Fine Art Storytelling: Dorothy in Oz

Three or four years ago, I was driving down 72 West toward Huntsville, in Alabama.  The music was blaring, and the road stretched before me in perfect, late Spring glory.  If you've ever traveled down this stretch of country highway, you'll know it's possibly the most beautiful patch of Alabama, rolling hills and low mountains hugging every curve, weathered barns scattered here and there in fields of growing cotton and soybeans.

It was one such field that captured my attention on this particular day: a rich golden sea of freshly bloomed canola blossoms, a ripe red barn nestled amid the rolling yellow, the scene crowned with brilliant blue sky.  

Suddenly, a vision:  an allusion to the yellow brick road, Dorothy lost in that field, and the frightening foreshadowing of events to come.  For just a flash, my imagination ran wild, combining my love of "The Wizard of Oz", my personal experience with tornados (they're very common in Alabama), and a snatch of memory from my college days, studying American artist Andrew Wyeth and his masterful painting "Christina's World".  At that moment I knew I needed to create this vision of mine.

"From the far north they heard a low wail of the wind, and Uncle Henry and Dorothy could see where the long grass bowed in waves before the coming storm. There now came a sharp whistling in the air from the south, and as they turned their eyes that way they saw ripples in the grass coming from that direction also."

― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

"Christina's World", Andrew Wyeth, 1948, MOMA

I secured my model, the lovely dancer Sarah Catherine, purchased wardrobe and a few small props, and scouted out the perfect location.  The photo session went off without a hitch, resulting in many beautiful images.

But ever the perfectionist, I was forced to shelve my original idea until I had the additional necessary ingredients to craft it solidly -- namely a believable cyclone dramatic enough to convey the richness of my vision.

"Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." ― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

"Well, how would you like to have someone come along and pick something off of you?" ― The Wizard of Oz, 1939

And then photographer Ashley Kirkland invited me to sample one of her photo overlays: a twister.  I was elated to see that her creations were so realistic, and so easy to work with.  Finally, I had all the necessary ingredients to finish the image -- and with it, an additional art history reference from another American painter, Grant Wood's "American Gothic".

"American Gothic", Grant Wood, 1930, Art Institute of Chicago

I'm so pleased to share these images with you now, a complete Storytelling set.  I hope you enjoy them, and that they take you back to that wonderful place you most likely visited as a child, as I did:  the land of Oz.  

"They now came upon more and more of the big scarlet poppies, and fewer and fewer of the other flowers; and soon they found themselves in the midst of a great meadow of poppies. Now it is well known that when there are many of these flowers together their odor is so powerful that anyone who breathes it falls asleep, and if the sleeper is not carried away from the scent of the flowers, he sleeps on and on forever. But Dorothy did not know this, nor could she get away from the bright red flowers that were everywhere about; so presently her eyes grew heavy and she felt she must sit down to rest and to sleep."

― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Enjoy this speed edit video of the fine art creation process of "Dorothy's World" (below):

Edited in Adobe Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CC by Lauren Bee: located in Inverness, FL; now serving Orlando, Tampa Bay area, and Central Florida; custom commissions available worldwide

Model: Sara Catherine

Styling: Lauren Bee

SONG: "Still Standing" by Anno Domini Beats

Textures by Jessica Drossin

Tornado: Ashley Kirkland Photography

Sky Photo by Jodi Mair Photography

My Florida Neighborhood Photography Challenge

There is no shortage of "look what I can do" photography challenges, everything from photographing on-the-sly at Target and Hobby Lobby, to boldly hosting a fashion session at Lowes.  I really enjoy seeing what other artists are able to create, with a little posing finesse and mad editing skills.  

Being new to Florida, I'm still learning my way around -- not just where to find the nearest Lowes, but also my neighborhood, which is sprawling and foreign to me (even after living here for a few months).  I decided to set out for a few minutes and begin learning my way around ... taking with me a model, a couple of pretty dresses, and my Nikon D700.  Here are a handful of photos I "found" along the way (with some "behind the scenes" shots too), all taken less than a mile from my photography studio.

Just the side of a nearby building, a stark white stuccoed surface, full of yummy texture.

