Patricia's artistic journey

Sigur Rós post-rock genre I'm in love

2011-02-10T18:27:00.000-08:00

Yah i know i was moving my blog. But figured something out. If i post here i can send my blog to all my pages, so giving it a test.

Sigur Rós my new best music to paint too

I'm not sure about other artist but I love (no need) to listen to music that touches the soul when i paint. I have a lot of favorite bands I use on a regular basis such as, Tool, Muse, Rush, Soundgarden, Radiohead, After Forever and such.

Today I was looking for some new stuff to listen too on Last.fm and did a search for Sigur Rós,

There is a story behind me finding this Icelandic band.

I had first heard them when i was watching a documentary they did named,

Heima

I immediately fell in love with their music, their look, their sound, their cause, and wrote the name of the band down in a note pad and on my calendar so I could look them up at a later time. Well needless say life got busy and i forgot about this wonderful band and the feeling they gave me when i was listening to their music. The note pad was lost the calendar had expired and been thrown out and the name of the band was forgotten.

Now, I like to watch movies that are bit on the odd side and not so popular. I often do this when I'm alone and the house is quite as my family does not share my passion for odd films. I have about 60 or so saved on my playlist for just such times. One of these was a movie called

Ondine

In this movie they mentioned Sigur Ros. I knew immediately this was the name of the band i had lost at least 3 years ago. This time I remembered the name of the band. Today I decided to look them up and listen too Sigur Ros radio on Last.fm. This station is tagged as Post-Rock. I believe i have found my favorite music genre. I have been tagging every band with a heart and adding to a playlist so i don't forget the names. I am so bad at remembering band names, which can be very frustrating when i hear music i love and cant remember who it was.

I fell as though i have found a lost dear friend and that this music is going to inspire many paintings yet to be discovered in my head. This is so exciting i cant wait to get started on the next painting.

I have moved my blog

2011-02-09T13:35:00.000-08:00

You can find me at http://patriciasalinas.com/blog/
All new blog post will be posted at the above site.

patriciasalinas.com Blog

2011-01-27T21:06:00.000-08:00

Link to my portfolio/buisness web page and WordPress blog
patriciasalinas.com Blog

Elk Bugle's and Cloudcroft New Mexico

2011-01-27T20:54:00.000-08:00

Yes i know its a bad photo. If your read on there's a story behind it.

I went to Cloudcroft Last Sunday with a couple of other students in my digital photography class. The first challenge was getting up at 4:45 so we could try to get there to catch the Elk and get some shots of them, our main goal for going at such an ungodly hour. I am not a morning person so this was a major hurdle, but I set the alarm on my phone and was able to get going and out the door by 5:15.

I knew the elk would not have cameras so there was no need for makeup or doing my hair....however I failed to remember my photography friends would have cameras and are quite sneaky at taking photos of each other when were not looking. I'm not much of one for really being concerned about the makeup and hair anyways but when i realized one of my friends was using a candid photo of me to turn in for her assignment i was thinking, hummmm maybe i should have at least warmed up the hair straightener. Oh well guess theirs a lot to be said for the all natural look, lol, and it was not worth giving up that 15 more minutes of sleep.

When we got up the mountain it was still to dark to take photos without flash but we did sit and listen to the elk bugle for about 20min. That in itself was all worth the early hour. The sound just cut through the darkness and me with a feeling I can not describe well enough. I am not sure hunters listen with the same ear as I was listening with that morning because there is no way I could kill an animal that stirred such raw emotional feelings in me. I could feel the sound go threw the core of my body and stir up something i have never felt before. I am an animal lover maybe that gives me a different perspective. I will never forget that experience.

We were able to catch sight of several elk that morning but soon realized we needed to re-think our strategy if we were ever going to get decent pictures of them. Now i have been up in those mountains several times but for some reason we saw more wildlife that day than i had ever seen in all my excursions up there. We spotted the largest red tail hawk i had ever seen, herds of deer and elk, a flock of wild turkeys along with the pigs, cows and horses. It was all so amazing.

We did make a lot of stops and went off side roads to get some good shots of an old run down house that was still furnished and the beauty that mother nature was providing us that day. We also got some odd looks from passers by. I'm sure they were wondering what the heck we were doing. We must have been quite a sight, 3 women all with cameras crawling around taking photos of tree roots and such. I did manage to get a blurry photo of an elk, my one trophy for the day even if i can never print it.

We all soon realized how tough wildlife can be to photo and that we all need telephoto lenses. Even so i must have taken over 900 photos that day...not all great mind you. I did have to delete a few of them. It's so easy to get carried away with a digital camera. So ill give one to the morning people of this world, sometimes it is worth getting up before the crack of dawn to experience and amazing day.

