I’ve been a novice photographer for a number of years now. I first picked up a camera when my son was born. Initially, I had just hoped to capture all the firsts, but he was such a cutie that I couldn’t stop taking pictures of him. He was also incredibly calm (And still is), so he wasn’t bothered by the snapping of a camera in his face all the time. It took years for me to acquire (And upgrade) to the equipment I use today. It also took me years to learn how to edit and produce a digital image that more resembled art than just a picture. I credit the look and feel of my images to Barb Uil with Jinky Art of Australia. I attended a workshop she had down in Round Top, Texas a long time ago - maybe 10-12 years ago. It was totally immersive, and we spent days outside shooting in natural light in the fields of central Texas. If you look at my pictures I hope you’ll see and feel the warm, soft, and almost glowing presence that I felt while learning under her. And just to show off what I learned, here's a few of the most important people in my life (Insert shameless cute kids plug):
In addition to editing images, you also have limited capabilities to draw simple designs that would otherwise would have probably required me to master Adobe Illustrator too. So how did I go from knowing I wanted to create religious pendants centered around chapter and verse to seeing something in print? Not by free hand drawings that's for sure. I’m a stick figure girl till the end. What is in my head most definitely did not translate when I tried to sketch. So instead I opened blank Photoshop documents and drew hollowed out circles, filled with numbers in various places. I used the paint bucket to see what it would look like in a mustard-ish not close to gold color. And when I’m talking about rudimentary designs for my pendants, I’m serious. I put a few of my initial shape drawings from Photoshop together so you can see how basic they were:
Isn’t it crazy to see what you can do with a picture in Photoshop vs. what you can do that should be done in another system?? The whole point of this is just to show you that good (And great) things start out as just a thought in someone's mind (And maybe with a BASIC design). Then maybe they become a sketch in a notebook for some or a doodle in a program for others. Whatever it is, it’s amazing to breathe any kind of life into the ideas in your head. Find some way to take what's brewing in your mind as an idea and give it some life. Once you give it space and you honor the idea, then you can keep building on it. I’ll keep showing you how I did it.
XOXO,
