Having fun

It's been either clear and cold or cloudy, windy and raining here. Hey, it's January, what's not to expect? Anyway, I still have my studio set up in my dining room and while I was out running errands I stopped by an art supply store and bought one of those wooden man figures artist use. For $10, what's not to like about having some fun?

And so it's been part of the day to have a little fun with the figure and with a small stuffed penguin I bought when I was a child in Germany around 1960. I nicknamed him Cocktail because he looked like he was going to a cocktail party instead of the normal tuxedo black and white penguins you normally see as stuffed animals or in photos. The toy has sat on my desk overlooking the bills and things to do holder for decades and now sits on my computer table just behind the keyboard.

And so I scrounge through the kitchen looking for interesting things to photograph, or I wander through the grocery store for interesting food stuff to buy and photograph. You never know what might strike the visual synpases to say, "Hmmm..., I wonder..." And so I spend the time just exploring. I have the two soft boxes and two halogen lights to work with the three types of cameras, 35mm film and digital and 4x5 film.

And Cocktail looks on with a sense of something, which I'll leave to the viewer.



My point to this? Not much. It's a visual thinking out loud exercise while learning to work with light, backgrounds, and composition. And it's a whole lot of fun.