Creativity + Rules + Breaking the Rules = Art

I’ve always been a bit envious of artists. The people who make drawing, painting, writing, or sculpting seem like second nature. I have never been one of those people. My art is concrete. I like science and math. One of the artists that I admire is my sister-in-law, Doris. Her artwork is varied and outstanding. She has a natural talent in a number of areas. She draws, quilts, and takes pictures. She graduated with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in art and design from Iowa State University and with a master’s degree in art history from the University of South Carolina. I talked to Doris to determine what makes an artist and artist and what defines art.

Ever since she was a little girl Doris loved drawing. Her mom tells this story of how she would draw pictures behind all of the doors and sign her name like an artist. The punch line is that she would then accuse her little brother of doing the drawing. She was quiet and introverted and says art was “part of my nature”. In kindergarten her drawings were used for the PTA newsletters and this is when she started receiving feedback from adults. It is also when she realized she was good. When I asked her if she thought she was an artist she hesitated before she replied, “Yes, I have the eye of an artist and I think like an artist”. I asked her what the hesitation was for and she said she doesn’t view herself as a practicing artist. To her being an artist has been woven into her being and it cannot be separated. However, she isn’t disciplined with her art any longer. She doesn’t draw regularly like she once did. She doesn’t “practice.
So what makes someone an artist? Is it innate or learned? I asked Doris what she thought and she said “innate”. She elaborated, “creativity has to be nurtured”, she compared it to a seed needing water, sunlight, and a lot of positive energy. The spirit of an artist can be squashed. It doesn’t depend on talent but on creation and creativity. I wonder where that puts me. I consider myself an idea girl. Someone who has ideas to be created but I don’t have the ability to make them come to fruition.

I explain that I am going to take a picture each day and edit them so I can learn how to use my camera, my photo editing software, and take great pictures that I can hang on my wall. We discuss the different types of photography and if they are art. Her assessment was “all photography, even portraits, can be art if there is creativity”. I asked for advice or rules I should consider when taking a picture. She went through centering the subject and lighting. She suggested thinking about the composition of the photograph including “the elements of shape, form, color, and light”. Then she threw a curveball and said “an artist basically takes the instructions and throws them out the window and does it their own way”.

We were sitting in a restaurant and there were three pictures hanging on the wall right by our table. I looked at them and asked, “What makes these art”? One of the photos was of stores along a street. There were cars parked on the street but they were cut off in the picture. She gave this as an example of not following the rules. Another picture was of lanterns and the primary lantern was off center. She pointed out that a rule was to center the subject but that in this photograph that rule was broken and it added some interest to the picture.

Rules. Breaking them. Doing things my own way. All within the context of learning about my camera and photo editing. If I really think about it I can become overwhelmed. This is going to be a challenging pursuit. I am going to work on developing an artist’s eye and thoughtfully consider when a picture may be more interesting if it isn’t governed by hard and fast rules. The only thing that is comforting right now is that “it isn’t about talent”.

Morning Bright

This picture was taken from the front of my house at sunrise as I was leaving for work. I was in the car ready to back it out of the garage and as I looked out the rear view mirror I thought it may be a good picture for the day. I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t like a good sunrise or sunset picture. I like the colors in the picture but think it may have been a better picture if I had taken it 10 minutes later. My main issue is that the picture is too dark. The trees down by the creek are a jumbled mess of dark.



If you use a high contrast the picture looks edited. Below is a picture where I set the brightness to 35 and the contrast to 35 so you can see the difference.

This didn't take too long to do and with practice it would be quicker. Most of the time spent was the trial and error to get the settings to the point where I liked them the best.

More Perspective

At church I took a picture of this stained glass window. Yeah, some color instead of the constant gray we have been seeing outside in Des Moines and therefore in the pictures on this blog. When searching through the effects I noticed they have both vertical and horizontal perspective effects. I decided to edit this picture once with the vertical perspective and once with the horizontal perspective so I could visualize what this does to the original picture. Before I used the perspective I cropped the picture to right around the window.

Horizontal

Vertical

There are different edge modes that can be used. I used color and left the default black as the color choice. I like this selection for this picture since it doesn’t detract from all the colors in the window. The other choices for the edge modes are wrap and repeat.


Wrap

Repeat

The wrap edge mode just shows the picture repeating while the repeat edge mode seems to use the very edge of the picture to fill in the extra space. I don't think this picture shows the repeat feature very well.

Perspective

This is another picture of a building in downtown Des Moines that I took from the skywalk. I would like to get outside and take more pictures downtown but folks, it has been cold and it is such a pain to bundle up. On the bright side taking pictures from the skywalk gives me ample opportunity to explore the different ways to clean up the photos.

