Dahlia's and Doodling

Doodle Business:
The Doodologist is fast approaching the last stage of business planning, although I am open for business, I still have some hoops to jump through. I visited the bank last week and had a meeting to set up a business account. It was slightly nerve wracking, but mainly exciting and more importantly they said yes! So I now have a shiny business bank account, with a cheque book and card that is emblazoned with 'The Doodologist'. I shall admit to being more than a little excited about seeing that. In regards to the business planning and inner workings, I shall be able to blog more about that sometime in August. I am working with a charity called the Prince's Trust to help me set up the business, from coming up with a sound business idea to then implementing it. Fingers crossed that in August I will have proved that this is a viable business and I will be matched with my own special business mentor. There is also a chance of getting a loan or grant, but really it is the help/advice that is the most appealing thing. More on this in August! (If you would like to join in and cross your fingers, legs, eyes etc, that would be most appreciated).

So at the moment I am working on some cool (very cool) commissions, which I will blog about as and when I can. I am also working on some ideas, so that I have some things to take to 'art and craft fair' type places. I asked the question to the folks that 'like' my The Doodologist facebook page, this question:

If The Doodologist was at an art fair type place, what would YOU like to see me selling?

Any ideas welcome, from doodle character suggestions to products like greeting cards, mugs etc. I am going to art fair type places for a few reasons, those include generating some cash, generating interest in commissions and generating publicity in general. I have never done anything like an Art Fair before, so I am genuinely in need of some help and advice. I have set myself the goal of doing my first one in September, which I am sure will creep up on me very fast!



Photo time:
If you are a regular reader of this blog, then you will have noticed that as well as doodling, I also love photography. So I was wondering if you think that some of the photographs are good enough to do high quality prints of and take them with to the art fair like places too? If so, any type of photographs tickle your fancy in particular? At the moment I am taking advantage of the intermittent lovely weather and the rather nice flowers in my garden. It is nice having photographic muses that don't try and run off.



Blog Tips: If you use Blogger/Blogspot, make sure you log into Blogger in Draft and see the new shiny new interface (place where you write your posts etc). Read all about it here Blogger's update interface now available for draft users. Remember you must be logged into draft mode to see the changes.

Google Plus: I have added another social network to my growing collection, so if you are hanging out over there, be sure to add me +Claire . It is very early days over there at the moment, but I am finding it a refreshing change from facebook and twitter. Not that I will be dropping either FB or Twitter any time soon, it is just different.



Thanks for reading xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A Hint of Pink: or the Dawnserly Light

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In the late afternoon, the sun paints otherwise dull buildings nice pastel colors.

Very early this morning the sky was beautifully pink --- looking both to the West...

...and to the East.

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Dusting off the photo editing machine

Not played with lightroom, or any type of photo editing, since I finished my younger sisters wedding photographs back in October. People have persisted in annoying me by taking marvellous photographs and reminding me that I don't have a camera. Well that is not technically true, I do have my point and shoot, which was a great beast in its day. Unfortunately that day has run out and its heading towards being a knackered piece of crap! People really should respect the fact that I am jealous as hell and refrain from photographing anything, but people just don't have manners these days.

Now the other wretched sister has decided to get married! So I need to brush up on my haphazard photography skills. I shall only be a shadow photographer this time, lurking in the dark shadows ready to snap unsuspecting wedding guests... Mwhahahaha! Oops don't know what happened then.

Anyhoo here are a few photographs I never got around to editing when I was up in Scotland. Which I have now edited. Does that even make sense?

The rest are HERE

Edited note: Especially for Linda.. I was lazy and forgot (couldn't be arsed remembering) what the ruddy lighthouse was called. After a quick google ponder, I suddenly recalled that it was Chanonry Point Lighthouse. No need to go on those dolphin watching boat tours, you can simply bring your bins and sit on the beach to see some excellent dolphin action.

Photography link of win: For those that like adding layer upon on layer to distress, alter, add wizardry to your images, then you may just like this site: My 2econd Skin


Doodles:
Don't be sad about the lack of doodles in this post, I shall be posting a MAHOOSIVE amount in a few days or so!

Also have you ruddy well 'liked' Self Exam Doodles over on facebook yet?

{ feature: lara jade }

Lara Jade started her own photography business at the age of seventeen. She has since done work for BBC and Sony Music, as well as international magazines such as ELLE.

I love how there is a sort of dark Alice-in-Wonderland feel to her photos and her talent for lighting gives her work a somewhat tint of magical touch!

Visit Lara Jade's official website!

xo,

techni-coloured!

