Pick Up a Box of Crayons for a Lot of Color

Looking for some ideas?

I bought a box of 24 crayons today to see what colors were in the box. Besides the usual
red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet there were gray, white, black and brown crayons.

There were a couple things that surprised me about the box. There wasn't a plain "pink" crayon.

I also was surprised to see the three languages on the crayons, but this makes perfect sense from a production point of view and children learning point of view. Wow!

There was the paint color celeron inside the 24 crayon box. I am hoping payne's gray is in the larger box of crayons... and I loved finding out that Amarillo (Texas) is the color yellow in Spanish.

Great photography assignment -- Pick up a box and shoot!

Birthday Bliss!

So what do you do for fun on your birthday! I used to have a big party each year... and then got too old for that.. or it some how seemed self-centered to host a party for myself. Anyway, today is my big day.

So, it's 2010... and what did I do today for fun? Of course, my work is fun for me!

Here's "On the Edge"  below from a pretty Zinnia garden on Mount Vernon Road. Above is "Yellow!" I have applied the poster edges filter from photoshop to both images. This is one of my favorite filters. Let me know what you do fun for your birthday and try out this filter on a simple photograph without lots of detail. I like it because it makes the image appear sharper.

James H. Floyd State Park All about Water

Like to fish? James H. Floyd Georgia State Park is a beautiful background for lake activities. We stopped at the park on the way home (to Atlanta) from Cloudland Canyon. My GPS wasn't exactly sure how to get in the park through the front or back gate, but I figured it out.

This was a really beautiful tree in the park. Notice all the bark is white. Do you know why? I will have to research.

Photography assignment... don't take your photographs at noon. This is when I happen to be at this park and took my photos. They are pretty, but they would be better later or earlier in the day. As an assignment -- take a photograph in the middle of the day outside and take the same subject in the same spot much later in the day. Which do you like better?

Below is the upper lake at Floyd. Click here for a park map. I include the paddle boats in my photograph because that was my companion's real interest here.

To the right is an image of the lower lake. Notice the people fishing on the right and the boat in the foreground.

James H. (Sloppy) Floyd State Park

2800 Sloppy Floyd Lake Rd
Summerville , GA 30747

(I am visiting, photographing, and blogging all of the GA state parks in one year. This is park 4/48)

Serenbe is Worth the Trip

The Serenbe community in Palmetto, Georgia is a city out of the past and the future all in one. This quiet community is one where you can safely leave your keys sitting in the ignition or pocket book in your car without worrying about either disappearing, but don't, just in case. The community was created to get away from it all. And, they did. There isn't a red light for miles. And, what a lovely photography place.

Serenbe Photography Center  ♥  9110 Selborne Lane ♥  Palmetto, Georgia 30268 ♥ 770-463-9098

I first made this hour trek from Atlanta for the opening of the Serenbe Photography Center many months ago. Recently, I traveled back to utilize their digital lab and 44" Epson 9600. I bought a roll of canvas, and I store it there at the center. Yesterday, we pulled it out and put it in the printer, and I printed ten nature images for about $100 for the ink and lab time (canvas cost not included). The largest was 16" x 24" and the smallest 8" x 8". The center has rolls of photography paper and adds that cost on if you don't bring your own. This is a great place to go to determine if you want to buy a big printer. But, how else would you be able to print a gigantic copy of your photograph without spending a fortune?

To enlarge your digital image to these big dimensions in photoshop, select the following:

Image/ Image Size 

click in the width drop down and change pixels to percent
Type 110 in the width box
Repeat until the image is the size you need.

In addition to the digital lab, they have traditional black and white lab and a color lab for traditional printing. They have just added new staff to complement Kathryn Kolb, the Exectutive Director. Stephen Brownlee and Loran Hygema are both working at the center to provide assistance and answer questions as needed. Both were very helpful and good resources.

As you see, I brought my camera to give you a feel for the place. I snapped both flower images yesterday at Serenbe. Learn more about Serenbe here. I have eaten at the Blue Eyed Daisy many times now, and the food is delicious.

So, here is your photography assignment. Travel to Serenbe and print a 44" image,

(which I haven't done yet)... and take your camera and take some photographs while you are there. The Photography Center is open Wednesday through Sunday 10-6. But call ahead to set up your lab time.

