Second Guessing????
28 May 2012 2 Comments
I can almost say that creating, designing and physically putting together my lampshades has become a passion. I love being able to take a photograph that I love and turn it into a design suitable for a lampshade. It doesn’t always work…there may be problems with how the subject matter looks on different shaped frames. Sometimes I can solve the problem and sometimes I can’t…if I really love the design I will be disappointed. And then there is second guessing. Is an artist somebody who is a maker and then a seller? Is a hobbyist somebody who is just a maker and a displayer? As a photographer I have the luxury of taking a photograph, then printing, framing and hanging it somewhere for all to see. Now I am making lampshades and if I were to display them all in my house I think that friends and family would think it very strange..including myself. So my goal is to sell these unique pieces. That’s when the second guessing begins….
The photograph of the dog with its tongue hanging out on a hot day made a great framed picture. I thought it could be a very funny lampshade. I received new fabrics with my images the other day and suddenly I just wasn’t sure anymore. I began questioning myself immediately. Should I make it on a long lampshade, a drum-shaped shade, or an arc-shaped shade? I wrapped the fabric around some of my lamp frames and I just didn’t know anymore. I asked myself who would buy a lampshade printed with a dog and its hanging tongue. For now I don’t have any answers but if I fold the fabric and put it away I am doing myself a disservice. Second guessing is the enemy of creativity…I need to have faith in myself and my instincts and go for it!
I took a picture of “thedogwithtonguehangingout” with my digital infrared camera. Taking infrared pictures always gives me a spiritual lift.
Lampshades and the Basement Spirit
15 Mar 2012 2 Comments
This is a story about the day I decided to photograph some of my lamp shades and had a few issues with the spirit who has been living in our house for the past 20 years. My daughter and I have sensed his/her presence over the years from time to time. I feel its presence mostly in our basement, usually late at night. I have never seen it and have only had a feeling that I saw a hint of a hint out of the corner of my eye. It has never done any harm…I wonder if it is the person who lived here before our family bought the house. She was an old lady when she died and I know very little about her…I do know that she was the mother of Alan Hamel who is the husband of Suzanne Somers.
I usually photograph my lamp shades upstairs in the upstairs bedroom where the natural light is quite good. In our basement are the usual – television, comfy sofa and chair, bookshelves etc. . I work on my lamp shades on one workbench and on the other side of the room is a long work table with a laptop and a desktop, as well as two printers. That morning I was working as usual on the desktop. (I tell you this to set the story up). I checked my email first, and then made the first trip upstairs with some shades, came back down and because I am obsessive thought I would quickly check my emails again but the desktop mouse was not there where I had left it. The laptop mouse was there but that wasn’t going to help me. I grabbed the second bag of shades and up I went again this time checking for the missing mouse in the kitchen, mudroom and the living room. It was a stretch but you never know! No sign of it in the bedroom either and I was now muttering to myself about this ridiculous situation. I went to the basement once again (I had a few trips to make), looked on the desk – only saw the laptop mouse. Sighing, I grabbed a pen and wrote a new item on my to do list…”buy mouse”. Next trip I brought up my camera and backdrop cloth…I had a couple more bags to bring up and when I went downstairs again to grab them I checked the desk one more time before giving up and going upstairs. Hard to believe, I thought, how a computer mouse that I had held in my hand only 10 minutes ago could just disappear. I spent about 30 minutes photographing my shades.
I liked the way the light was shining on the shades so I took this shot and then went downstairs with my camera to load the images onto the computer. As soon as I got there I remembered that the mouse was missing so I couldn’t do anything until I bought a new one…I looked down on the desk and to my right, where I had left it, was the missing mouse.
You have to remember that I had looked on that desk for the mouse at least 10 times…I had picked up and put down the laptop mouse at least 6 times. There’s no way the other mouse was there because I would have seen it. I am convinced that the spirit, who hadn’t shown herself for quite a while had played a little joke on me. I spoke to my friend Cerise who reads the tarot cards. She said that the spirit just wanted to bring attention to herself because so much has been going on this year in my life with a new grandchild, a new business and she just wanted to say hello (or whatever she wanted to say). Just a bit of mischief…hopefully she will bring me lots of luck in my life!
And that’s my story!
South Africa
08 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Cape Town
I’ve been in Cape Town for a couple of weeks and have several new pans which may make nice shades. Problem is to get out of an alternate reality and back into production mode.
When Aristocrat Lighting relocated recently, I bought several very large frames. My next foray may be with one of these. 
A Cow Lampshade
25 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
A friend of mine bought one of my horse lampshades as a Christmas gift for her husband. She let it slip that although she liked horses, she really loved cows. A few weeks ago I decided to go through all of my negative binders and cull them…they were taking up too much room and many of them were no longer relevant. I knew I had images of cows somewhere and when I finally found them I decided that they might be lampshade worthy. Even though I have more or less closed up my darkroom…(it is now a storage area for lampshades), I have an excellent film and slide scanner (Nikon Coolscan V) which I use to digitize my negatives. Once that is done I work with an image in Photoshop…my skills are very basic but I have a lot of fun trying out new things.
I think this is going to be a very unusual lampshade and I am excited about making it….I will post pictures of the finished piece.
Portrait of a Pig
23 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
Many years ago I was asked to do maternity photographs of a lady who lived in Niagara on the Lake…I live in Toronto = a very long drive! That wasn’t really the problem. She wanted me to be there before her boys set off to school so that they could take part in the photo shoot. And what time did the darlings set off – very early! My client was chomping at the bit to get them out of the house by 7:30 a.m. This meant getting up by 5:30 a.m. and leaving the Big Smoke by 6:30 a.m. I wouldn’t even have time to think about the things that might go wrong…before digital this was always an exercise I took part in before any assignment. However I was determined to make it a nice drive so I took my morning cappucino and raisin toast along with me, turned on my favourite radio station and left the city before rush hour. When I finally arrived after making the prerequisite wrong turns the client awaited me looking intense and already cranky with the boys. The photo shoot didn’t go well…she yelled at them to smile and to hurry up before the school bus arrived. Finally they left – I envied them! She relaxed somewhat and I proceeded to do something I had never done before – maternity photographs. Of course this was before digital and redoing them wasn’t exactly an option. After an hour or so of shooting and making sure that she stayed in a good mood we wandered out to the back of the very large property. I saw something dark, very big and slow-moving in the distance coming towards us. I was in a daze trying to figure out what it was, and she explained that it was the family Vietnamese pot-bellied pig. I was very excited…you see I was and still am a collector of anything Pig and here was a live one….but oh so big! I had always thought that the pot-bellied pig was a cute, little bundle of pigletness. In any case it was better this way…big and beautiful!
Taking a Chance
29 Dec 2011 1 Comment
I am a person that wants to do the right thing all the time. I realize now that following the rules can really hold a person back. If I could go back in time and redo my MFA I would do it in a totally different way…not so carefully and wanting to please but “out there” and edgy. Anyway it’s never too late to change one’s colours and I’ve decided to be more expressive with my photography and lampshade work. That said here is something that is very edgy…I think!
