A Free Texture for the 4th of July

Free CMS Texture

Here it is; a free, full-res texture. Most people seem to like their textures to be monochromatic. I prefer to use color when I want more than just Grit and Grime for textures, which is almost always.

This texture was photographed using a Vivtar 70-200mm Macro lens at f/3.5 and completely out of focus, obviously. Click on the image to the left to download the full resolution image then right click and save it to your personal textures folder.

Here is a sample of using color textures to pop and image. To the right is the original image of my friend and fellow photographer Nathan Smith of SmithFineArt.com.

This was photographed on an overcast, dreary January morning and ample blue-gray light falling on and around the subject. In addition to the natural light, a flash fired off to the left, just out of frame.

The natural surroundings are already very industrial and textured so why would I need to add more?

I didn't need to. But I wanted some color in the back and foregrounds. Nothing too heavy or present, but something subtle but noticeable.

Hence my use of an abstract texture I photographed in my back yard, shooting fall leaves that had fallen on the ground. The colors here are green, yellow and a slight magenta and purple. Green of course was the strongest color of the three.

I hope you enjoy the free texture and keep checking back, as I will add more content weekly.

First Day of Vacation

It has been two years since my last official vacation. I don't have to be back to work until July 10th and I am going to make the most of every minute of it.

Old is new again; old is revitalized

Color Abstraction

I am always amazed where a journey can lead me. Even a painful journey through thorns and thistles can lead to a beautiful meadow of wondrous delight.
 
I have officially left Posterous. And while I won't shut it down for technical reasons, I won't post new content there any longer.

I moved my site to Posterous almost two years ago, for two reasons; as a part of my brand re-imaging and because of the native social media plugins for marketing. It was commonly believed, by me at least, that a professional photographer couldn't market him or herself using a free blogging tool with such limited capacity. So I made the switch to a free blogging tool with more capacity in some aspect and more limited in others.

Well, I am not marketing myself any longer, at least not for the wedding/portrait/product photography business plan I was planning two years ago. In the course of the last two years I learned several profound things, well at least profound to me. First; I am an artist. I am not just a photographer. I am a painter. I am a poet. I am a writer. I am a photographer. I am an artist. Second; I can't market myself to save a fledgling career. There was a lot of self sabotage in the marketing arena, a huge chip on my shoulder that prevented me from excelling and a Titanic quantity of baggage from my past left buried that surfaced. There was some obstacles I was unable to overcome by myself, such as how to get past the local market's desire to get everything they can for free, or next at least next to nothing as well.

Oregon Summer

So after much postulating, I posed myself this question; Why are you staying with Posterous? I didn't have an answer. Rather than beat Posterous about the head and shoulders let me explain my move back to Google's blog engine in a positive manner. I have more creative control over the content, layout and general look and feel of the site using the Google blogging engine. Notice the varying alignment of the images in this posting? I wasn't able to figure out how to do that using Posterous without editing the HTML of each post and wanted to focus more on content than writing HTML code to make it work. Google makes layout so simple. A click here, a click there and boom; done.  

To be honest, I have missed Google since leaving, which is why I never shut this down. I am a control freak when it comes to displaying my work and Google lets my freak fly like no other.

Another change that has happened recently is that my 300mm macro lens bit the dust. I was sad as hell about that. But, never fear. Mike out at Focal Point in Dallas, Oregon hooked a brother up. I got this old, heavy, 100% metal Vivitar lens that is 100% manual (focus and aperture), but I could not be happier with the lens or the service Mike always gives. Thank Mike for being simply the best!

The lens is a 70-200mm macro. And just to prove it's image quality, the three images in this post were made with this lens tonight. Photographed at 6:20 PM in the waning, overcast light of a dreary day (hence the raindrops over everything).

So there you have it; old is new again. My blogging site of choice is Goggle and it is good to be back home. Old is revitalized. My new-to-me 1980s Vivitar lens is finding new life after being stored in a bin for who knows how long.

It is good to be home again, making art like I did in the old days; circa 2010.