some more publicity - try to get something in the cabbagetown-area weekly newspaper

and

finish writing and illustrating the seminar I will be giving to the Toronto Master Gardeners on Oct. 21st
print some of my floral images on canvas to take to TBG that day (I've got a table at which to sell my wares).

I've got under a month to do all the above.

Oh -- and write a cheque to the insurance company, now that they've dinged me an additional $345.60 for running a small business at home so they would give me exhibit insurance. I wish they'd get with the modern age and let me pay either directly from my bank account or via credit card.

On: beautiful light

2006-09-08T23:04:00.000-04:00

Tonight, before sunset, the light outdoors was exquisite in the east end of Toronto.
There was a clear sky to the west, where the sun was setting, and a bank of clouds arranged *just so* to the east. The light from the sun, setting in the west, bounced off the clouds in the east, and down to ground level.

It illuminated everything the way we try to illuminate objects using gold reflectors.

Sometimes, it just happens.

Now it's raining. Glad I captured a shot of the back garden in this wonderful reflected light.

I was shooting toward the west: normally, that would mean that the plants would be in shadow. But because of the way the clouds reflected the light, there's a warm cast and very few shadows.

You can see that I had a slow shutter speed: the wind was already starting to pick up, and some branches and ferns were starting to move around in the breezes. But it's pretty interesting light, considered that I was shooting into the direction of the sunset.

Approved!

2006-09-07T22:58:00.000-04:00

OK, the exhibit insurance has been approved. It may still be a couple of weeks until I get the paperwork.

On to the next step: drawing a hanging diagram for the show, and printing labels (the restauranteur will have one of his staff hang it).

Waiting for exhibit insurance

2006-09-01T15:46:00.000-04:00

*sigh*

No word yet on whether I've been approved. Apparently it could take two more weeks, just to hear back. I've asked the broker if she can hurry the application along, because I'm waiting for approval so I can hang my photos.

She said she'll see what she can do.

About "Exhibit insurance"

2006-08-27T19:37:00.000-04:00

Wow.

Tough one.

First I called my home insurance brokers to see if they have Exhibit insurance. Well, blah, blah blah... first I have to get additional insurance on the house for running a small business, then I can get a rider to be moving some of the canvases off-premise and have them insured, but I also have to buy liability insurance (in case somebody gets hit by a falling canvas, i guess)... ca-ching, ca-ching. I told them I'd look into some companies that offer it separate from home insurance.

I started out by calling Visual Arts Ontario, to see if they knew of any insurers who deal specifically with exhibit insurance. Seems they've had a go-around about it, too, and ended up doing a rider on their standard business insurance when they held an exhibition in their office.

So next, I googled "exhibit insurance" and Toronto. Bingo! Found a company.
Ummmph.

I think they're really not interested in small potatoes: more into corporate exhibitions. large things. things with lots of dollar value, lots of money behind them.

Well, that's not me... not yet :-D

So... back to the residential insurance. They fax me a form.
I fill it out.
I try to fax it back.
Their fax machine (or ours: not sure which was at fault) isn't working. Can't get the fax out.
Get it out the next business day.
Wait two days.
Call.
Yes, they received the fax at the brokers, and have sent it on to the insurance company for approval.

And so the waiting game continues.

I'd like it to be short: I've got an exhibitor just waiting for me to have insurance to put things up in his restaurant!

...pat.

Sold!

2006-08-25T18:49:00.000-04:00

I've made my first sale.

Three Amigos, for $300.

Thank you, Lori!

Now I need to start keeping track of money --not just all the receipts of money I've spent, but money I've got coming in. I'm going to retain electronic copies of receipts, so I'll know who I sold to, when, and for what price.

It's good to track customers -- if at all possible, I'll make sure I've got an email account for them, so I can send out advertisements of future shows or groupings of images.

Publicity!

2006-07-27T18:50:00.000-04:00

A bit slow on the recount, here. Had to wait until I had permissions to republish.

If you want to get publicity, start sending out information about 6 months before you want to get something published. I sent out a flurry of press releases at the end of January/early February, and I've had an article (with a headshot) published now. Warning: expect that what you say may be translated into something different in print.

What is the interest of the newspaper, magazine, or medium that you are trying to get published in? It's important to figure that out. For this article, I knew that their primary interest is in people and events happening in east-end Toronto. So I filled out the information I gave them with other information about what my interests are in the community, and volunteer work that I do in my neck of the woods.

