http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:stillshooting&section=today deviantART RSS for by:stillshooting en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Wed, 09 Dec 2009 08:57:46 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/15174298/ http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/15174298/ Mon, 22 Oct 2007 14:11:46 PDT
I a not quite sure if these eight facts are supposed to be something folks don't know already or if you can use stuff that people already know.....however since this is a web site, it's not as if you know anything more than your art, journals and comments show of you.

Now the rules state that you must 1) tell 8 things about yourself......2) put them in your journal,....and 3) tag eight more people......4) you must restate the rues.........

So without further ado......

1) I have an almost fatal weakness for amassing fabric, no, make that for amassing anything I can make something out of.......can barely go for a walk without picking up rocks, cones, leaves...maybe I should just say I tend to amass things in general.

2) Music has an unbelieveable and profound effect on me......I am the daughter of two musicans, but it is the curse of my life that I have the kind of voice that should only be heard in the shower, and when I was young and tried to learn to play the piano, banjo and guitar, my fingers would get horrible cramps. But I have a very acute ear and nothing is more wonderful to me than music of many genres done well, and nothing is more horrible to me than music done badly. I can listen to almost any style of live music done well, but canned music not so much.

3) I love to travel....boat, car, plane....it doesn't matter what the mode of transportation, just going someplace.......I especially loved the 6 trips I have made to England and Scotland. (I am a Californian)....

4) I love old house and old stuff....can be beautiful and expensive things, can be just the everyday ordinary things of times gone by. Linda Goodman, an astrologer once said of Cancers (my sign) that "if it's old it has value, if it's new, it's suspect....." now I don't know if I'd go so far as that, but if it's old it has value is one of my cornerstones.

5) Nothing makes me happier than to have a big group of folks I love around and fill them full of food I cooked......bliss.....wish I had more of that going on in my life now.....

6) I try very hard to look upon life as an adventure......it's easy to do when you're doing well, and a lot harder to keep in mind when you're going through bad patches.....but it really helps if you can keep that in mind!

7) I think outside the box because I was born there......when I was young, I was proud of it and vowed to stay that way, I actively worked on it. Now that I am getting on, I am finding out that the world isn't very nice to people like me. O they say they value creativity and originality, but it ain't really so most of the time......if you stick out from the norm, they try to lop off those parts.....life isn't easy for those of us who don't fit in the little boxes that society has made up. and it gets harder and harder to maintain your individuality.......so all you fellow artists here at deviantart.....know that you will have to fight to maintain your uniqueness, but please do, the more of us that can't be crammed into societies idea of what is correct, the easier it will be to be that way......

8) I love to learn, never lost that.....try new things and new ideas all the time.....I have an almost pathololgical fear of getting in a rut......keeps me young.


when I started this little game I was thinking .....oh my, what are the 8 interesting things about me I want others to know.....I could go on for a lot more, there are so many things I am interested in. however my computer has borked and will only play this gawdawfu music so I have to do the turn of and turn on thing.......

so far it's been a very adventursome life, perhaps even a little more than I had asked for .... but dull, nope it hasn't been that ...well hardly ever......

and now I'm off to tag 8 more ....

]]> ~stillshooting http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/13452783/ http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/13452783/ Fri, 22 Jun 2007 21:40:49 PDT
You see, I found this sight in the first place because I was looking for my son. (or birthson as the children of the birthmother are known as) I knew that when he was in his teens he was a rock climber, so I was googling his name and it kept telling me Deviantart....Fine said I, after every search engine told me the same thing.......so I clicked on Deviantart, and there he was......a photographer.....who photographs rock and roll bands....hey, genes are a trip aren't they.

Well, due to certain indicators I had over the years, I thought that he would be glad to hear from me and promptly wrote him a couple of notes on this site.....and waited to hear from him.......and waited ........and waited........and waited.......


Meanwhile I was waiting to move up here to northern california, and finally managed to pull that off in April and it was just yesterday that I finally found a place to live!

