New Drawing

For the first time in a month and a half (ouch!) I picked up my colored pencils and went to work. This is another drawing based on an image from the latest J. Crew catalog, which, as always, I am in love with. I drew the above image in about 30 minutes, but I think it looks like I spent more time on it than that, so I'm happy with it.

Materials: Prismacolor pencils, 11x14 Windpower Vellum Bristol Board

Rural Shelby County

I spent about four hours today, driving back roads in Shelby County. I mostly focused on roads between Chelsea and Columbia. I found all manner of interesting things: abandoned farmhouses, an old cemetery, empty motels, and gas stations that clearly haven't been used in years. It was a LOT of fun, and I took about a million pictures.

Since I decided to get a Pro Flickr account, you can veiw all of my favorites here.

Enjoy!

More Photos!

Spent a few hours this weekend taking advantage of more beautiful weather at the Botanical Gardens and around Birmingham. My Flickr page has been updated!

Birmingham and Urban Decay

I am starting a new series of Urban Decay photographs. Yesterday I wandered around downtown Birmingham, camera in hand, to document some relics of the past. I found a treasure trove worth of old signs, deserted department stores, and boarded up buildings. I find a lot of beauty in these old, forgotten places, and when I look at them, I wonder what they must have been like in their heyday. I've updated my Flickr page with a ton of photos I took. I hope to go out again soon and take more photographs around Birmingham, as well as around the state.

Oak Hill Cemetery Pictures

This past Saturday (Halloween), a friend and I went on a guided tour of Oak Hill Cemetery, one of Birmingham's oldest and most historic cemeteries. I had a blast. People were dressed up as "residents," and they told us about their lives and what they had accomplished while they were alive. I have updated my Flickr page with more of these photos.

Old Baker Farm Photos

My Flickr page has been updated again with new pictures from this past weekend. My coworker and I went to Old Baker Farm in Harpersville, Alabama over the weekend to attend their Fall Festival. It was fantastic! They had Civil War reenactments, old-timey shootouts, a hay ride, pumpkin patch, Native American Dancing, and arts and crafts. The weather was absolutely perfect: crystal clear blue skies and a high of around 70.

I ended up taking around 600 photos. I went through them all last night and deleted 400 of them, leaving me with 204 shots that I felt were worthy of keeping. I am fairly ruthless and relentless when it comes to my photo editing. I only want to keep pictures that mean something to me or that I think convey a certain spirit or feel. As far as editing them in Photoshop, I mostly stick to cropping and bumping up the color or correcting the color if I can. Nothing too major; just trying to recapture what I saw in person. Hopefully I will be able to get a killer DSLR soon which will open up lots more possibilities for me. I have a film SLR (a Nikon FM10, but I definitely want to invest in a digital SLR camera. Right now I'm using my trusty Panasonic FZ20 and Panasonic TZ5. I'm saving the Holga for other things at the moment.

I've provided a taste of my pictures above; please go to the Flickr page to see more! If we're friends on Facebook, you can see nearly 100 photos from this glorious day.

Flickr Updated!

I've updated my Flickr account with some new photos (an example of which is above), and I would love for you to click here to check them out! Last weekend I went to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens and took some of the best photos of my entire life with my little Panasonic TZ5 point-and-shoot. That small camera is an absolute marvel!

To be honest, I'm really doing a lot of thinking and ruminating over my photography. I've been using my Holga like mad (still waiting on my photos to come back from the lab) and I really want to do a series of the backroads of Alabama photos. I want to explore places one wouldn't usually see, and try to capture something about the place. I'm very, very excited at the possibilities, and I'm looking into investing in a DSLR by the end of the year. I also have a trip planned for New England over the Thanksgiving holiday and I hope to come away with some amazing images from there as well. Hopefully this is the start of me getting back into photography with a serious passion!

More Sketching

Another sketch from the new J. Crew catalog. Nothing much to say about this one, other than I'm super proud of that hand!

Quick Sketch

Drew the above last night fairly quickly. It was nice to get the colored pencils out again. The image is from the new J. Crew catalog, which I am presently lusting after.

Materials: 9 x 12 inch pastel paper, Prismacolor colored pencils

Blast from the Past

I went through some of my old sketchbooks this morning, looking for a drawing that I seem to have misplaced, when I came across these studies that I drew several years ago. I'm quite proud of them. Both were done in pen and ink (with a nice wash in the case of the nude studies). I think that it's important to look back to where you've been to see where you're going, so I figured I would share these with my readers.