Selected for Typologies Group Show

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Three of my “Fallen Leaf” abstracts have been selected to be part of the group show Typologies in the current issue of Fraction Magazine.

A typology is “the study or systematic classification of types that have characteristics or traits in common” (link) — I believe that my leaf abstracts fit this description nicely. It’s a very interesting collection of work, showing collections of power lines, people, newstands, and more — be sure to check it out.

Nikon announces best micro photos

Nikon just announced the winners of their “Best Microscopic Images of 2008” competition. I love and am fascinated by micro photography, but often it can look too… clinical and scientific. This year however, wow, there are some beautiful works of art in this group. Photographs that transcend their “micro-ness” and really contain some power and beauty. Here’s my favorite:

Deprived Amoebas by ©Matthew Springer/University of California, San Francisco

maple tree seed

After a very busy September, full of print schedules and marketing plans, I finally got to spend some time in the studio shooting new photographs. I’ve been able to spend large parts of the past few days shooting, and am pleasantly surprised at how quickly things are gelling for me. Digging around in my stash of seeds, I found this beautifully curled maple seed. It took a little while to warm up, to get my lighting right, to get comfortable with my camera, to get my eye really seeing again. But after a few hours of exploration, I found this:

Since then I’ve been discovering many other images hidden within this little seed. I’m pretty excited about how this shoot is going! More to come…

Fear, creativity, and the stock market

While continuing our conversation on creativity and fear continues over on this post, I realized that the recent insanity in the stock market gives us as artists a good lesson on the nature of fear. (”What?,” you say, “artists learning from.. the stock market?” Yes, of course! Artists should be willing to learn from any source.)

The current unrest in the stock market is causing a lot of fear in people. I know, because I’ve been caught up in it some too. And this is a natural reaction, because suddenly being exposed to something with such a big impact is going to shake you up a bit. But how people react to that fear is where it gets interesting.

Some people are giving in to their fear, and panicking. Selling off their stocks, fleeing the market, and trying to pushing their money into “safe” investments. It feels like the right thing to do. But ironically, it is not. By doing this, they are basically guaranteeing that any money they lost will stay lost. By trying to be safe, they are actually holding themselves back.

Yet others are feeling that same fear about the market, but instead of panicking, they are stopping, watching, and listening. They are not trying to “protect” themselves, they are trying to find the opportunities. As a financial advisor friend tells me, you never make decisions because of fear, you make them anticipating the fear. Every investor knows (or should know) that stock markets always go through downturns, and when they do, you will feel that fear and panic. So instead of dreading it, or ignoring it, you plan for it. You look forward to it. And when it comes, you remember that it is a natural part of the economy. It still scares the heck out of you, but you understand it, and are ready for it.

Artists can follow this example. Making art is a lot like investing in the stock market. (How’s that for a quote?) You invest all of your energy into it, hoping for long term gains. Some days your investment pays off. And other times, it crashes. But when it does crash, you should never panic. Remember that your creativity goes through cycles of booms and busts, bulls and bears. When it’s high, you will feel unstoppable. And when it is low, you will fear that your creativity is drying up, or that you are a fraud as an artist. Just remember at these times that this feeling of fear is natural, and don’t succumb to it. When you feel the fear, don’t run and try to protect yourself. Don’t panic and lock in your losses. Invest in it. That feeling of fear is the signal that it is time to step out on a limb, and push forward and (hopefully, god-willing) grow.

(Needless to say, I am not a financial expert, so please take my understanding of the stock market with a few fat grains of salt.)

Check out my new Facebook page

My grand exploration of the social web continues! I have been using Facebook more and more lately, not as a business tool, but as a way to keep in touch with my widely spread out network of friends. It has really been a blast, getting reacquainted with a long-lost school friend, learning that a former coworker is having a baby, and just being part of a community. And not some artificial online “community”, but a real community, made up of people I have worked, played and studied with.

Since I am getting reacquainted with so many people, I was thinking about how to introduce my art to my network of friends. I didn’t want to just add it to my regular Facebook profile, because I wanted some separation between my personal life and my work. I don’t want to have a potential collector or gallery who is following my work be inundated with updates about how my kids are doing at school! Likewise, I didn’t want to constantly pester my friends with work-talk.

I discovered that Facebook lets you create “pages“, separate mini-sites dedicated to a specific topic, person, or cause. So I decided to create a unique page for my photography on Facebook. People can then become “fans” of my work. This lets them see what I am up to, without me pestering them every day. It’s an interesting idea, and I am curious to see how it works out.

I invite you to check out my Facebook page, and please consider becoming a fan. Let me know if you set one up for yourself!