The truth about being an artist is this: the "artistic temperament" is real.  I'm not always a happy, sunshiny person.  I have low days (really low ones), and on this particular day, I just wasn't Feelin' It.  I had to make myself grab my camera, make myself get out there, make myself do the work.

We found a giant bush -- with fresh, yellow blooms.

I was really feeling the dark and moody edits for these.  It was an overcast day (to match my mood).  So for the final images?  Grungy and shadowy and angsty it was!

Are these images better in color, or black and white?  I'd love to know what you think.

That breeze was perfectly timed.  I love some good hair movement.  

And an extra l'il something for this shot.  The trees were the perfect framing, and I was really digging the depth and sort of naturally created "stretched" perspective.

I think I prefer the black and white on this one.  Channelling my inner "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children".  How did I do?

The Results are in: 2018 Shoot & Share Contest

Have you ever been that kid in a candy shop?  You know the feeling:  you walk in, and laid out before you is this rainbow-colored assortment of delights, the likes of which you've never imagined, much less seen, before -- floor to ceiling sweetness, all sugar coated and promised glistening goodness.

This feels exactly like that.

Each January, photographers from around the world come together to participate in The Shoot & Share Photography Contest, an international competition that is not only free, but also fair.  Beginning the first week of February, images are voted on in a completely random and anonymous fashion.  Photos by professionals who have been in the business for 30+ years, brand new amateurs, and everyone in-between -- and no one knows who the photographers are until the voting is complete and the awarding begins in early March.

This year was my first time entering, and lemme tell you:  the competition was fierce! I've not seen photography talent and skills like this since ... well, ever.  And I didn't expect much to come of my work, tossed as it was in an ocean of vibrant colors, expert editing, perfect posing, and exceptional lighting.

So color me shocked -- like an awed child in a sea of gorgeous candy -- when I watched as my images plowed right through rounds one, two, three and four, on to rounds five and six, and then pushing past seven and eight ... all the way through round twelve.  

My photos made it all the way to the finals, the top 3.1% of all images submitted.  Y'all, one of my images even placed.  

Let's let that sink in for a minute.  (It hasn't sunk in for me yet, so I'm still trying...)

An image of mine actually placed in the top ten in an international photography competition.

What.

Maybe 2018 really is  my Year of Possibility.  

I am beyond astonished -- nay, utterly floored -- and overwhelmingly honored to have witnessed nearly half of the 50 images I submitted place in the top 30% and higher of a competition encompassing more than 412,000 total submissions.  This is not false modesty.  I am truly blown away to have done so incredibly well in my first year of submissions, with so.  much.  astounding talent.

Here a graphic of what that looks like:

Pinch me.  I might be dreaming. 

Want to see which of my photos placed?!  Well keep scrolling, my friend because here they are!

(Placement is shown beneath the image as number/total entries in category.)

Wedding Couple - placing 7,546/36,983

Kids - placing 10,143/35,570

Kids - placing 8,954/35,570

Seniors - 6,095/29,460

Styled Portrait & Fashion - placed 2,243/11,101

Model: Princess Keilee

People Portraits - placed 4,127/14,733

Chicago, October 2014

Family Portraits - placed 5,623/26,963

Engagement & Couples - placed 7,930/37,145

People Portraits - placed 2,210/14,733

HMUA & Model: Brittianna J

Creative & Personal Projects - placed 2,199/13,502

HMUA: Brittianna J

Creative & Personal Projects - placed 1,993/13,502

Pets & Animals - placed 1,652/14,426

Kids - placed 4,385/35,570

See MORE from this session HERE.

Travel & Landscape - placed 1,129/16,373

Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World, Florida, December 2017

Emotion & Excitement - placed 605/8,800

Creative & Personal Projects - placed 1,266/13,502

Travel & Landscape - placed 303/16,373

Castaway Cay, Bahamas, October 2017

Teens & Seniors - placed 209/29,460

People Portraits - placed 210/14,733

Model: Alicia Wright

Creative & Personal Projects - placed 393/13,502

Styled Portrait & Fashion - placed 7/11,101

Model: Princess Keilee

PhotoShop Escapades

I've been an artist for decades.  Whether the endless unicorns and mermaids I drew as a child (I'm talking notebooks full!) or the two years' worth of pastels, acrylics, and graphic drawings and paintings I created in college as a Fine Arts major, I've always felt this near-manic drive to create visually.  Even when I was a writer, my words attempted to invoke the visual-emotive through effusive comparisons, similes, and allegory, words flooding the page like a thousand drops of liquid rainbow, mingling with a thousand more splashes of warm honey-glitter.  (See what I just did there?)