I have been meaning to share silvii tron's find for the longest time! silvii tron from Evening Lantern mentioned the Multicolr Search Lab in one of her entries and I had such a fun time playing around with colours that I promised her I would share it with you.

Multicolr Search Lab will extract 50 images of any colour(s) you choose from the palette from Flickr!'s "interesting" gallery. You can even mix a few colours together and produce an even more varied search! What's best is that you can head over to Flickr! to view that image right from the site itself!

I found this especially amusing -- adding light green if you only have one other colour will bring up mostly macros of flowers in that other colour (as well as an occasional bug or two). Behold:

silvii tron and I both hope you had fun with this share!

Techni-coloured! xo,

{ feature: warwick saint }

I am in love with these photos of ink by Warwick Saint!

Check out Warwick Saint's work for Adam Lambert, Lady Gaga, Alicia Keyes, Missy Eliot, Simple Plan, Bjork, Christina Aguilera and...uh, Infected Mushroom -->here<--

too chicken for tattoos, xo

{ feature: 2011 TED prize winner -- JR }

JR is a 27 year-old French artist who developed a passion for photography after finding his first camera in the Parisian subway.

He has recently been granted the 2011 Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) prize, which entitles him $100,000 as well as the support from the TED community to carry out his amazing photography projects around the world.

An idea of how prestigious this award is? Previous winners were Bill Clinton, Bono and chef Jamie Oliver.

JR is only known by his initials and has never been seen without his sunglasses. His anonimity has a lot to do with his work. The kind of art JR does is large scale and unconventional -- he photographs the faces of people he meets, turn them into enormous black and white prints and then with the help of volunteers, paste these images on buildings, bridges, walls and other surfaces in the urban environment (think buses and trains even!). It is therefore no surprise that JR is extremely protective of his identity, as mounting of these large images have been considered illegal in countries like China.

Here are two videos on JR's attempt to highlight the dignity of mistreated women around the world:

...when you hear their stories, you're like,"whoa, maybe this person has died inside". But then when you ask her to do faces -- then you can see life.

And then this video of Randy Kennedy from the New York Times having a telephone interview with JR after the announcement of the 2011 TED prize winner:

An image can portray so much; can do so much.

See here, here and here for more details on JR's work (if you are more of a picture person like myself, watch a slideshow of JR's work instead). You can also visit JR's official website :)

inspired in so many ways, xo

Next one is going to be BIG

Time flies when you are having fun busy!

Finally FINALLY finished editing all my sisters wedding photograph, here are a few of my favourites;







If you want to see all seventy bajillion of them, feel free to peruse the Flickr collection (19 sets) 'Wedding Photographs'. There are only 1260 really and Heather has to leave a comment on every single one of them, kidding! (not really).

I didn't just want to leave it at that, so I also created a blog, which works like a virtual wedding book of sorts. You can see that by clicking here 'Wedding Blog', start with the 'About' section and then hop over to the 'Chapters' section. I think this gives you a good idea of what the day was like, hope you like it, as blood, sweat and tears went into it (hehe).

No more photography stuff for a wee while, although I am sure I will be posting more photographs from the day. Also its hard to go back to the old point and shoot camera, after my flirtation with a DSLR.

Next!
If you haven't checked out my new project, please do!

It is a site dedicated to checking out your naughty bits, for the good of your health, using the power of doodle.

Click here to see Doodle Nudity

I would really appreciate people having a look at this site and maybe clicking the facebook like button etc. It is a project that I am enjoying immensely and there is a LOT more to doodle with it. The thing that motivates me is the input from the people that enjoy the doodles, their thoughts and ideas. So any help, thoughts, ideas would be great!

The next blog post on here is going to lonnnnnnnnnngggg, as it was my four year blogoversary on the 29th of October. So to celebrate that, I am doing something a little special.....

Treasure Box Wednesday on Sunday: Time Travel in Blogging

Since I will be heading down to Florida on our usual Treasure Box Wednesday post day, in order to bring my Dad up north with me, I figured I'd make Wednesday come early this week. When ya run a blog, you can do that sort of thing, you know-- make days shift around like dominoes-- and then hope it won't confuse the heck out of the nice people who stop by regularly.

My favorite treasure of this week was this pretty hand-tinted Victorian photograph on glass from We Miss Back When in Apollo, PA...

I had my eye on it a while, and at $8, I finally caved and show them the money.

At the Goodwill in Monroeville, I got this handy-dandy book on British kings and queens...
Now when I have questions about ol' "King Elthered the Unready," "Queen Ethelfleda the Somewhat Snippish" or "King Ferdinand the Impetuous," I'll be able to look 'em up and learn something.

