Being Crafty

I stepped away from taking photos the past few weeks to focus on paper crafting. With the slew of birthdays that fall in February, I found that these projects make really unique gifts.

With my Cricut machine I have been making cards for over a year and love it! These are cards I made for my sister-in-law and nephew- 

  

While exploring Etsy for a Valentine’s Day card idea, I found a pattern for “exploding” boxes. I’ve constructed two and can’t wait to make more. Please excuse the horrible cellphone lighting situation.

Lastly, large scale origami projects are now underway. These take significant time; my Cricut tries to resize the images, throwing off the proper scales of the pieces. So, I have to cut and score everything by hand. The penguin will be completed by Monday and then I'm onto a red panda :) I’m overjoyed by all the cute designs available online.

Japanese Friendship Garden

 Wk 4 - Infrared Photography

Yes, I was supposed to take self-portraits, but 1) I cannot find my camera remote, so ordered another and 2) I'm avoiding this project (damn you self-esteem). Instead I decided to start exploring infrared photography. I discovered this form of photography 5+ years ago, but the equipment is not cheap and I was not sure it'd be something I'd ever use. So glad I was wrong - this is my new favorite medium.

For my birthday, I gifted myself an infrared camera that I found off of ebay and some filters I purchased through Spencerscameras.com. Today I decided to not futz with a bunch of filters and decided to just stack two - a light pollution filter and a 590nm, also known as an Extreme Color Infrared Filter. When I got the camera/filters this fall, I set my white balance and basic settings on the adapted, full spectrum, Canon 5D. The difficult part of this process was deciding where my first location to shoot would be (outside of my backyard that is).  

I only had a few hours to shoot, so going out-of-town was out of the question. The Botanical Garden was crowded. Tempe Town Lake doesn't have a large variety of scenery. I finally settled on the Japanese Friendship Garden in downtown Phoenix. While the infrared camera does not allow for great shots of koi fish, the affects of light on the water, grass, and stone is incredible. I can't wait to go play with other filters, in a new location, again!

Stop and Smell the Flowers

 Week 3 - Flowers

    Lumen prints required me to purchase a variety of flowers, so the next logical photo project was using flowers as my primary subject. I broke out some of my old equipment for this one, namely my Canon T4i, 52" macro lens, light box, and reflectors. For lumen prints I selected flowers with a lot of texture and non-traditional shapes. The peach lilies glowed in the brightness of the day and the golden reflector helped to bring out their brilliant tones. 

    I had fun, but find that I'm still am hesitant to try anything too crazy or devote significant time to creating a setup that may or may not succeed. Hopefully, I will get more daring with my project this week (self-portraits). Also, this really reinforced how restricted I feel in the pandemic since this is a project I would normally have done at a public garden, park, or arboretum. Luckily, Arizona has had a very mild winter and I was able to enjoy an entire day outdoors capturing these in the sunshine.

Macro Lens

 

Arrangements - Canon T4i 50mm

Potted Plants - Light Box

 

Single Stems - Canon 6D w/reflectors

Lumen Prints

Like other photographers, I have boxes of darkroom equipment that are collecting dust, dreaming of the day that I convert a bathroom or closet. With time in the pandemic, I started going through these boxes, consolidating and tossing things as necessary. I discovered 2 boxes of Ilford photo paper; about 300 sheets. Since it's expired (2016) I don't want to use it when I eventually get a darkroom up and running, but I don't want it to go to waste. The answer was simple - Lumen Prints.

Lumen Prints are similar to cyanotypes, but require photo paper, fix, and longer exposure periods.  Examples and tutorials I found online used organic materials - flowers, leaves, rocks, etc. For my first round of attempts and timing I decided to do the same. I went to a local florist wholesale store and purchased flowers and greens that had great textures and shapes.

My first attempts I tried at 10am for an hour, but this was not long enough to get the crisp lines needed for a good exposure. So I set up again and planned on 2-3 hours, but then the wind came. Eventually, I was able to get some solid lumen prints using a variety of flowers, greens, lace, and broken glass chips.

The fixed exposures were then scanned and enhanced using Lightroom.

Playing with Fire

With grad school complete and being in my role at work for 6 months, it is now time to dive back into photography! I'm going to be challenging myself to one new project a week. This will help increase my knowledge and skill set. The pandemic will also pose an interesting difficulty, since most things will have to take place at home or while avoiding people.

During the pandemic, my husband and I have been watching movies outside, while eating marshmallows we roast over our fire pit. The flames and glow of the embers were the perfect inspiration for my first project. Week 1 of 52 was playing with fire.

Other than cropping, these are not edited. They were taken with a Canon 6D.

"Cover Up"

"The Dance"

"Where There's Smoke"

"Fire Flower"

"Into the Light"