I suppose it's only natural that something inside of me shifted when I began to use a DSLR to full effect.  At first it was just playing around with a Kodak point-n-shoot, but then the Nikon D3100 became "a necessity", followed by the D7000, the D7100, and now the FX D700 (two of them in fact -- yes, two).  Don't even get me started on the quest for quality glass;  my current obsession is the Sigma Art line, the 50mm 1.4 being the most frequently wielded weapon of choice.  

The learning curve didn't stop there.  Along with self-propelled education in the use of manual mode and Kelvin white balance, I ripped through editing software with a hunger akin to Edward Cullen on a vegan diet.  Lightroom was a very good investment, along with a few Creative Live classes, watching assorted and sundry YouTube tutorials, and picking the brains of several excellent photographers.  It's been painful and maddeningly frustrating at times, with sudden stops and starts, moments where I just didn't understand (!!!) and even the occasional (violent) urge to just quit it all!

And all of that in just four years.

Around this time last year I signed up for Creative Cloud.  And then I just quietly paid the monthly fee, terrified to dip my toe into the waters of all things Adobe.  I wanted to try Photo Shop;  truly I did.  I just didn't know where to begin.  So I didn't.  I just stared at it.  Weeks went by, more payments made.  I tried to find the time to start playing with the buttons and whatnot... but it was just so terrifying, so daunting.  So I ignored it.

Until about eight months ago, when my creative spirit just sort of said to me, "Lauren, look.  If you procrastinate any longer, you're going to stagnate -- and artists don't stagnate, you hear?  'Cause when they stagnate, they die.  Long, horrible deaths, moaning and wailing in pits of darkness and despair and --"

And that's when I told my creative spirit to shut-it because I got it (and she was being way too melodramatic anyway .... which yeah, is what creative spirits do...)

So I started playing with Photo Shop (PS).  The first few attempts ended in tears and much bemoaning to a friend who is very well-versed in PS and who just swore up one side and down the other that it's pure magic.  Bless her, she tried to explain some things to me, but I just was not getting it.  I didn't even know words for things, so I couldn't so much as Google for information.  I mean "how to use that swipey thingy that does The Cool Thing in PhotoShop" didn't yield such great results.  Still, I tried and tried on my own, hacking and sawing, reading up on things, watching more tutorials, taking more Creative Live classes, hacking and sawing some more amid wailing and gnashing of teeth ...

And then, one day, it just started to click.

I began layering things, adding on textures and pushing buttons and using brushes (I think that's what the swipey thing is called), creating clipping masks, adding and manipulating text, and, and, and ...

I also found that those long-distant semesters spent in Fine Arts school started to pay off.  I brushed up on my fairly decent understanding of shading, lighting, shadows, and two-dimensional depth, making the painting in of finer details an intuitive process.

As my confidence grew, my ideas started to gain some steady momentum, becoming more grandiose by the week.  Ranging from the dark and emotive, to the light and whimsical, one day it was fairy wings and solar flare, the next day it was head swaps and 19+ layer composites with excessive Gaussian blur.  It became a sort of game where I dared myself to see if "it" could be done (whatever "it" happened to be at the moment) -- and that creative spirit of mine, not one to back down from a dare, said to me, "Challenge accepted."

I have so much more to learn and so far to go -- but I can't wait to learn all the things and go all the places PS will take an eternally budding artist!  I've even got my sights set on Adobe Illustrator;  I hear it too does miraculous things -- and miraculous things, that's where it's at!  I love more than anything the process of creation, of plumbing the depths of a human heart and pulling forth beautiful and amazing worlds and emotions and stories.  They've been there all along, but the act of bringing life to it all.... this is why my creative spirit exists.

Want to see how I do it?  Enjoy this warp speed video of a recent edit, taking my daughter from sweet blond Jerrica to "truly, truly, truly outrageous" Jem!: