One of my photography goals for this year was to photograph a different LDS temple every month. For March I decided to photograph the Salt Lake temple mainly because I happened to be scouting locations for an upcoming shoot in SLC and figured I would do the "two birds with one stone" thing. Also, gas is expensive. So March 3, 2011 found me with camera in hand staring up at the temple, trying to think of a way to present it in a different and unique way. That. Is. A. Hard. Thing. To. Do. Here is what I came up with.
The photograph above is the reflection of the temple in the reflecting pool. I'm a sucker for reflections, especially at night.Below is the picture that I've been working on for almost three months. I decided to turn it into a painting. First I took clouds from another picture of well, clouds, and layered them into the sky so that I would have texture to work with and not just a boring mess of blue. I upped the saturation for fun and took it into a program called painter where I applied all the brush strokes by hand with my fantastic Wacom tablet and pen (which I could NOT survive without). Yes, it takes forever but thanks to Hulu I am well entertained and only have to worry about eyestrain and carpal tunnel. I finished and posted it around April 14th but was not happy with it. It kept nagging at me and I would open it up, stare at it, get disgusted and frustrated and close it down.
The sky is just plain boring. I've always loved van Gogh's Starry Night so I decided to try to emulate it a bit ... isn't it so moving?
It took me forever to get up the nerve. Finally I was with my husband on a business trip and I was at the office where he was working. I was trying to watch webinars on Studio Management Software and was so bored I was actually falling asleep so I decided to bite the bullet and try to fix the sky. This is what I came up with and I like it a lot better.
After I came home from my trip I pulled this picture out again and tried painting in stars and the amazing swirls of Starry Night but it just made a mess, so I've decided that I AM NOW DONE with this month and need to get to work pretty darn quick because I am so terribly far behind that it isn't even funny. Ah well, some thing you just shouldn't rush!
Hi. Just happened upon your blog. Love it. LOVE the timp temple pics. Any chance you have a "same and un-unique" pics of the SLC temple? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteOoh I do like it better. It's lovely.
ReplyDeleteThanks Leah!
ReplyDeleteThanks Eh, I think this next year instead of doing a different temple every month I want to get shots of the ones closest to me (Salt Lake, Bountiful, and Logan) in every different season so I will have a lot more pictures coming. I will try to get more "same and un-unique" for you. Lol :) For now I just posted a more standard shot of the Salt Lake Temple on my online boutique. Here's the link
http://fineart.illuminephotography.com/saltlaketemple
Thanks so much for visiting and commenting!! :)
Hey just rereading your comments. I think it's a good idea to get the Utah temples in the diff seasons. There would be a big market for that in Utah I think where people want prints of "their" temples. I do like the vintage Ogden pictures in your gallery. Do you have any of it in other seasons as well? I like the sepia but our house is all in black/greys...etc. Hmm.
ReplyDeleteLeah, I can change that one to black and white easy-peasy. I am so sad that I didn't start my project until they started the demo so I don't have many pictures at all of the Ogden Temple the way it used to be...sad, sad, sad. :(
ReplyDelete