#Create2020 - Week 6 - Winter Woods video

This is a favorite spot by our house at Apple Farm. Something about the winding trail leading off into the woods captures my attention, and the fresh falling snow gives it an extra pleasing appearance. (It beats all the brown and gray.) I recorded stereo audio of the filmed scene, and then also added a guitar track.

Whenever I listen to my recorded guitar playing I think “You’ve been playing for a few years, and you playing still sounds so lousy?” I wish I played better. I could spend time moving around each note so it hit exactly on the beat and re-recording each note that didn’t sound exactly right, but I’m not interested in creating machine made music. I enjoy making music. I enjoy looking at a scene and thinking about music that might fit the scene. If I waited until I thought I was good enough to share anything I wouldn’t share anything, so enjoy my imperfect world.

#Create2020 Week 5 "A House Built of Sky" Video

This week’s creation is something I created for my job at The Hermitage. It is a video introduction to the house we will be building this year, and in which June and I will eventually dwell.

I will confess that I want to preface showing this video with all sorts of qualifications to lower expectations. This is my first go at more of a produced video. I pretty much put this thing together in 2 or 3 days. There was a lot of learning/trial and error in the video editing program (Shotcut), and I can easily point to a dozen things that I should improve. All that aside, I had fun working on this and hope to do more, I think it does what it is supposed to do, and I don’t think it distracts from the message. I did all the video, guitar, and most of the pictures. The narrator and author is my colleague Naomi Wenger.

#Create2020 Week 4 - Loping

This video is a product of playing. Whenever I record guitar playing it is all just exploration. I never have a plan in mind. I ended up with this brief piece which I thought of as loping. I then wanted to create some kind of video that would accompany it. I wasn’t sure what it would be, but eventually realized it should be in slow-motion. Fortunately the iPhone handles that very well, so I set up the phone on a tripod and walked away.

#Create2020 Week 3

Seeing as it is cold, and grey outside, I thought I’d stay inside and experiment with some still life/lighting. I used light from a window, a reading lamp, and my iPad on a white screen turned up as bright as it can go.

Black beans

Nuts

#Create2020 Week 2

I’m sharing two pictures for this week’s Create2020 project entry. I’m sharing two because while they are very different they both draw me in.

With the first one I was out after a trace bit of snow and noticed the pattern on the ground and took a quick shot. It was one of those, I don’t really know if there is something here or not. I mean, it is just the ground. But I like it, and I don’t particularly know why.

This 2nd pic is obviously much more dramatic. It’s dramatic in part because I made it so with my image processing. I’m still coming to terms with my role in “making” a picture. There is part of me that wants “natural” pictures without my making it unnatural, but especially with digital photography me and my choices are a very active part of what makes for a picture. I’m not crazy about “hyper-real” pictures with all the colors and light so over -process that the pictures looks amazing and nothing like real life, I think the black and white and high contrast emphasizes strain and forces.