Announcing November's Theme!

I have so enjoyed reading everyone's posts. Thank you for your creativity and inspiration!

I am excited to announce this month's* theme: frost. I can't wait to see what we all come up with!

*Comment on how many months you feel each theme/challenge should run. It seems that we all needed about two months last time to post.

AN EYE SINGLE TO THE GLORY OF GOD BY Debra Stevenson

AN EYE SINGLE TO THE GLORY OF GOD

I have loved this scripture and have thought and pondered it's meaning many times.                                                                              

 As an artist I have always been drawn to eyes and love the challenge they are to study and draw them. The eyes are the window to the soul.  Recently, I believe I was able to understand a small part of this scripture as I had the privilege of being a part of two spiritual events in our family.  To me it was a miracle of the 'eyes.'  It was within the realm of the full spectrum of life that I was able to witness this.   The first event was the passing of our dear Mother and Grandmother Beth Millerberg.  There were many times that I visited her and she was not able to communicate very well.   I was drawn into the beauty of her blue eyes that at times were as clear as a beautiful blue sky.  I would look intently in them to see what she was wanting to tell me.  It almost seemed that I could see the eternities through them.  I was privileged to be able to be with her the last hours of her life.  I remember looking at her and thinking to myself 'she looks like a teenager'  How could this be with a body that was so frail and dying.  I realized that I was seeing her spirit through her eyes and that spirit was stronger than her body.  It was shining, singing to me of her great excitement to move on.  I also felt her love for her family and her concern for them in that brief moment that I was able to say good-bye and all of this through looking in her eyes.

The second event was when I was able to see our new grand-daughter Eleonore Anne Rees (our little Ellie) for the first time as she came into this earth.   On the complete opposite end of the cycle of life was this precious daughter of God sent to us from His presence.  Her eyes were so full of wonder and purity and complete love and trust for her Mom and Dad and brothers.  As I think of the charge to become as a little child to enter the kingdom of God, I think of these pure spirits that are being sent down and if I have ever wondered at what that means all I have to do is look into the eyes of a little child especially a newborn. It is the closest thing to heaven on the earth.   I am so grateful for the blessings of life and even death and for the wonderful example that I had to see through Beth and Ellie's eyes to see the glory of God.

Eye of Round Roast

Cooking has been my main creative outlet lately.  I decided to take this month's theme and do a cooking experiment trying both a dish and a technique I had never used before.  An eye of round roast is a fairly lean cut of beef.  It doesn't have the fat or the connective tissue that left make a typical beef roast so tender and juicy.  I found a recipe that called for roasting the beef at a very high temperature for a short time - about 500 degrees, for just 7 minutes per pound (no searing, browning, or anything else - and then just letting it sit in the hot oven for about 2.5 hours (don't open the oven door!).  I had serious reservations.  "My oven will be ice cold at the end of 2.5 hours," I thought.  "How could the roast possibly come out done?! This could be an unmitigated disaster."  I tried it anyway.  I made it for Sunday dinner, and we invited some friends over...why not?

This is what the roast looked like before going into the oven:



 This is what it looked like in the oven:

This is what it looked like "done:"













You might not be able to tell exactly how pink that roast is inside.  The color is actually not much different from the cutting board it's sitting on.  It turns out my fears about the oven being totally cold at the end of 2.5 hours were well-founded.  The roast came out very solidly rare, and barely warmer than room temperature.  When we put it on the serving platter, it was soon swimming in a pool of blood, like some kind of deli murder scene.  I was...completely...mortified, but I had to serve it since we had nothing else to eat, and despite its macabre appearance, I didn't actually think it was unsafe.  Our guests were very gracious and their kids even seemed to like the "red chicken."  Bottom line - this recipe is not welcome in our kitchen anymore; it was simply too offensive on its first and only visit.  And next time, I will try to spare our guests my culinary experiments.

Pleasing to the Eye

Since moving into a bare apartment last month, I am learning about how to make my new home "pleasing to the eye". Part of that education has been the importance of color. After looking at maybe hundreds of bathrooms on pinterest and marthastewart.com, I realized that I am drawn to rooms with several shades of the same color and then a nice complimentary accent. 

I decided to test this idea on our bathroom. As you can see, our bathroom counter top is speckled black and gray and the cupboards are a reddish-brown. 

I was worried about choosing a shower curtain and bathmat that would clash with these colors. I decided to add some browns, tans, and white and then bring in a splash of some greens. 

As a side note, I wanted to learn how to take better indoor pictures and I found this website. I am definitely not an expert yet, but I thought I'd share what I learned.