Color Negative in Curves using Photoshop

I loved this photograph on the left for many months before I knew what to do with it. I thought it needed a little punch, but I wasn't sure what to do. Recently, I hit upon the color negative feature in curves and loved what happened to this ordinary scene taken in Tennessee at my parents' farm. Now, this image titled Family is one of my favorite canvas works.

Picturing This: How to: Open Photoshop. Pull in a photograph. Click on the background in the layer panel. (Click on window/layers if layers are not visible.) Left click on the 'Create a new fill or adjustment layer' icon shown here with the red arrow. Left click on [Curves]. In the Curves preset box select 'Color negative RGB' and your image is reversed. I also played with hue and saturation to obtain the image on the right above. Show me your images, if you try this photoshop trick.

Picturing This is a new feature on MagMoment blog about art, craft and photography. This feature will delve into photoshop topics and also send other random art and craft tricks your way.

Weingarten Pallette Series' Links to Painters

Lumiere Gallery hosted an amazing video conference with photographer Robert Weingarten on Saturday. Of course I was was right there taking notes. He spoke about his various series. I thought the discussion about the Palette Series would make for a nice post. These photographs were shot between 2004-2007. The works are close up photographs of contemporary painter's work spaces.

His original question was whether the palettes' hues resembled the location of the artist or weather of the day. He set out to discover whether there were any correlations. And, Weingarten determined their palettes were pretty random, artists painting what they wanted to paint. View their photographed palettes at Lumiere Gallery or on Weingarten's website.

I thought it would be fun to look at the paintings behind Weingarten's palette series artists. Here are the links to some of the painters he specifically mentioned during the video conference.

Jasper Johns
Ed Moses
Richard Estes
Chuck Arnoldi
Eric Fischl
David Salle
Robert Kushner

Also, pictured to the left is my palette. I use styrofoam plates and popsicle sticks to mix my paints together.

** Send me your palette photo at hazel at hazelberger dot com by March 1st and I will include in an upcoming post with your shop link. **

Halloween Fun! Photography Assignment Week 7

The assignment for this week is to take a photograph that tells a story. Please bring at least 10 images from this assignment and past assignments to class. Please print one or two of your images (even black and white is good), so we can talk about them and examine them.

Black and white is a great test of the contrast in your image. If the photo is flat without a lot of black and white range, try again.

At class, we will work on creating a scene. Bring in your Halloween costume (to get a second use out of it) and we will have some fun creating a set! We will use some props I will bring in (bring your own too) and create a mood! We will take photographs of each other dressed up  and ourselves with the self-timer and a tri-pod.

Photography Assignment Week 5

Lyrics... please print the lyrics to a favorite song and then... illustrate it with a photograph. Have fun with this... and pick more than one? Concentrate on framing your image with a natural or man-made frame.

Happy Shooting!

Here is my illustration of Van Morrison's "Moon Dance," a song I really love. And the link to purchase on Etsy.










Moon Dance by Van Morrison

Well, its a marvelous night for a moondance
With the stars up above in your eyes
A fantabulous night to make romance
neath the cover of october skies
And all the leaves on the trees are falling
To the sound of the breezes that blow
And Im trying to please to the calling
Of your heart-strings that play soft and low
And all the nights magic seems to whisper and hush
And all the soft moonlight seems to shine in your blush

Chorus:

Can I just have one a more moondance with you, my love
Can I just make some more romance with a-you, my love

Well, I wanna make love to you tonight
I cant wait til the morning has come
And I know that the time is just right
And straight into my arms you will run
And when you come my heart will be waiting
To make sure that youre never alone
There and then all my dreams will come true, dear
There and then I will make you my own
And every time I touch you, you just tremble inside
And I know how much you want me that you cant hide

Chorus

Repeat 1st verse

One more moondance with you in the moonlight
On a magic night
La, la, la, la in the moonlight
On a magic night
Cant I just have one more dance with you my love

Capturing Movement in a Photograph Week 4

This week's photography class will focus on movement. We will spend time in class practicing panning (moving the camera with the subject) to try and stop the movement. We will also test out our camera's sports setting to see what a fast shutter speed does to stop motion. The assignment this week is to

Take many shots to still movement.
Take many shots to illustrate movement.
Take several shots to capture moving lights at night.

