Shawn Miles Photography: Making Art

Shawn Miles Photography: Making Art

Making Art

When I look at my pictures after the fact I'm not as thrilled as I used to be. Now I'm just another one of those photographers in my mind. I don't want to be one those photographers. I want to be my own unique individual. When I look at something I take a picture and share it. That's how it started. Now I'm taking pictures and I get the feeling that it's looking to commercial or to much like the other persons picture.

I decided to step back and start making some art for a while with the pictures I've take, plus start looking at the masters, Ansel Adams, Annie Lebowitz and maybe I'll go see Andie Warhol at SAM. Granted he wasn't straight photography but his work is out of this world.

I need to stop trying to be and just let it flow.

Here are two pieces I did last night:

Abstract...
This one took most of the night. I used plumbers tape and nail polish. hahahaha




I'm most proud of this because it was so simple!

a Tile wall hanging...

My first mobile post

Beans, Beans, Good for your heart........

A few days ago I was talking with my dear friend Tea about beans. I haven't been able to cook them successfully from scratch yet.

She gave me some excellent ideas and I put them to the test while working from home yesterday.


Today for lunch I'm enjoying the fruits of my labor (yes that's an attempt on a play at words).

I'm eating this lovely red bean that isn't a kidney bean and Quiona. I tossed in Almond slivers and some Almond milk to taste. It's yummy.


Red bean before

Lunch

Goals and Plans...

Photographers don't make enough to support two boys going to college or to buy a house unless they come up with a plan. I've done my homework, researched and asked a lot of questions. What I've discovered is time and experience are the most important think to a photographer.

I need to spend a lot of time working on developing my skills to be where I want to be. In order to accomplish this I need to stay with my current job. My current job will pay for this dream. I believe if you follow your heart the rest will come.

I want to live my life as a full time artist and I don't want to do anything else.

I'm always thinking about art and pictures. How can make art? Lately it's been my brand. I came up with it and I so now I'm going to put it together.

I know I've shared this picture but it will be an adaptation of this one:

Holland Days Oak Harbor

 

It was the neatest thing to watch. I thought this was a sleeply little town held hostage by the Navy. In fact it's starting to really bloom. It started with the last weekend in April with the Hollad Day Parade. Kevin was asleep because he was on nights that week, which meant braving the day alone.

Could I do it? Of course I could. Riding the bus all over Philadelphia as a kid taught me something! It taught me to handle the small towns of America. Ok so this one was really freakin me out. With my iPhone in hand, tweeting every fear along the way, I took my camera and headed down to street fair. It was in full blown street-fair-ness. Lots of un-necessary stuff everywhere, amazing art here and there, awful must have greezy food with promise of heartburn and the ever popular sales people for windows or something at the end of each section. I did a mighty fine job of smiling and saying "no thankyou!"

After following the sound of music to the beat of a full on band I discovered a band, seated in the park on the parade route. Brilliant!

They were seated in the shade, next to the stars and stripes themselves. I couldn't feel more patriotic then I did at that moment. Well, not untill the the fire trucks came down the road starting the parade. Normal Rockwell would have been proud!

Here are some more pictures to share the moment.

The band..

Firetruck...

Tesoro Family Incident Fund

On April 2, 2010 the Tesoro Anacortes Refinery suffered a catastrophic failure in one of its refining units. As a result, 7 of our co-workers lost their lives. Employees, Family, and Friends of the Tesoro Anacortes Refinery have been working hard to help the affected families with immediate financial support. We began offering Hardhat and Bumper stickers for a small donation that will deposited into the Tesoro Family Incident fund at the Tesoro Federal Credit Union in Anacortes, WA.

(the above statement was taken from the Tesoro Family Incident web site) If you are interested in helping you can go directly there.


Tesoro Family Incident Fund - Stickers

In the end if you cancel lunch with a friend and donate that $20 bucks you'll help one of these seven families on the road to recovery.