Well, about the time I got here, I found his folks email address......and wrote his mom, as she and I had always gotten along real well and we talked over the years and she kept me up on what he was doing..... She wrote back that he wanted nothing to do with me, I had figured that out by myself as I had also writtten him several email letters, and he never sent any kind of acknowledgement that he even knew I was writing him......but it was so very hard to find out my suspicions were true.....I had always thought that we were going to be able to be friends when he grew up. (I didn't want to get in the way when he was growing up, or divide his loyalties, but I watched from a distance)


It was in March that I had to leave the place I was staying, and as I was still waiting for the check from the gov't tax agency.....so I stayed in my van on the street, and my life was consumed with waiting , waiting for the check and waiting to hear from my son......the check finally arrived, after 4 months, but I still haven't heard from my son.......and that March and early April was the hardest times I have ever had to live through.....

When I came on this site, I was always reminded of my son, so I stopped. It was just too painful, and I wasn't ready to try to explain why I disappeared then. My son is the last member of my family who is alive, and his rejection was more than I could face. I looked a lot of pictures of kittens to keep myself from totally going under.


So now, I am a little better, I still haven't heard from him and his mom tried to talk to him about me, and he is going through a tough time right now, and he is still adament that he wants nothing to do with me, but I finally am going to have a place to live.

and that is the coolest of all, it's a house with artists in it, and while my room is small, it will be nice to have roommates who understand.....Usually, I have to do a lot of explaining about myself to "normal" people.........Anyone else find that normal people don't understand you????!!!! And it's about 1/2 block from the top of San Fransisco Bay, so it will be a lot cooler in the summer than Sonoma is! (the older I get the meaner I get in hot weather and Sonoma often hits temps in excess of 100 degrees in the summer!!!) and they have wireless....


I only have one problem,.......the art work I put up on this site before, well it was my friends in LA who did it, I watched.......now I don't know how to put the stuff up here.......and so far I know more about computers and the interenet, (which is a pitiful amount I must admit) than any of my friends up here!!!


Oh and the other good thing is that where I will be living is only about 20 minutes away from Sonoma!!!!

So.....my apologies fo you all, I didn't mean to be rude, I was fighting for my life and my sanity (such as it is) and you will alll never know how much your kind comments about my work and our chats back and forth, how much they meant to me. It was about the only bright spot in my life at the time......but it did get to be too painful....


Anyway, I am back!!! it was so nice to the site again, and while I'll be buzy painting and moving and getting settled in for a couple of weeks, when I do get settled in, I'll have acess to the internet right there at home!!!! I won't have to go to the library to pug into their internet.....


Sally

]]> ~stillshooting http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11695864/ http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11695864/ Mon, 05 Feb 2007 10:58:16 PST In a crescent moon valley north of San Francisco, some very fortunate and creative people lived in a magical place, in a magical time......Oh and the music; it was everywhere, huge talents, their music drifting down the dirt road to float into your house; Sunday afternoon on the neighbors front porch, Saturday night at the inn;......and how we danced to that music, swinging and twirling bodies flinging through the steps.


I thought I knew then how lucky I was to be there, but with the time so long ago now, and life has taken me down such unsuspected paths, I now know how very rare were those times, how very rare the people who came together there, and how unspoiled the place was.


The people have scattered, the valley is being plundered, the magic is leaking away; but oh the times we had, the beauty we shared, the music we lived, never has there been such a place.


Along the ways of my life, most of my images were lost, years of work gone from me forever, with only these few left, memories of a beloved life.