Bring five best images to class.

Photography Assignment for Week 3

Had a busy, busy weekend. This time I was looking forward to Monday to relax.

Our photography class assignment for middle schoolers is

Take a still life photograph of your favorite collectible. Take a still life shot of a stuffed animal. Take a still life shot of your choice. Bring three images to class.

For the class I created a simple one page photography critque questionairre. This may be helpful to all beginner photographers. Take a look!

People photographs Week 2

Continuing the photography class this week. We will discuss Annie Leibovitz's work. She is an amazing portrait creator. Here is a link to a recent New York Times article about her financial problems, which seem to be on-going. Regardless, her ability to capture amazing shots of people is something to study and learn from. While we discuss Annie's work and style, we will talk about capturing people on film. Most cameras these days have many settings to "get the red out" of eyes and photography programs help with that as well. Try different settings and lighting to determine what is best for your camera. BUT the most important part of capturing a person may be to turn the camera so that it is portrait. See my blog entry about portrait shots.

The assignment for next week's class is to create a portrait of a family member(s) only one person per shot please. This will require many practices to acheive a final image. Please bring multiple examples to class.

Here is a recent portrait I captured. This July, at a performance for http://www.culturedkid.com/, Michael Levine played and sang for a summer camp. Michael is an amazingly talented singer, song-writer living in the Atlanta area. He is especially gifted at playing guitar. CulturedKid is my birthday party business. I create art and science parties. Learn more at www.culturedkid.com/party.html.

Camera 101 at Roswell Visual Arts Center for Middle Schoolers Week 1

Today is my first class for Camera 101 at the Roswell Visual Arts Center. The class lasts eight weeks and there are still a few spots. Click on the link above to learn more. Then click on Youth Visual Arts. I will post the assignments here on my blog to motivate you and just in case my students forget...

The assignment today is to practice off-centering the subject. Take ___ landscape shots. Bring 5 best to class next week. And, find another shot of Ansel Adams' that you like on the internet. Bring a copy to class. I found a nice bio and photographs on this site.

We will discuss the tic-tac-grid. Here is a visual reminder of where to place your subject. Place the main subject in the green areas and avoid the center or red ex.

Arthur Leipzig

So. One of the lessons from school is that we artists are influenced by all the images we have viewed before our next work. Click on Arthur Leipzig's Chalk Games and then let me know how it compares to my Kickball in Parc Guell, left, taken in Gaudi's parc in Barcelona. Streetball Barcelona is shown here to the right. I studied Leipzig long before taking the Barcelona shots. Leipzig was born in NY in 1918. Leipzig has a lot of neat shots of children playing in the streets of Brooklyn. Click to read a short bio on the photographer. Study Leipzip's works and go shoot an image in his style.

Portrait vs Landscape

Ah! So you have heard these words before....

So which way do you usually hold the camera? landscape

And, which way do you usually type on a page? portrait

And why is it called portrait?

If you are taking a photograph of a person, you will want to turn the camera 90°, so it is portrait like you are typing a letter. And see what happens... Put their eyes about where hers are 1/3 of the way down from the top. Do this because people are shaped tall and not wide (for the most part...) Here's my latest photo titled "Freckles" -- you'll have to zoom in (click on it)!

And, so I will write about one of my favorite children's books, which I did not read as a child, but was published in 1971, so I could have. Freckle Juice by Judy Blume is an endearing story about a little boy who WANTS freckles. It is short, just 47 pages, so early readers can manage. It's about second grader freckleless Andrew Marcus who wants freckles and an enterprising little girl named Sharon who is willing to sell the recipe for freckles for five weeks' worth of allowance. You can just imagine what happens...

At summer camp, everytime I see a child with freckles I ask them if they have read this story because Blume certainly provides a new appreciation for freckles.

Photography Assignment

Finished up a journalism camp last week. The kids created a neat paper with lots of information about Roswell in it. I'm hoping the campers will check out my blog and be surprised to find a new photography assignment waiting for them--

Go in your backyard and find something textured in a little bit of sun. Take the shot at 5 PM, 6 PM, 7 PM and 8 PM. (Perhaps a Crepe Myrtle or Magnolia.) How different do the photographs look?

Here is my Christmas Crepe that I was searching for. As you remember these are complementary colors.