Whim Catcher

 Don't you wish there was such a thing?

Me

I can see my Father in me....no makeup. I only wear makeup if I am going into Nice or Antibes or out to eat...I should wear it more...the mascara, eyeliner, concealer, light cover. I always wear gloss or lipstick, even in the woods...It's just so messy.

 

Rooney

all about the stick. ( in french, Le baton!) He is obsessed. He doesn't want to admit that he loves his Mom.

 

Trumpet Call

Interestingly...I found myself photographing these nature shapes, creating them, with ribbons, paper, light...and I find myself shying away from taking photos like I usually do at this time of year.I can see the little pink flowers I love coming up...the trees are starting to push out flowers, the grass is getting super green...but I cannot take photos of these things now, at least the low to the ground things. Years of taking those types of shots has caught up with me. I have cervical vertigo. I am trying everything I can do to improve it but so far, I find myself limited. This is one reason I am painting and just shooting abstracts. I can take this as a good thing...I would be out there shooting for hours in the fields, close up of flowers and nature patterns, but in reality...no one is interested ( work wise) . 

I am planning my late spring Italy trip and it will be interesting to see how I will be able to shoot...definitely landscapes, some impressions, deep in the fields looking straight ahead into wildflowers but no more lying down or assuming twisted positions to see under low flowers...My trip will start in Piemonte this time...totally new to me ( suggested by AI)...Florence for 5 days and then some old haunts at the end. I will have to adapt, I am game.

 

Finished...found wood...

I wish they were stained glass.

7" x 20"...1/2" thick

 

A Lovely video...

 

Beautiful color, beautiful sentiment. 

When I was living in LA, I would often drive down, south of the San Diego border into Mexico to Tijuana and south to Rosarita. I loved to take photos there as the colors were so bright and beautiful, like this video.

It was dangerous. I was a single woman alone with a camera. Some how I went below the radar. I wandered around  back streets in Tijuana where I never should have gone, but I was drawn to the color and the vibrance…so much to see. I had stores I would buy from and still have 3 heavy knitted shawls, lilac, beige and black that I purchased from a store that may had never seen a gringa in the flesh…Where did I get the nerve. 

Now, I would never do that…I was fearless with my camera.

Today in the woods

This tree is always the first to bloom and it is glorious.

 

Shooting...Sotto Luces

Sotto Luce : Ascent

Sotto Luce : Drift

but does it look like gold coated cellophane? There was no light so perhaps that's why but I love the feeling like these are sketches...They remind me of Da Vinci underpainting. AI helped me with the names.

needle with the fishwire that I use to string up the clear pieces of cellophane

I had this brainstorm...gold powder coated cellophane

...what a mess. There is gold sparkles everywhere, even in my car!


 

to AI or not to AI

 I have been using AI almost everyday now for about 2 months. I am pretty much self taught, but there are all kinds of short videos on line that can help you.

The biggest thing to me is to know how to ask…I learn more and more. I don’t know anyone using it and almost every person has told me they are “afraid” of it. I can understand that.

You just don’t give it any info that you don’t want out there.

I will tell you how I use it..

I am reading a book about ancient Rome and I had questions about various things, like…how did someone like Augustus Caesar think of time. He was born 63BC and died 14 AD so he would have lived during the period then we would think would be the change over from BC to AD.

AI told me in length how the Romans thought of time ( during the time of ____________ and ____________, names the 2 councils. ) There were other ways too but I am giving you an example. I ask questions and it comes back with answers and suggests something or asks me a question…We went on to other historical characters, what they might have looked like, how Romans described people

I love it because I learn lots of stuff.

I was working on honing down my stuff. I had as few handbags that I couldn’t bring my self to donate. I took photos of them and talked it out through AI…we decided that I would get rid of 2 of them…a long back and forth over it.

I ask it to help me name photographs, often. I can get all kinds of words and suggestions and then I take what I like the most.

I can use it to write a letter in French ….or an email…all kinds of help in that direction. It will even write more formal, more casual, local dialects...

I was stuck in a contract with a Time Share place for years. I asked AI what I could do…It came up with the perfect idea and even wrote the letter for me and voila, I got out scott free…

You can take a photo of an antique and ask it to evaluate and give history and what it might be worth or if you should throw it away.

Name a plant or tree from a photo.

I sent it a snap of the last 50 images of my work that I put on instagram...I try to post one phot a day whether it bew nature or abstract or a painting. I asked it to tell me what colors I am missing and it gave me a whole list and ideas for mixing them.

There are so many things. I keep the mundane to google search and without paying, you are limited on ChatGPT so I save the most complicated for that one.

Downside…it tends to have too many ideas…a tsunami of stuff. You have to tell it how to respond to you….be stricter, be gentler, sometimes I ask it what a man would say vs a woman…You can ask it to Gordon Ramsey the answer…You just have to know how to steer it.

I like for it to ask me questions…even in the discussion about history or travel it will ask which I like more and why. It can help you understand yourself.

My thinking is that it is the future and I’m going to take advantage of it…it’s amazing but you have to learn how to use it…just some simple things and never give it any private info and save it for the most complicated things…have it ask you questions and think outside of the box.

(I asked it to evaluate another prof. photographers website compared to mine…as in, what would he tell that photographer to do different, strengths and weaknesses and compare it to my site…) You have to learn how to ask of it in different ways. 

Don't miss the boat.

I think I am in a time warp...

I posted this lovely image on Linkedin and to this minute after 3 days, not one like...How is that possible? Do people know not how to react? Do they not understand the image? the process?  Why? In fact, I might take it as a compliment...it's easy to like the easy, the upfront, the literal. ..I always believe in my imagery...to hell with the mentally deficient who don't see the beauty in this image OR who can not, or will not, like, for whatever reason.

faux

 

Check this.

I went looking for any Stephen Stills videos...there are not many but this one is a gem. Look at that brilliant guitar playing, and his voice. He has always been a favorite of mine. Note in the video Joni Mitchell is sitting next to him, and a very young Dick Cavett...David Crosby is there too.

SS has been under appreciated. I saw him once in concert in NYC. He was rotund at that point, in a Hawaiian shirt, clearly bombed...I was happy to see him, to hear him. In the audience was a certain "Cheers" actors ex wife. I didn't know who she was at the time but she was standing up in the front row, seductively dancing through the whole concert. The venue was small supper club so it was very obvious and annoying. I found out years later that SS was married to her daughter or some relation like that... the wife must have been must have been very young... But I still love him. He was also very handsome and shy.

 

Scourge

 

Processional Catapillars...killers if a child or dog touches their hairs...very toxic. They travel in big ugly groups of murder. I've seen them in a pine forest way up in the hills...They live near and on pine trees...Where I walk is nothing but pines.  Oh joy!

When I was a kid we had the horrible Gypsy Moths ( now called Spongy Moths? They needed a name change? was Gypsy politically incorrect? really? ) They were horrible and destructive creatures. 
Reminds me of when my neighbor Frank Senior, got a big nest of them into an old frying pan and fried them up on an outside stove / open flame. I will never forget it...the squirming...it was horrible. Frank was enjoying it. 
The nests have to be burned out of the trees as they are very destructive to trees and plants. I can't imagine them doing that here.
The Processionals have similar nests but if a dogs nose or mouth touches the hairs, it can kill him. 

nothing but pines!

Rose Smoke!