I couldn’t get a good angle for my picture since I was limited by the skywalk. I just took a few pictures hoping to be able to edit them into something worthwhile. In the original picture you can see the angle. I am not cropping the picture for this post because I think you can see what the perspective tool does.



Notice in the original the windows are angled and after the perspective edit it looks like I took the picture from straight in front of the building.



Here is the final edit of the picture after cropping the picture, using the high pass sharpen feature, and adding a border.

Straightening a Photo

Sometimes having a picture at an unusual angle is cool. It can cause the picture to be more artistic. However, sometimes the picture may just look odd and you want to straighten it. I took this picture from the car (no, I was not driving) and the angle is just off.



I don’t know what I am going to do to edit a photo until I open it on my computer. When I opened this picture of an evergreen tree I thought it was cool but that the angle detracted from the tree. I had never used the straighten tool before and I am happy that it was so easy. The tool is on the toolbar and it puts a line on the picture. I then moved the line so it was parallel with the horizon in the picture and the tree was straightened. The thing about using this tool is that the picture is automatically cropped. It doesn’t matter so much in this picture of my tree but it could be a problem with some pictures.



This was a very quick edit and a useful tip in making an ok picture better.

Weaving the Landscape with Buffalo

Did you know that right here in central Iowa we have a National Wildlife Refuge? If you live in central Iowa and haven’t been out to the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge near Prairie City is it a trip I highly recommend. It may be a bit more pleasant when the weather is nicer if you like walking the trails but I like seeing the buffalo in the snow and I had a picture to take. My family and I drove out to see if we could find any buffalo. There is an auto tour that is pretty well maintained. In addition to buffalo, the wildlife refuge also has a herd of elk. There is also a very nice learning center that is free to the public. It is a great place to take kids. They also have activities throughout the year. You can check it out here - http://www.tallgrass.org/

We saw a few elk on our trip around the refuge but we hit the jackpot with the herd of buffalo. We saw 2 groups of buffalo that were separated by a hill. Each group had between 20 and 25 buffalo. We saw them butt heads and dig in the snow.



I took several pictures of the buffalo herds. Since it was snowy and an overcast day the picture is kind of gray. In fact while I was editing the picture I turned it black and white and you couldn’t tell much of a difference. I played around with some different techniques and found the weave texture, which I think, works for this picture. I like how it adds interest to the picture while keeping the buffalo as a focus of the picture.

Windows Windows Everywhere

We went to the Civic Center to the production of “Frog and Toad are Friends”. When we go to the Civic Center we park in the ramp on 3rd and Court Avenue since it is connected by a skywalk. From the parking ramp I took a picture of this building on Court Avenue and if you look closely you can see Johnny’s Hall of Fame.




The first thing I did was crop the picture. I really like the windows of this building so I got rid of most of the stuff around the building. Under Image Effects is an option of seamless tiling. I used this option and selected a corner tiling method, bi-directional direction, and a curved corner. I don’t know why I picked these they just sounded good. Below is the picture after the tiling.

I like this picture but it seems dark. I decided to add some fill flash and it lightened the picture quite nicely. This process didn’t take too long but I found myself doing a little trial and error to turn the picture into something interesting.

Blurry Pictures

I spend a good amount of time in downtown Des Moines. I work downtown and often am in the skywalks over lunch. If you pay attention while you are walking through the skywalks you can see some really cool architecture on the buildings. I took this picture from the skywalks. I wasn’t sure how well it would turn out because the glass looked kind of cruddy. I am not at all surprised that the picture was fuzzy and it proved to be an excellent opportunity to see what the high pass sharpen feature in Paint Shop Pro X does. One of the complications of the features in PSP is that once you select a feature to use you are often given the opportunity to alter the parameters. I generally have no idea what to do with the options I am given. In the high pass sharpen feature you can adjust the strength, radius, and blend mode. For this picture I am comparing the differences in the 3 blend mode options of overlay, hard light, and soft light.

Overlay


Hard light



Soft light



At first glance I thought I liked the hard light picture the best. It is the most clear. However, I think if you look at the square below the lion you can really tell that it is edited. Therefore I guess it would depend on what I am going for. I also think the difference between the soft light and the overlay is minimal. I have to say that the differences between all of the high pass sharpen pictures and the original are amazing.

One Step Photo Fix

My kid is cute. Really cute. I like taking pictures of the boy. This picture isn’t the greatest picture of him but it really shows how easy the One Step Photo Fix is to use and what it does. The picture is of Robby in the living room sitting in the recliner. I don’t know why the picture is dark, probably incorrect flash settings. For the first edit I used the One Step Photo Fix, which is simply the click of the button. As you can see, it really lightens the picture. Unfortunately I think it makes the picture look grainy.



Also I am not all that keen on the walls, recliner, and curtain detracting from the focus (cute boy). I could crop it so Robby takes up more of the focus but I used a geometric effect called circle. It jumbles up the outside of the picture without skewing Robby (the center of the picture) too much.