At the same Goodwill, I bagged me a few CDs, too--
And speaking of bagged...
I already had this particular item, but every day I think what a bargain it was. :)

I hope to have a post for you next Sunday. With Dad sick, things are kind of up in the air for me right now, but I don't want to leave you folks with nothing in your blogly goody bags, either. So I'll do my best to keep things rolling.

Treasure Box Wednesday on Sunday: Time Travel in Blogging

Since I will be heading down to Florida on our usual Treasure Box Wednesday post day, in order to bring my Dad up north with me, I figured I'd make Wednesday come early this week. When ya run a blog, you can do that sort of thing, you know-- make days shift around like dominoes-- and then hope it won't confuse the heck out of the nice people who stop by regularly.

My favorite treasure of this week was this pretty hand-tinted Victorian photograph on glass from We Miss Back When in Apollo, PA...

I had my eye on it a while, and at $8, I finally caved and show them the money.

At the Goodwill in Monroeville, I got this handy-dandy book on British kings and queens...
Now when I have questions about ol' "King Elthered the Unready," "Queen Ethelfleda the Somewhat Snippish" or "King Ferdinand the Impetuous," I'll be able to look 'em up and learn something.

At the same Goodwill, I bagged me a few CDs, too--
And speaking of bagged...
I already had this particular item, but every day I think what a bargain it was. :)

I hope to have a post for you next Sunday. With Dad sick, things are kind of up in the air for me right now, but I don't want to leave you folks with nothing in your blogly goody bags, either. So I'll do my best to keep things rolling.

Adding layers to life

Heather and Jessica edited with lightroom and enhanced with layers

Still on my quest to edit all my sisters wedding photographs, hopefully soon I shall be finished. Luckily she loves me and knows I can still lock her in a cupboard if she annoys me about it. To be fair, she hasn't moaned once about it and has loved the ones I have shown her so far. I just want them to be edited to the best of my abilities and for her to have some lovely photographic memories.
It is a steep steep learning curve, not only taking the photographs, but also the editing. I keep adding new things to my box of tricks, which of course adds on more work, but it is still fun! There is so much to learn and once you make the dreaded mistake of looking at other people photographs, you are doomed.

Heather on the way to the church, edited in lightroom and enhanced with layers

At the moment I am using Lightroom 3 to edit the photographs and then using Picnik.com to add some finsishing touches.
Lightroom Trick - Look into the world of presets! Magical stuff that creates all sorts of cool effects that you can then further tweak.
Picnik.com Trick - If you are premium user you can add 'Layers/textures'. You can also do this using other programs, but I can only do it using Picnik for now!

Wedding Car edited using Lightroom and enhanced with presets

Next time I update the blog about the wedding photography, hopefully I will have bloody finished, but probably not. Let me know what you think and if you have any favourite photograph editing tricks or tips be sure to let me know them.

Silver Eye Center Goes Down the Rabbit Hole with Maggie Taylor

Here in Pittsburgh, the Silver Eye Center for Photography has been showing a collection of works from artist Maggie Taylor, along a theme near and dear to my heart. It's These Strange Adventures, a surreal trip through Wonderland and other remote areas of imagination.
What I found most intriguing-- and I thought you folks might, too-- is that her work is done by layering Victorian engravings, photographs and objects into Photoshop, and creating an illustrative scene from them. So what were once ancestors being sold on Ebay suddenly transform into a serious-faced Alice carrying a Cheshire cat on a moody landscape. Or the King and Queen of Hearts posing, both realistic and cartoonish, for posterity.

This work illustrated a fascinating book of Alice in Wonderland, where the Alice here is portrayed by many different "Alice's" of different ages, in different antique photographs to complete a single story...
Perhaps that Drink Me bottle did more extensive personal alterations than height!

Another interesting thing about the work is its use of vivid vintage colors... shades that make the photos look hand-tinted, the way old lithographs or portraiture would have been during the day.
One of my favorites is Alice here with the dodo and other creatures in the Pool of Tears. Look how seamlessly these individual images were combined to create one full scene...
For my good readers in the Pittsburgh area, there's still time to see this show at the Silver Eye Center. It runs through August 21, 2010, and it's located right on Carson Street on the South Side.

The address is:

1015 East Carson Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15203
(412) 431-1810
www.silvereye.org

Oh, and before we go today, because I thought this would make you all laugh...
Do you think my cat, Alice, is trying to tell me something? It doesn't seem.... subtle.

Have a Wonder-ful rest of your week!