The Response: Bold Abode — Cheryl

Tonight’s Call involved a lot of wandering. I played around with in-camera techniques, then I played around with post processing techniques, finally settling on this image. It’s an ICM photo that gets its bold color treatment from a Lightroom preset I came up with a few months ago. It didn’t feel like it was raining while I was outside, but I managed to get water on the lens. I never bothered to wipe it off, because I absolutely love the effect/mood it created.

The Call: Silver Lining — Jessica

This was not the image I had in my head when I made the call earlier this afternoon. But while driving the kids home from school, I noticed this huge storm cloud coming over our area and thought it looked so bold and dark surrounded by the blue sky and fluffy white clouds.

This is just a straight shot with the Lensbaby Edge 80 but I used the variable neutral density filter that I bought for the icm/me shots. It definitely does an interesting color shift on the sky when you use it at it’s maximum power.

The Response: Zig-Zag — Jessica

Hockey was the first thing that came into my mind when I read Cheryl’s tweet with the call. The kids had just watched a section of “Miracle” in their gym class and we had discussed it a bit on the car ride home. (Their dad had made them watch the whole movie one Friday for a movie night – so they were already familiar with the USA Hockey Team.)

So this isn’t a shot about hockey, or necessarily anything remotely placid. I was stuck in a doctor’s examining room this morning for about 30 minutes waiting for our turn. This was the view out the window. The sun was glaring off of those silver pipes and I just thought it made a cool “urban” shot. Mesmerizing might have been a better description but that’s all I’ve got today. ; )

The Call: Blowing Bubbles — Cheryl

When I decided on placid for today’s Call, I imagined I’d create an image involving water, but I was thinking the calm, reflective surface of a lake, not bubbles floating through the air. Placid means calm, not agitated or disturbed, so blowing bubbles actually fits the bill for me. In high school, my sister and I, along with our friends, spent lots of time blowing bubbles. We found it to be a great stress reliever. In other words, it helped erase agitation, and was a nice break from studying for a test.

The Response: Purple Boots — Cheryl

I find that getting the perfect shot has a great deal to do with patience and perseverance. Today, I shot nearly 300 photos. It’s almost as if I need to warm up. I generally start out with a specific goal in mind, but the winning image will very likely have nothing to do with my initial notions. This one, which I knew was the one when I first saw it in Lightroom, was something like photo number 172.

The Call: Dining Room — Jessica

Today was the perfect day to go take pictures of the cherry trees. Perfect in the sense that the weather was gorgeous — sunny and warm with a slight breeze (sorry, Cheryl, I don’t mean to be rubbing it in!). It was not perfect, however, in the amount of things that I HAD to cram into the day. In other words, the perfect weather had to be ignored, and the peak of the cherry trees had to be ignored because responsibility had a higher priority today. I don’t like days like that. ; )

The Response & the Winner: Swan Lake (because it reminds me of the scenery) — Jessica

I’m writing this before I even choose the picture for my response.

I’ve got two selects and I can’t decide what to go with. Once again, they are different. One is a capture of the glittery evening light on some bushes in our side yard with the side of my neighbor’s garage in the background. I love the way the Edge 80 captured the light and the gorgeous bokeh in the background.

The other one is an icm/me image from the night before. Also done with the Edge 80 and also done in the same general location (from my seat on the back door frame out of the carport toward the street.) And yet the images are night and day apart. I recently bought a neutral density filter to be able to get longer exposures and used it on both images.

I just don’t know which one to choose. I just don’t know which is “better.” I just don’t know which way to go. Maybe acceptance is holding that indecision in your heart but choosing and going along a route anyway. Maybe it’s a mystery.

The runner up:

The Call: What Does “I Am Good Enough” Look Like? — Cheryl

Acceptance is one of those words that carry a lot weight, for women more than men, I’d bet. Yes, we all want to be accepted by others, but women seem to have an especially hard time accepting themselves. Throw art into the mix, and things get thorny. Why do so many of us find it easy to accept that others are artists? Why do we find it so difficult to apply the label to ourselves? Why all the comparisons? Why the constant coming up short?

My four-frame multiple-exposure and ICM image reminded me of sound wave art, and I thought, “Maybe the sound wave for an affirming statement like ‘I am good enough’ looks something like this.”

The Response: Recollections of Liberty — Cheryl

I keep returning to my paintings and starting new ones to use as fodder in my multiple exposure and composite images. Combining them in this way seems like a perfect synthesis for me.

The Call: Early Spring in the Backyard — Jessica

Gregory was standing next to me today when I sat down to think of a call. So I asked him for a word. “Photosynthesis” was his original choice but I cut it down to synthesis. I was thinking along the lines of thesis-antithesis-synthesis…but then that sounded to pseudo-y intellectual, you know?

But I have been thinking about how to make sense of these icm/me pictures. I think my more successful ones the same elements as any good picture: color, form, line, composition. But to get them to that point requires a synthesis of all that I have learned over the last years. Or it’s just dumb random luck. I sit and look at the unsuccessful ones, trying to determine what doesn’t work. Sometimes it’s obvious and sometimes not so much. And with the successful ones? There doesn’t seem to be any formula – but to my mind, color seems to be the common element.

I’m so happy with today’s image that I’m going to put it on Flickr. This will be a first for the icm/me images.

The Response: Forsythia: Spring Fire — Jessica

I am slowly starting to discover a way of getting the impressionist/abstract look but still maintain a somewhat identifiable subject. This is not the best example. In fact if I were feeling better I would go out now and keep trying the technique to see what I could make. But since that blasted flu is still not leaving me…this will have to do. I HAVE spent the day resting – finally! So am starting to feel a bit better.

The Call: The Right Direction — Cheryl

Now that I’ve found this artistic place that feels like home, I discover something new and wonderful every time I pick up my camera.

This four-shot multiple-exposure image was created with the corner of a canvas I’m painting, an odd camera angle, and a little tweaking in Lightroom.

The Response: Little Red Riding Hood Has Arrived — Cheryl

Expression? Yes. Explanation? No. Evocation? Yes. How do I know? Intuition.

The Call: Rainy Good Friday — Jessica

Maybe I had an intuition that today would be rough. Still recovery from the stomach flu myself, two more kids fell victim to it. And that’s why I’m so glad that I took this shot out of my bedroom window this morning as I was getting dressed.