photography, writing, handweaving
There’s a stand of pine trees behind my parents’ house that I seem to be compelled to photograph. When the sun sets behind the ridge it often lights these trees up in quietly spectacular ways, and I keep trying to catch it. I liked this image, converted to sepia to highlight the sun’s rays.
Much to my own surprise, I have quite a lot of shows coming up. First is the one at the Libation Station (opening party this Saturday!), then juried shows in Stanwood and Mountlake Terrace, a Food-as-Art themed show in Seattle (more info as I get it), and then Ristretto Cafe in November. This means I have had to go back into framing overdrive. Fortunately we’ve managed to clear enough space in the basement workroom for me to have some work surfaces, so I don’t need to be working on the guest room floor like I was before. Someday we hope to move all the lumber out of there, which will be even better. I’m still learning my way around my mat cutter, but I think I’m making good progress.
For more information on my upcoming shows, check out my website and Facebook page.
We went out to a friend’s farm last week, and I took the opportunity to try to get a few chicken pictures. Chickens, as it turns out, are really hard to shoot. They won’t stop moving! I suppose I should have upped my ISO to get a faster shutter speed, especially when they were throwing dirt around – I have a lot of blurry pictures of dusty hens. I do think it would be fun to try to get some really good chicken portraits.
I spent this past weekend at the International Food Blogger Conference in Seattle. One of the workshops was an absolutely amazing presentation by Saveur photographer Penny De Los Santos, about what makes a good food photograph and how she approaches the subject of food culture. It was fascinating.
Another good workshop was presented by Kat Flinn, author of The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry, on food writing. She presented every table with an assortment of lemons, both whole and cut up, and invited us to write about them using all five senses. I found this difficult, as all I really wanted to do was take their picture.
You can check out all my pictures from the conference on my Flickr stream.
Until today, the weather has been clear and beautiful this week. On Tuesday morning we got up early and drove out on the flats so I could catch some early morning light, but happened to be just in time to see the moon slowly sinking behind a ridge. I jumped out of the car, thought about grabbing my tripod then realized there wasn’t time, and ran into a cornfield to try to shoot the moon through the stalks. The result is a bit blurry and grainy, but with a watercolor-ish quality that I think works quite well. Next time, though, I’m attaching the tripod to the camera before I leave the house.
The other day I had a request for a photo of spiderwebs to go with a newspaper article. I had a few in my archive, but I wanted to see if I could come up with anything new – goodness knows we have enough spiders in our garden right now. The morning was gray and dry, though, so the webs were barely visible. I took out a spray bottle of water and misted the webs until I could see them, then lined them up with a dark background and tried a few shots.
The newspaper ended up choosing one of my old images, but I liked how this one came out.
As opposed to my last entry, which was pretty much taken straight out of camera, this one has been messed with a little. I had gone out to try to capture the cloud patterns, which were fabulous that morning, but exposing for the sky left the foreground a bit dark and dull. I swapped the image into grayscale and cranked up the blacks, the fill light and the clarity settings, giving it a strange two-dimensional quality but bringing out a huge amount of detail. I like it, what do you think?
I didn’t take as many pictures over the long weekend at my parents’ house as I thought I might, I was just too tired. I did spend some time with my mother’s sunflowers, though, as they were in full bloom and attracting all sorts of cute bees. To my surprise, this was my favorite image of the bunch. Instead of the usual open-to-the-world sunflower face, the flower hearts are shrouded by the petals, coyly peeking out through their bangs. And I love the intensity of the colors.
After a week spent frantically printing images and washing glass for framing, I got my first show successfully hung! The opening party went well, and the show will stay up at the gallery for the rest of the month. If you think you’ll stop by, just give them a call in advance.
And don’t forget that even if you can’t make it to a show, you can always view and order prints from my website www.jessamyntuttle.com, or just drop me a line at jftuttle@gmail.com – I’d be happy to print and frame any image of mine that you’ve seen and liked.
Currently showing at the Peshastin Creek Gallery, through Saturday, August 28, 2010.
I know I haven’t been here much lately, but I had a few small things to attend to…like finally quitting my day job, then working like crazy to get everything together for the show I’m hanging tomorrow at Peshastin Creek Gallery. I’ve managed to shoot a few pictures for my food blog, but that’s been about it. I did have a little fun with this bunch of dill I shot for a recent post. Mostly, though, I’m trying to get everything ready on the business side before I get back to shooting – hopefully that’ll be soon!
Jessamyn Tuttle