Both of these effects were very quick to do.

Removing a Shadow

I took a picture of a wall in my house. On it is a picture one of my friends took of the Statue of Liberty and above the picture is an Uppercase Living saying. First I just took the picture but there was a reflection of the flash on the glass of the photograph. I retook the picture without flash and it was much better. When I looked at the picture on the computer I noticed there was a shadow on one side of the picture because we have windows near the picture. I made an attempt to remove the shadow from the picture.

I used the clone feature in Paint Shop Pro X. This feature allows copying sections of the picture while essentially using a paintbrush. There are several "brush" shapes to select. I selected a square with soft edges since the edge of the picture is straight. To select the section to copy I right clicked and then used the left mouse button to begin the cloning process. I went around the right side and top of the picture. I tried to blend the cloned parts with the rest of the wall.



I really zoomed in the picture during this process and it took about 30 minutes to get it done. The cloning feature is really cool and you can do some neat stuff with it but it doesn't happen quickly.

Flash Study

On my Sony digital camera there are 3 basic flash settings. On, Off and SL. I didn’t know what the SL mode meant so I did what any self respecting person in 2010 would do and consulted Google. From the website http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/367004.html, I learned that this setting keeps the shutter speed slow but the flash goes off. It is called the “slow synchro flash mode”. It it intended to be used in darker settings.

I decided to go into the basement and take a picture of an item with each of the flash settings so I could compare the results. My subject is the 15 ball on our pool table. There are no overhead lights on but there is a small window 8-10 feet behind me that faces north. Therefore a bit of light from outside came in since this was during the daytime but not direct sunlight.

The first picture is with the regular flash setting.



The next picture is with the flash SL mode setting.



The last picture is without flash.



I like the picture with the flash SL mode the best. I can see the benefits and now will know when to use it properly. I’m on my way to better pictures already.

What is this All About?

Five years ago, when my son Robby was born, my husband and I started taking a lot of pictures. We have taken thousands of pictures, mostly of Robby. I went to a workshop at the Bondurant Library one night to learn more about taking pictures. I have read about ways to edit pictures and I have listened to others talk about it as well but, bottom line, if I don’t actually practice using the techniques I hear about I won’t develop the skills and the knowledge will quickly escape my brain.

Point, shoot, upload, print. Sometimes I add a zoom or a crop but basically that is how I take and print pictures. It is quick and convenient and virtually anyone can do it. I have some excellent pictures. One of my favorite pictures is of Robby sitting by a tree in the park. I also really enjoy pictures taken at the pumpkin patch. I think because the surroundings are so interesting and natural. My pictures aren’t good due to talent or knowledge, but due to volume. If an amateur photographer takes 500 pictures in a month several are likely to be good. In fact, I get compliments on my photographs quite often. However, I would really like to be a better photographer, someone who knows how to take a good picture and can elevate a good picture to a great picture using technology. I would like to be able to frame some of my pictures and hang them on the wall. I want them to be art. Practicing taking pictures and editing them will make taking great pictures easier.



I read blogs of other moms that had babies the same age as Robby and some of them have such neat pictures. Over the years I have seen some truly fabulous pictures taken by people who know what they are doing. Some of the pictures look professional but they were just taken by moms with their digital cameras.

My digital camera isn’t fancy but it has a lot of features I don’t know how to use properly. The same is true of Paint Shop Pro. I bought this software five or six years ago with high hopes of using it often and learning the ins and outs of photo editing but unfortunately that didn’t happen. There are many different menus of effects that not only do I not use, but I don’t even know what they do. To learn more about my camera and photo editing my quest is going to involve taking pictures.

Each day for 30 days I will take a picture with my digital camera, a Sony Cybershot that is several years old. This will force me to always look for opportunities to take pictures. I will keep my camera in my purse so I will have it with me most of the time. Then if I find a something I want to take a picture of I will be able to do it. I will take pictures of my family, the landscape, or whatever else I choose to. I imagine sometimes I will go somewhere special to take a specific picture and sometimes the picture will be of life as it is happening.

Each day, I will use a different feature either on my camera or on Paint Shop Pro. I will edit the picture and compare the original photo to the edited photo. I may not have an “original” photo to compare to if I use a feature on my camera but if possible I will take a picture with and without using the “special” settings. I will describe the features and editing process that were used and what their purpose is. Some of the changes I make will only take a minute or two and some could take hours. I will also talk about the time the editing takes.

At the conclusion of this 30-day quest I hope that I know a lot more about editing the pictures I take. I anticipate being able to imagine the end product when I take the photo and to have a better understanding what goes into a good picture. I want the pictures I take not to just document my life but I want them to become art that I can hang on my wall for years to come.