So here it is, reproduced verbatum, with permission of ETC... News:

In ETC... news:

East Toronto Artists

Beauty in the Gallery and in the Garden

by Linda Ward-Barnes

Pat Anderson, born in Halifax and raised in Montreal, moved to Toronto in 1987 after her graduation from Waterloo University. She and her husband moved to the Leslieville neighbourhood in 1997. It was a time when real estate prices were still in the affordable range. Pat and her husband appreciate the creativity and variety of small businesses in the area.

Researching the history of their home uncovered the fact that it was built on land that was part of George Leslie and Sons Nursery, the largest garden nursery in the British Empire (according to George she states). Given that information it is not surprising to know that gardening holds a special place in her life. As a Master Gardener (http://www.torontomastergardeners.ca) she has completed her apprenticeships and courses and hopes to do more public speaking to local groups. In the past she has presented to the Maple Cottage garden Club. The topic at that time was planting native species for winter interest. (largely attracting birds). Pat is preparing to make another trip to the archives to complete a chart she is preparing about the Leslieville area. (http://www3.sympatico.ca/patash/leslieville.html)

Pat's artistic interests focus mainly photographs and prints on canvas, which she gallery mounts onto artist's stretches and varnishes. Many of her compositions are based on items she owns. Pat also enjoys garden and flower photography. She often takes pictures at the Rosetta McCain gardens and the Scarboro Guild, as well as parks and ravines. A trip to Provence and Italy last spring resulted in the production of some window and door images. Pat's primary career is managing software documentation projects and documenting 3D design software.

Pat shoots her photos with a digital single lens reflex (SLR) camera and uses Photoshop to correct or modify the photos later. Pat enjoys still life images. Some of her work was exhibited at Barrio (Queen St. eatery) in February. Most of those photos were food items, which she says is part of her kitchen and dining room's decorative artwork. To see some of her work you can check out http://www.patanderson.net. Pat is currently working on a series known conceptually as "living room and library pictures" photographing items such as sheet music, instruments, books, globe etc.

Pat and her husband have restored the gardens both at the back and in the front of their home. From bricks and asphalt to a sanctuary with flowing water and native berry species (elderberry, Saskatoon berry). Having recently purchased a book that documents the catalogue of the Toronto Nursery during the 1820s she is figuring out what wonderful early Victorian plants she can add to her garden. According to Pat, there were 70 different types of apple trees available back then, probably 10 times what is available now. Pat's wonderful contribution to both the garden and the gallery certainly makes her an artist.

2006-06-18T21:53:00.000-04:00

Having a good week

I was off in Santa Rosa, California this week for a leadership course. While I was away, my photography business continued to percolate! My husband was home, so when a phonecall came in to display some of my photos in the Leslieville Cheese & Fine Foods shop that was opening on Saturday, he got right on it, and picked out seven pictures for the place.

I went in on Saturday and put up stickers with identifying info, email addy, and price. We'll see what comes of it.

And on Sunday, ETC (East Toronto Community) News was delivered to my door: with a full-page article and headshot about yours truly and her artwork (and gardening, and dayjob).

So, sometimes it takes a while for things to happen. All of this got set in motion in February, when I was showing my pictures at Barrio. That's where Lori saw them, and that's when I initially contacted ETC news.

Summary? Work six months in advance!

Cheers!
...pat.

Time for Canadian women who blog to meet?

2006-04-08T18:00:00.000-04:00

See My Name is Kate for more information about a possible meeting.

It sounds like a real opportunity to network with other women bloggers, some of who have created businesses through their blogs.

Make it so, Kate!

...pat.

New photo gallery up tonight!

2006-03-26T21:13:00.000-05:00

I've added a new gallery of photos.

Doors and Windows: Provence and Italy
These are images that I shot last year while on vacation with Sandy in Provence and Florence..
Due to the fact that I'm shooting digitally and not using a large view camera with an adjustable bellows, I needed to take the images into Photoshop and square them off (remove the keystoning effect of pointing a camera up at things).
Color corrected, re-shaped, enhanced where I felt the need to remove something from the image.
Next step: I'll look for a retailer..

I have a list of places that I'd like to be selling my images; I'm about 3/4 of the way through developing a sales CD for them. Just need a few more hours to get it finished, provide some sample prints, and do a mail-out.

I'm not sending out to hundreds of places: I think I have ten retailers on the list.

I'm aiming to finish it by next weekend.

cheers!

Post the first

2006-03-12T23:59:00.000-05:00

My first post on this blog.
My name is Pat.
I take photographs that dredge up the memories of long forgotten still life images.
My first series is food based. I consider it my kitchen and diningroom series.
My next series will be based around the living room and library.
Stay tuned!