Post #1 for 2013

My first 2013 post is now up on my blog at http://www.anitajesse.com. I hope you will mosey on over and visit.

I also hope 2013 is off to a smashing start for you.

Season's Greetings

I wish you all a

Merry, Merry Christmas

and a

New Year filled with blessings!

Ups and Downs with CS6

Mostly, new software turns me into a quivering mass of dread and my brain turns to unset jello. On the other hand, new program also inspires me. I get excited about all the things I'm going to be able to accomplish with the new tools. That doesn't mean I learn the software quickly and easily. It's that the joy of discovery eases the pain. 

On the Jesse Dread and Inspiration scale, Photoshop CS6 was a 9.5. I have eyestrain from the tutorials that I've watched and I still feel like a blithering idiot. The first time I launched CS6, my jaw dropped. My first thought was a panicky, "What program is this?!" I knew immediately that I was in for a long and steep learning curve. For me, it's a big leap from CS3 to CS6 and I'm still not done.

Would I go back? Not even that proverbial "team of wild horses" could drag me there. (Well, face it, if there were horses involved, who knows.) The point is I find CS6 a dramatic improvement over previous versions and only wish that I made the move earlier. 

The new ACR alone makes the cost of the upgrade worthwhile, if you shoot RAW files. Since upgrading, I have examined  RAW files previously processed in CS3 and been astonished by the untapped information. This is mostly true with the equine action photography. There were countless cases where I got everything I wanted in the image except the exposure—the black horse running into a shadow resulting in under exposure. In most cases, so far, I have found that the RAW file had all the information that I needed, after all. 

And, I haven't even gotten into those incredible brushes. I like painting with the various brushes before, but this is a whole new world. 

Especially if you shoot RAW files, give CS6 a try.  I don't think you will be able to resist it. It's that good.
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Note: new post up at http://www.anitajesse.blogspot.com/ 

I Brought It on Myself

I could just as well have called this, "Some Old Dogs Do Have Trouble with New Tricks". Really, now. Why do I persist in believing that just one more project, one more deadline added to the pile won't make a difference?

Trust me, I don't have a Superwoman complex—never did buy the "You can have it all" business, and I actually have a fairly functional mind. I just don't always engage the section that holds awareness of time limitations.

Somewhere along the line, I became hopelessly enamored with the notion that time is elastic, and we can always get just a little more stretch out of it if we are careful. Of course elastic does have its limitations, after all, and, alas, so does time.

At the other blog, I get into some of the mischief I have stirred up in the past few months and post a thumbnail of one of my newer pieces.

Just to prove that I have "a lick of common sense", as my Dad would have said, I am not trying to do equally detailed post at both blogs. That would tip me right over the edge at this stage.

So, hop on over to Anita Jesse http://www.anitajesse.blogspot.com/ for more about the newest projects and an image


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

My New, Shiny Toy

Yes, this new adventure of mine has completely taken over my life. I hadn't posted on Blogger for so long that I couldn't remember where to begin.

I still plan to get back to the real/virtual world of blogging. But, for now I am completely buried. Meantime, if you wonder about anything I am doing, this link will take you to the latest post at AnitaJesse.com. where I focus mostly on equine photography. But, I am branching out on that site. More to come on that.

 I hope you will follow me there and we will pick up the conversation about photography, creative processing, the learning process, along with life's funny ups and downs.

Little by ever so little, I am getting my ducks in a row at the gallery. I really leapt into the deep end of the pool—and you may remember that I can't swim! So much to learn, and such short days.

A Drop In

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This is lame. I am the first to admit it. But, I have missed all of you for so long and just wanted to say I am alive and plugging along. I think blog posts and messages to you frequently and, yes, I know: fat lot of good that does anyone.

 

Showing in a gallery is a wonderful education. I had no inkling that I would enjoy it so much. I am exhausted and frazzled by deadlines much of the time. Of course, I bring it all on myself. You knew that, didn't you? But, I am glad I took this on. It has been challenging, exhilarating, and a wonderful opportunity to grow. A big bonus is that I have met new friends—a good thing when you have fairly recently moved to a community. At last, the Tehachapi Valleys genuinely feel like home.

 

The Husband and Galen are well. Our pup had been giving us a health scare for quite some time and there was some tension with that, but the doctor has told us to relax. Surgery would be stressful, so he will never get neutered, after all. Galen has been unfazed by the drama. He is enjoying life as much as ever.

 

All members of the equine trio are currently well. Imagine that! No vet bills for the horses in weeks now.

 

Learning like mad—upgraded to a new computer (Wow! What a great move!) with Windows 7 (big change for me) and still making good friends with CS6 (big jump from CS3 and the new Camera Raw is amazing!). I am in love with the new brushes in this upgrade and so very glad I had gotten my Intuos tablet. My poor, tiny brain aches most days from absorbing new lessons and I am enjoying my work on images more than ever.

