Bright Chicago

DSC_0392, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

Hello!
Recently ebay has taught me that people DO want to throw me a little change (as in money) for a few pictures of mine, and I appreciate this!
I certainly don't want to discourage this!
Now, I don't want to sell all of my artwork in multiples and cheaply, which is to say, some work I'd prefer to just sell once for a higher price.
But I can definitely get behind selling certain pieces multiple times for a very low price.
It encourages me to try and make more than one kind of photo, and it gives me a reason to look through all my old stuff!
So. At this time I'm offering that you can purchase, for personal use, any picture featured on this blog for whatever price you feel appropriate.
Simply paypal thelotusduck@gmail.com and note what picture you'd like to have in a digital copy.
If you're not a paypal person, we will have to work out some different commission basis.

Remember skills?

Wastemold removed, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

I'm focusing (and I'm applying the word very loosely) somewhat away from sculpture, but making a waste mold and bust was one of the most cool things ever, and I'm positive (no pun intended) that it wouldn't take nearly as long as it did. When I made the original positive, I spent two days putting in details that were not going to come through in the mold and cast process. I also made the waste mold ridiculously thick, which made it tough to get off and contributed to me chipping right through the nose I made. Knowing this, I'm somewhat less likely to make those particular time consuming mistakes, so I can say that if I got some clay I could make another bust far more easily than I did this one, and hey, with 2D art the gallery expects you to provide a frame, but with sculpture, they don't expect you to buy a pedestal, right? You just give them the art, so that seems far cheaper, as gallery expenses go, and what's stopping me from building the original out of play-dough? Oh, nevermind, playdough is far more expensive than clay.

Goals

worm's eye view of cat, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

Although dumping massive amounts of data on Flickr in and of itself accomplishes nothing, knowing that I want to save more this month than I had been saving over the past two years makes me feel, I don't know, photographer-y.
I bought a little three dollar tripod, so now I can stabilize my shots without calling up a deep stillness while lying on the ground (see above) or having a box upon which to put the camera.
I know this is a slow escalation of equipment, where I eventually become one of those people with a lensbaby, just trying to think of tiny things to shoot, but I'm fairly safe for now, as I barely use the stuff currently available to me, to say nothing of what I could get on ebay.

Impressing myself (and nobody else)

Bee Martyr, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

I'm in an awkward phase where I have a chunk of stuff that I've spent a lot of time and drive space on, and I mostly want to make more and learn more, but this would probably also be a good stage to show off, to get some kind of real feedback on what I've done so far. I had a picture in our little art crawl, so that's one thing, but I've got a bunch of stuff that I like, at least, so that's about the place where people are supposed to say hey, hang this shit up in your grocery store.

I have no real idea of how to do macro photography, I use those automatic digital cameras a lot, so figuring things out is often just an unintelligent screaming conversation. I just pointed the camera and took picture after picture at different zooms until one turned out where you can see the bee and the camera promptly died for want of batteries.

Many this way pass

PICT1458, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

I spend a lot of time photographing the highbridge, because I am still mostly an incidental photographer, and I cross the bridge on foot somewhat often. It's probably the biggest structure near my house, or the nearest big structure to my house.
I think about how rusted it gets and how quickly--the rust from the railings pours down over the structural elements, which is, as I understand it, not such a great thing. I wish kids or advertisers or someone with the time energy and resources to repaint the thing more often, would. A while back there was an initiative to put weird, confusing artistic signs around neighborhoods because studies showed people drove slower, if not more attentively, where art was present.
At the very least, someone should write "This too shall pass" on the other side of the railing, as it's a somewhat popular suicide destination in the Twin Cities.

Old things

Chuck, illustrated by Uncle Arnie, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

The idea of an image *belonging* to me in any sense appeals to my senseless photo greed.
Certain two dimensional Prentice family artifacts belong to me and about 7 other people, so I have a continuing interest in preserving them, at least digitally. Things in the public domain belong to everyone, and therefore everyone, although someone has already scanned Moses King's Handbook of the United States (http://books.google.com/books?id=3FE6AAAAMAAJ although perhaps their scans of the smaller images leave something wanting...), and I gave away that old music book, so I don't think I have any original editions of public domain material not freely available elsewhere. But, naturally I have as much right to public domain material that I find online as I do for
something I rescue from the trash and scan myself.
I want to photograph every antique thing, but I don't yet know what the tips and tricks are for shooting small.

What was lost

CIMG0611, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

None of the computers at my immediate disposal have a good relationship with CDs.
So it took me actually finding CDs around and remembering to take them out to the studio to find out that a lot of stuff I'd written off as lost is readily at my disposal.
I've been making fake double exposures, and I'm really loving how I've saved so many redundant or shitty pictures, because trying to make a photo accidental can only go so far, large stacks of photos that are almost good in places but are still kind of pedestrian are exactly what is needed to fake an accidental double exposure, but still get a result that has good definition in places.
There is much to do.