Raw files now working in CS4

2009-10-10T13:45:00.000-07:00

Well for some how my Raw files will now open in Photoshop CS4. Don't know if it is because I'm using the camera software to download off the card but that seems to be the only thing I can think of. I'm running CS2 at home and even though I have updated the camera raw plug it will not work but used CS4 in class and it works now. All I can say is yay. Now its time to go get some blank disk so I can clean out my portable hard drive. Even after editing and cleaning out files and bad pics I still have eleventy billion pics taking up space. So easy to get carried away using a digital camera. I've been putting it off but time to clean house or im gonna run out of space for all the wonderful fun pics in my future. There out there calling me to take them I can hear them now while I sit at my desk. Well time to go get some work done. later all.

The Weather and update on camera woes

2009-10-03T12:40:00.000-07:00

So much for well made plans. I had planed to go out tonight after work and take a few night shots for my photo class, but guess what I woke to this morning, rain. Looks like it going to rain all day too. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. I spent a lot of time yesterday taking indoor shots and playing with flash and exposure in bad lighting.
Seems I should have saved that for today and taken my night shots instead. If I was not worried about water damage to my camera I could probably get some cool rain shots. Not willing to risk it though so guess I'll try some more indoor shots tonight with the lights out and annoy my family and the dog, lol, could be fun.

As for my camera woes, I broke down and called cannon after uninstalling and reinstalling Adobe Photoshop cs2 and manually installing the camera raw plug-in. As the Adobe site recommended. Cannon could offer no solution as to why I am unable to open my raw files using Photoshop cs2, cs3, or cs4. So the only work around I have come up with is to download my photos to a folder on my desktop and use Adobe's DMG converter software which I downloaded from there site.

Once I convert the files to DMG I am able to open them and use Photoshop's camera raw dialog box. The DMG converter is easy to use and does not change the original raw files. So at some point if I get this figured out I still have my original camera raw CR2 files. Its an extra step but it seems to work well and I'm willing to live with it. Maybe I'll give Adobe a call next or not, I hate talking to tech support. The folks at Cannon were nice enough and tried to come up with a solution but to no avail. Most forums I've read folks had to use the DMG converter as I am doing. Oh well I have more pressing things to spend my time on, like that Web Page I am supposed to be working on.

My camera woes and the dirty dishes

2009-09-30T19:45:00.000-07:00

Digital Photo by: Patricia Salinas

Okay so I pinched my pennies to get a digital Cannon Rebel XS SLR camera to use for my digital photography class and my art. I love the camera takes great pics and I've learned how to use it pretty well in class. All my art training has paid off, in that I seem to have a good eye for framing and taking some pretty creative shots. All a surprise to me.I had no idea I was going to enjoy this so much.

My dilemma, for some reason there seems to be a problem opening the camera raw CR2 files in photoshop cs2, cs3 and cs4.
Those are the versions I have tried so far. Found some forums with others having the same problems. Has something to do with the camera raw patch updates in the software. It's a good thing I have been taking my pics in jpg and raw format. So it seems I have some work ahead of me to either figure out how to get my software to work with my raw files or break down and use the software that came with the camera to download the pics from the card. This will be a slight distraction from the web page until I figure it out.

Figure it out I'm sure I will but it's going to drive me crazy until I do. Yes I'm one of those people that will stay up all night until I find something I lost or to fix something that is not working right. But at the same time im perfectly comfortable with leaving the dirty dishes in the sink while I solve life's little problems.

Hey you have to have priorities right?

The WebPage

2009-09-29T11:22:00.000-07:00

Okay so I've been playing with the idea of having my own web page for awhile. But I wanted to be able to use my own ideas and create my own page from scratch. I went so far as to take Graphic Design classes while I was completing a Fine Arts associates, which I completed last fall semester. Well my interest in art and technology came together perfectly in graphic design and I ended up loving it, so I'm now on the last legs of that associates as well.

Yah call me crazy, while doing all this I worked on campus, still do (I'm a fixture now), raised my teen's and tried to keep some type of order at home.
Keep in mind I am an artist and not known to be the most organized person on the planet, so yah life has been a bit crazy. Oh and add in the mix my artwork and a local small art group I helped get off the ground, yup crazy. Okay I got a little side tracked from my web page goals.

I was able to develop some pretty good ideas in my graphic design classes that have give me a basis for my final web page. Of course even when it is complete and live nothing stays static and it too will be changed, updated and new ideas will come to me, but its been fun to go threw this journey. I have learned so much and want to share what I have learned with others. I have so many creative ideas flowing threw my head I cant possibly create them all in this lifetime but I can sure give it a good go.

Oh yah the web page. I've been working on that diligently for the past month editing and revising a page I designed in class. Of course like painting you need to know when its done and when to put down the brush. It is so easy to keep making changes so that has been a challenge. It is allot different than designing for someone else, this is so much more personal and I feel as though I'm creating a work of art. Like a work of art some will like it and enjoy it and others will not but I wont know till it goes live so I am determined to finish my web page and publish it with in the next month. October is a good month, my birthday is in October and so is my daughters, and my anniversary. So October it is. Keep reading my blog and I will keep you updated. See you on line.