 

Life is good in Bear Valley Springs. I simply had finally gotten too many plates in the air and something was bound to drop. I regret that it was my participation in the valuable conversation with my friends on the web, but hope to fix that. I am clearing up some health issues, may be getting close to getting a handle on the gallery thing, and look forward to finally having time to return to blogging. I have never understood how I was so fortunate to be welcomed into a community of  such outstanding bloggers, but I was (and still am) grateful to have been accepted. I appreciate the welcome and will come back asking to return and catch up on the news.  

 

Take care, everyone. I miss you.



New Beginnings

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I feel as though I need to introduce myself as a newbie blogger. Come to think of it, that is fitting. After all, I began this blog in July 2007. Now, here I am coming back after a long absence and doing it a few days after my fifth anniversary as a blogger.

My absence was not about being lazy, traveling, or being tired of blogging. When I was first struck with the notion that it would be interesting to explore marketing some of my prints, I thought that was I fairly well prepared. I am curious, by nature, and had long made time to read articles on the pitfalls and strategies for art sales. Certainly, in the beginning, I read the material strictly out of curiosity. But then, I couldn't resist dipping a toe into the water. Talk about slippery slopes! The next thing I knew I was neck deep in art shows and flailing to stay afloat. Yikes! I have to get out of this deep water metaphor. There is history here.

I do have a habit of getting into things that are over my head. When I was young and even more foolish, I took up water-skiing in spite of the fact that I was never able to learn to swim. That is, unless you count dog paddling for a couple of yards, at best. Still, my desire to get up on those skis overpowered my fear of drowning and ski I did. I even had a grand time doing it. Those life vests make you feel indestructible—provided you haven't yet hit your twenties and your brain hasn't begun to grasp the concept of mortality.

My foray into selling my work reminds me of that person I was long ago. Here I am older—oh, so keenly aware of my mortality—yet diving into things without considering all the possibilities. Yes, I thought long and hard about the preparations for this venture, and I felt pretty darned ready. Hey, I had my bright orange life vest at the ready, didn't I? What I didn't anticipate was handling the sales and keeping up with all that entailed.

Reminds me of the night we took the skis out on a lake waiting for the moon to come up. Of course we hadn't checked to see when the moon was rising! Are you kidding? I was a kid a very long time ago. One didn't pull up that info on a smartphone, because we didn't even have cell phones for Pete's sake. There we were on a vast body of water—one well-stocked with Water Moccasins—under pitch black skies (no city light lights for many, many miles), racing along atop the inky water and laughing like the numbskulls we were. It hadn't occurred to us how the driver of the boat would find us when one us went down. Since the other silly female on skis was even more a novice than I, she went down first. That is when it finally hit me that I had to drop the rope out there in that thick darkness and wait, trusting.

I have had flashbacks on that experience during the last few weeks. Still, just as my young and foolish self had faith, so have I. Back then, I didn't really dwell on the fact that we could be run over by some other nut jobs tearing around that lake and unable to spot a body bobbing up and down thanks only to an inflated orange vest. Now I am taking this adventure one day at a time. I try to stay calm while dealing with a perpetual state of lagging behind my ambitions and barely meeting deadlines.

It has been a great ride, so far. After all, there are no deadly poisonous snakes on this body of water. Yippee! Crank up that engine! Faster, faster!

Additions

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Where the heck have I been? You know what I have been up to and you are not at all surprised that I am working at preparing for this show as though Heaven and Earth depended upon it. I figure if I am going to do it, I may as well go all out.

Meanwhile, the rest of life has not stood still. The Husband's quest for answers regarding the gray gelding's back has yielded little results. The man can't be faulted for not trying. Near the end of his imagination, resources, and patience, he got a phone call a couple of days ago that added a bit more chaos to our lives.

A fellow farrier called, while we were on the road, and said he had a lead for Jim on a great prospect of a horse. To make a long story short, the fellow above arrived at our place Saturday afternoon. Lancer and Night were terribly excited about the stranger on their property. The animal was touching their things and eating their carrots! What an insult. But, they were deeply curious. Naturally, the gelding's arrival had to be documented.

There will be more information about our new addition in the weeks to come and I will probably steal a few minutes here and there for some more photos. His registered name is Ground Zero. It seems he was born on September 11, five years ago. The name is appropriate, but neither of us can handle the sound of it—too many unpleasant memories. So far, the young gelding is simply "The Black". We didn't think Walter Farley would mind.  

June Art Show

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How many times do we think, "Hey, I want to do that/be there/accomplish that/go there—or whatever" and nothing ever comes of it?  Conversely, there are those times when you are struck by something you would like to have happen and maybe you even spend some time creating pictures in your mind in which you realize that dream or ambition. Then, lo and behold, it happens.