I have this note in the front of my portfolio.
Sally

]]> ~stillshooting http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11695770/ http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11695770/ Mon, 05 Feb 2007 10:48:22 PST You may have noticed my animated avatar, the cute view camera that runs away. I was visiting the ladies who help me put my stuff up on this site, computer whizzes one and all! Jessica and I were noodling around the net, and she informed me that I needed an avatar, the sites da wouldn't do anymore. So first we messed around with that photo of mine that is a self-portrait. nothing was quite working out to our satisfaction, when I said you can't really see my face, why don't we put a "happy face" there. She chuckled evily and went to work, I was only kidding I wailed, frantically searching my brain for another idea. Camera! I shouted, yeah that's it, a camera an old camera, yeah on a tripod. You know the kind you see, big box camera on a tripod, has a black cloth that you have to go under to look at the ground glass image. so off we went searching for the right image.... took oh say 5 or 6 minutes. put it in the avatar space, not bad, but then I said, can we animate it, make it run away or something. Well, my friend the whiz, in the space of less than ten minutes had hocus pocused up that wonderful running box camera. We were so proud, we sat and watched it run away for a while.
Now, as you may know, I am planning to move home to Sonoma in the next few weeks, but before I go, I have another list, this one for photos I want to take before I leave for good, never to return. Cause while Sonoma is my spiritual home, I did grow up here in LA, and then returned when I was 34 and lived here again since 1984. Well, one of the photos I have on my list is a pair of gates, they are on either side of a bridge over the Los Angeles river, and they are stunning works of art done in metal, rather new too, maybe within the last 5 years or so. You'll be seeing them sooner or later, cause I will post them when I take the shots. Anyway, I was going to take them this morning, but found my self running a little late, so I promised me to do it tommorrow. As I drove over the bridge, I could see a truck parked where the second gate is; hmm, I wondered. Now it's morning rush hour, so I had to stay at the flow of traffic speed, but I was able to catch a glimpse as I drove by. There it was.... a tripod, and the guy had just removed a rosewood box view camera from it, the deep red color of the wood catching the morning sun.
OK, not a giant one, but it started my day off right.

]]> ~stillshooting http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11654549/ http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11654549/ Fri, 02 Feb 2007 01:09:38 PST
My point being, that I beg your indulgence, if I look at someones work, I cannot help but feel obliged to comment, after all those years in the classroom, it's second nature. And as some of you may have noticed by now, I am a wee tad talkative.

]]> ~stillshooting http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11654497/ http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11654497/ Fri, 02 Feb 2007 00:57:23 PST
]]> ~stillshooting http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11633882/ http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11633882/ Wed, 31 Jan 2007 11:03:03 PST
What, I was intendeing to say when I started this entry, was that I am assuming that pretty much everyone who is a photographer is using a digital camera.

I use one too now, but the work that I am putting up at first here was all done with a 35mm. film camera, a Pentax Spotmatic. It has a light meter built in, but it does not effect the photgraph being taken. You don't even have to override it. You can use the information you get from it(light meter that is), or ignore it completely, it's all up to you.

That is one things that drives me crazy about the modern cameras is the fact that you have to work so hard to get them to let you make your own choices. Phooey.

The other thing is that the prints are done in my darkroom, often using 2 developing baths, and the paper is Agfa Portriga Rapid 111, the grade of paper depending upon the negatives contrast (or lack thereof) Portriga Rapid has more silver in it than almost any other paper on the market. And, of course I used double weight paper, so washing it is tedious, I could only safely and effectively wash 10 sheets at a time, for an hour. So prolific darkroom binges took most of the next day to wash up!!

However, the results are quite lovely I think. Frankly, the computer doesn't begin to show the quality of the print, and the depth of the tonal range.

(I don't mean to sound braggy there, but I was trained by a man named Pirkle Jones, who was trained by Ansel Adams. Not only was he trained by Adams, but when Adams would go to Oh say Alaska, he would send his 8x10 negatives to Pirkle to develope. so photographically speaking, I consider myself to be Ansel Adams granddaughter. Adams also founded the photography department where I got my BFA. San Fransico Art Institute {I was in the 99th graduating class in 1977})

While the digital is very easy to use, no doubt, I would urge anyone who loves photography, and who has not yet tried a film camera, and doing their own darkroom work to give it a try. a long try. You will not regret it. Not only are the results wonderful, but it really is a lot of fun. I swear, I did cartwheeels in the darkroom the first time I printed pictures what a rush!

Learning the old-fashioned way will not nessessarily make you a better photographer, (though it will most probably give you better prints) because the system and the tools do not a good photographer make. The reason I urge most of you to do so is that from what I have seen here, there you all are already good photgraphers, in that you all have "the eye" and that cannot be taught!