 

Pompeii

Bastille, a band out of London, recently released their debut album, Bad Blood. One track, "Pompeii" caught my attention and I checked out the music video. Per our discussion on eyes and their impact, I thought it would be an interesting addition to our site this month. The song is about a conversation that the artist imagined occurring between two ash sculptures that were caught in the famous volcano disaster; the music video was filmed in Los Angeles as a kind of allegory to the Pompeii disaster. Check out what happens with the eyes in the video. What do you think it means?




To hear the band talk about the song, check out this site.

Little eyes

I'm cheating this month in that I'm not posting something that I feel like truly pushed me creatively, but it was a satisfying photo shoot nonetheless. My friend, Heather, has generously hired me for the past four years to work with her family to do their yearly photo shoot; while I haven't taken many clients due to the impending baby deadline, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to work with the Jenkins yet again. I admire my friend a great deal; she is a fantastic mother, always pushing her three creatively little ones to explore the world and not to be trapped by mindless activities and material wastelands. There are some beautiful things that come from working with the same clients for four years as well. We get along swimmingly! I know them and they know me and we know what to do together. This year's shoot was at our children's library, Imaginon, and it is one my favorite locations in the city because of the fun mix of whimsy, color, texture, and light, and it definitely captured the personality of their family. I went into the shoot not feeling my best. In fact, I felt like a rather un-creative lump whose only purpose was to incubate a baby and whose existence had no cognitive or creative value. However, this is where practice and experience are huge values to the creative arts as I was able to lean on previous experience to draw out my creative self and shake the cobwebs off.

 

Portrait tutorial: Focus on the Eye

The eye is often called the "window to the human soul" and for good reason. When we look into someone's eyes, we feel connected to them. When someone doesn't have eyes or their eyes don't connect with ours, it is a non-verbal disconnect that is hard to overcome. In portrait work, connecting with the subject of the photo is essential. It makes the subject feel real, alive, and vivid. Making the eye the focus of the portrait is an easy way to help the viewer feel that connection with the subject in the picture. Eyes are something that I am always thinking of first when I do portrait work, particularly individual portraits. For me, a picture isn't worth keeping if the eyes aren't in focus and looking where I want them to (which isn't always directly at the camera), even if the smile is great.

When I shoot portraits, I generally like to be above my subjects and looking down at them at a slight angle. This means that the subject is looking up at me and into my lens. There are several benefits to this angle:

1. Pleasing triangles: In design, triangles are very pleasing to the eye. When you are above the subject, they naturally lift their chin up to you (which is another bonus if you have a subject who is self conscious about a double chin) creating a nice triangle shape on their face. The eye line becomes the widest line on the face and the eyes look bigger as well, and the focus of the picture is naturally on the eye line rather than the mouth, chin (which usually looks bigger when shooting from a lower angle), or nose. I feel like the smile also looks a little curvier and more pleasing at this angle as well. 
   
2. Lighting: Shooting below your subject tends to give them more back lighting (compare the pictures above) whereas shooting above generally means that the subject is lifting their face to the light. There are definitely times when you can break this rule and get a great shot, but generally if you want a nicely lit face without a lot of shadow, shooting down is the answer. I took both of these pictures within minutes of each other, so the outdoor lighting situation is the same, but there is a significant difference in the way each looks.
3. Focus: The sharpest focus should be the eye and it is easier to achieve this when you are shooting down. If you are shooting with a dslr camera, try playing with your focus points. When you look into your lens (and your camera is on auto focus), you should see boxes that light up when you lock focus on an image just before you shoot (see the image below). Your camera should be able to allow you to select one of those boxes as the only point that you want the lens to focus on. Look through your lens and determine which box is likely to hit the focus spot that you want and then select that focus point. Even if you are using a touch screen cell phone to take pictures, often you can select where you want the camera to focus, so try playing around with this feature next time you are taking a portrait. 

September Challenge

Hi everyone! Welcome to the Original Oculus. I wanted to start by explaining why I chose the title of the blog. The word "oculus" means "eye" in Latin. In architecture, an "oculus" is a round opening at the top of a dome and it is used a light source as well as a way of drawing the eye upwards. One of my favorite examples is in the Pantheon, an ancient dome built in Rome during Augustus's reign. I think the creative process is the pursuit of elevation, light, and inspiration with an unique vision and introspection that only each individual can deliver. I'm so excited to see what each of you create and I look forward to being inspired by you!

On that theme, our challenge this month is to explore the concept of "eye." I'm not going to define it any more than that and I can't wait to see what you do with it!