While I kept crazy busy with very small art shows last fall, I held a picture in the back of my mind for a show at a particular gallery in town. This time the pictures in my mind's eye materialized. For First Friday, June 1, 2012, I will be the featured guest artist at Tehachapi's Gallery 'N Gifts and twenty, or more, of my pieces will be exhibited. The work will remain on display throughout the month of June. More information coming about this soon.

The art director, SG, at the gallery is wonderful to work with and I am honored to have been chosen. Lucky me. June should be a very good month to have my show which means I must present only my very best work. SG is a fan of my equine pieces and that is what has generated the most interest at shows thus far. Consequently the June show, will focus exclusively on that part of my work.

My readers know me well enough to know that I am busy tweaking completed pieces. Between a vision slowly, but constantly, evolving and developing new finishing techniques, I can never convince myself to stick with an old print once I have new insight into a piece. Naturally, I look at those and think that I should be able to do the tweaking in no time at all. And then I dig in. Oops, where has the time gone?

I am doing fairly well at a regimen of working smart, meaning that I get away from the computer by 5:30 PM to assure that I am not dangerously tired by the end of the evening. The last thing I want is a relapse of that hideous bug. The downside of my discipline is that I have no time for anything other than keeping my nose firmly connected to my little grindstone. The To-Do List for the show is formidable and I am on the edge of being overwhelmed.

In case you didn't catch it, the last paragraph was a veiled excuse for why I have yet to describe my crazy experiment for the last show. I tried getting a snapshot of the piece once it was hung at the venue; but, no luck. I wish preparations for this show had been smoother; but, things were a little hectic around here. First, I must say that thanks to The Husband, aka The Knight in Shining White Armor, the piece was completed in time for the show. One afternoon when my body had said, "Stop, or else", he put on the finishing touches.

"Eclipse—a Velvet Darkness", printed on metal at 11x14, floated above a frame/mat that consisted of a 16x20 base covered with a rich chocolate brown suede leather. The outside edges of the frame were finished with antique brass upholstery nails. The piece created a nice stir on arrival, Saturday morning at the venue, and was purchased the moment the doors opened. Since there had been more than a little angst on my part about this experiment, I was delighted that it turned out so well.
I will do my best to stay somewhat present at my blogs and, yes, I will eventually visit blogs. You cannot know how much your encouragement has meant to me.

I hope you will check out the post on these two pieces of news at my fine art prints blog.

Old Dogs and New Tricks

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"You can't teach an old dogs new tricks." So goes the old saw. By now, I am a prime example of how unreliable that old saying is. This old dogs just keeps learning tricks. While preparing for two art shows, spending time getting to know and appreciate my Wacom pen, and keeping up with the lively Sheltie who runs our place, I faced a longtime challenge. For years, Microsoft Excel sat there in my hard drive and I never went near it. The term spreadsheet made my blood run cold. I had all but taken a vow to never tackle the job of learning. Let others make their spreadsheets, I reasoned. I would continue to stumble along with my little calculator and my scribbled notes on odds and end of paper and sometimes actually getting information into my computer.

A few days before the flu bug took me down, it became clear to me that I could no longer deal with my so-called record keeping and I was sick of calculating the same numbers over and over, ad nauseum. I knew I would have to learn a new piece of software and wasn't eager to deal with the inevitable headaches that would entail, but plunged into the fray anyway.

With the help of the Internet, I sailed through—well, for me it was relatively sailing through—in a couple of days and absorbed the basics of creating an Excel spreadsheet along with formulas and formatting. Whoduthunkit? Now, of course, I am kicking myself for not having learned this years ago. Formulas are the cat's pajamas. No more calculating and recalculating with each slight alteration in figures. Enter a new amount in column C and whammo!, the formula takes care of all that number crunching across all those columns. Excuse me for gushing, but as one seriously intimidated by numbers, this equals a little bit of magic for me. I may even become a spreadsheet fanatic.

I am not yet the full strength version of Anita—I am productive for very few hours any give day, but I am getting closer to recovery. I have another art show to prepare for—more coming about that soon. Besides, Galen has been going through an allergy reaction that has cut back on everyone's sleep. As soon as possible, I will post more about the next show. I am already a tad anxious about all the work to be done. I need a robot to take care of oh, so many details.

The image above is from a very old photograph and one that I barely liked enough to keep in the files. I never found any reason to share it and kept it only because each time I stumbled across it it reminded me of a beautiful display that I had the good fortune to witness. I haven't yet found how to make this work to my satisfaction, but at least I have reached a point, recently, where I am willing to share a version with you. Perhaps there is enough here that, with some imagination, you will have an inkling as to what captivated me and convinced me to hold on to a deeply flawed photograph. Sometimes, it is enough to have files that serve only to jog our memories, to remind us (perhaps when we most need it) that there is much in our lives that is sublimely beautiful and needs neither explanation nor excuse for being.