So think about it, and kudos to you all for your amazing work, keep shooting!!

]]> ~stillshooting http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11621906/ http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11621906/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 10:36:00 PST "You have been designated a social deviant!"


So I guess you could say that I have been a deviant since 1968!

]]> ~stillshooting http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11582676/ http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11582676/ Sat, 27 Jan 2007 00:38:12 PST But THAT'S OK. I am having a wonderful time roaming around and looking at peoples' work. I must say there are a slew of great cat photographers around here. Being just a wee tad partial to the critters myself, I can spend hours just on the kitties alone.
I have also noticed that the people that are on this site have lovely manners, and it is soooo nice to hear (well read) all the nice things you all say to one another. I hate to admit it, but it took me by suprise, guess I have been living in the big city too long.
The other thing that I get a kick out of is when I heard this was an international site, I had no idea just how world wide it is! I am relatively new to the internet, and brand new to this site so this real exicting stuff to me. Glad to be part of it.

]]> ~stillshooting http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11574948/ http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11574948/ Fri, 26 Jan 2007 10:38:43 PST
]]> ~stillshooting http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11544984/ http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11544984/ Tue, 23 Jan 2007 17:58:41 PST I just last night put some of my work up on this site, and it's nice to hear that that work is being well recieved. For years I have looked at it and one day, I think I'm a genius, and the next, I wonder what ever made me think I was any good. (I hear that it's not an unusual way to think.)
I am not expecting the valley to be the same place it was in 1984, I have been back on occasion, and the place that had one stop light when I first moved there in 1971, now has many. I did know quite a lot of people when I lived there, so I do expect to find an old friend or twelve, but not only have some moved away, but it seems as if too many have died.
I am hoping that the magical aura that was the Sonoma Valley hasn't dissapated entirely. There's something about that place.......and it's calling me home.
My plan is to put up work that fills out the start I made last night, the images you can see now are the creme de la creme (OK, best of the stuff small enough to fit on the scanner. I have some stuff I like fully as well, but it's too big for the scanner, so I guess I have to take it to Kinkos' and have it reduced?! Unless anyone has another idea about how I can put 11x14 photos and I also have drawings and etchings that are larger than that.)
The point is that when all of the work is together, it does evoke a time and a place rather well I think. and as I don't have any book publishers beating down my door, I would really like to see it together somewhere other than on my living room floor.

]]> ~stillshooting http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11447431/ http://stillshooting.deviantart.com/journal/11447431/ Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:28:38 PST It was a shock to discover that he had become a photographer, a protrait one at that , and musicians a specialty to boot. I happen to be a photographer, pportraits and musicians and landscapes are my main fields. (well you live in Sonoma for 14 years and see if that doesn't turn you into a landscape photographer too) so the connectionis 2 out of 3.
Jason and I are related, but I don't want to say how without his approval. I am, after all, a member of the previous generation, I don't know how well your generation gets along with mine, but I do remember vividly that when I was a young hippie, we did not have much use for my parents generation. Never trust anyone over 30.... those were words we lived by.
But , one thing about being an artist, is that you become kind of ageless as far as being stuck in your age is concerned. I don't mean that I want to pierce anything or tattoo any part of me (could also have something to do with my extreme phobia about needles) cause there are few things more pitiful than an older person trying too hard to act younger than they are. but artists as people tend to be free in their thinking compared to most folk. (this is an understatement) and lots of us don't folllow fads, we tend to make our own way, without regard to what anyone else says. And that makes us kind of timeless.

I do know that looking around this site really makes me feel older and out- of touch. so I am glad I found it, mostly because I always am interested in what other poeple are doing. as long as you stay curious, you stay young, It's only with settling in, and trudging down those same ruts year after year, with only those same high walls of your rut to look at, that you become old and dusty. And cranky too I bet, with nothing but rut walls to see.

I will be putting some of my work up when I get back to Sonoma, and I then have to get someone to show me how to do so.

My best advise for young artists of any media is to do it, if you call yourself an artist, then that is what you must do. Do it a lot, every day and don't give up.

]]> ~stillshooting