Photo By your sister, Harmony Motter
Today is my sister, Sarahbeth's 26th birthday. Above is a photo of her with our nieces and nephew. They are acting a bit wacky. They don't usually look like that. Happy birthday Sarah!
Photo By your sister, Harmony Motter
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Above are some photos that I quickly snapped of my niece, Jessi. She wanted to jump in front of the camera and strike some poses. I like what she came up with. Photos By: Harmony Motter
I have to admit that I don't know a whole lot about baseball. I do know that I love the Boston Red Sox and could sorta kinda care less about the New York Yankees. I know that eating a hot dog at Fenway Park is a great feeling and watching Jacoby Ellsbury walk to the outfield is an ever better one. My favorite pitchers from the Sox would have to be Josh Beckett or Clay Buchholz. But, Meadville Area Senior High School's star pitcher is Alex Glatch! I recently photographed Alex's senior portraits and quickly caught on that baseball is what he is all about. We had fun shooting these photos, especially the serious ones. It was amusing watching Alex try to keep a straight face.
SayerMotter Photos By: Harmony Motter [P.S Click on Image to view larger] I recently photographed Jocie Rick's senior portraits. Jocie is a student at Meadville Area Senior High School. I never know what to expect when I meet these seniors for the first time. They are strangers to me and I to them. So, I quickly try to get a feel for their personalities. The better I can understand them, the better I can photograph them. Jocie is in LOVE with music! She plays the guitar, mandolin and some other little-tiny instrument that I cannot remember the name of. But, regardless she is a very talented and confident young woman. I like the photo above. I was shooting pictures of Jocie while she was playing her little-tiny instrument when the wind started to blow the hat off her head. She stopped playing to catch her hat. I liked the moment.
SayerMotter Photos By: Harmony Motter I've written about this before I know, but we have been discussing this a bit lately at SayerMotter Photography. When we started making memory mates we investigated literally hundreds of different templates available to photographers made and distributed by several different design and printing companies. Some of them are very nice, most of them are just poorly designed and all of them were not 'ours'...or showing our vision. So at first we started making them as simply as we knew how, but keeping them unique. As we develop our tools and understanding of what makes an eye catching memory mate, we get more intricate. More intricate means more time, but if we want to make something unique and with our vision, that is just something we have to do. All together each one takes between 15 to 30 minutes after the initial design is established(that sometimes takes a couple hours to figure out.) What is important to us is that we deliver a product that suits our vision and our commitment to giving our clients quality unique products. We hope people respond well to them and I think for the most part people have. SayerMotter photography and designs by Richard Sayer.
Before hitting the hay this morning I began tackling the MASH wrestling cheerleaders memory mate. So in the wee hours of the morning I came up with the beginning of this. When I woke up I already had an idea to add to it so I hit the ground running and after about another hour I arrived at this. I see some minor tweaks to the edge that I'll work on, but wanted to post this to see if there is a response to it before I commit 110% - since I'll have to make more than dozen of these I don't want to be barking up the wrong tree! And I wish I had more to say because I'd love to find a reason to use some more cliche old phrases. SayerMotter Photographs and design by Richard Sayer. And yes Frankie---after I did this I realized you didn't even order a memory mate---isn't irony amazing?...some day I'll learn to look before I make(this is actually the third time I've made my design using a person that didn't want a memory mate--just individual pictures--so maybe I won't ever learn huh?)
I was planning to simply just crop a photo in order to put with a link to the page of posted photos for the MASH Wrestling cheerleaders when I made one little move that turned out being something that peak my interest to explore(the artist in me grabs hold and won't let go sometimes.) I then started with the --what if I did this and what if I tried that and suddenly I'm on to something that I now can't stop until I make it right and finish it. So a simple thing that was meant to take no more than 30 seconds of my day suddenly was consuming a minute--then two and then 10. All in all I didn't spend much time on this, but probably 15 minutes and it took an ordinary picture with a pretty unremarkable background and turned it into a 'thing' - something a little more considered than the original which was pretty much a snapshot. Not sure what to do with it other than show it and maybe this will help figure out the MASH Wrestling cheers memory mate design---I kinda like this repeating image in layers and faded in and out so...maybe today I'll be able to get to work on that! SayerMotter photograph and design by Richard Sayer.
People who know me know I am at my best when dealing with pictures--those flat world things that give illusion to something real. Everything else is a struggle. Today I was frustrated because I am trying to do something most people find simple--organize and order something. I finally decided to start from scratch and hopefully get the order right once and for all. But in doing this I had to find a picture of Tyler that I needed to order that for some reason keeps coming back as the wrong image(Ok so I found the culprit and it was me mixing up numbers----me and numbers don't work!). But as I figured everything out I found this picture and decided to make a couple of wallets of it even though it wasn't ordered. And as I was getting it ready I made a move and ended up with this reflection type image and just sorta thought it looked cool. Figured instead of burying it deep in pixels on my hard drive I'd post it as a featured picture of the day. It turned a frustration into something that made me feel a lot better. I love that--when a day turns itself around like that! SayerMotter Photographic manipulation by Richard Sayer
Subtleties. I think for most of my artistic life I never really dealt with subtle. Nearly all of my paintings were 'in your face' statements. I keep looking back at my old work in hopes to re-think and re-learn things. I'm finding that my 'best' work from my twenties I didn't really think so much of as being my best work at the time. And in many ways it was on to something much more worth going after than most of the work I did in my late twenties and early thirties. Getting involved in journalism has really helped. This idea that I'm recording, not making statements has helped me see that more subtle thoughts somehow grab my attention for much longer periods of time. Sorta like that new hit song that hits you right away and you can't get enough of it, but then after awhile you find nothing really in it to keep your attention any longer. That in your face, that 'catchy tune' doesn't have the staying power to keep you interested and looking into it further. I think thats why I like the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan so much. Their work has a tendency to have so many layers that you keep coming back. The Dead in their way of seemingly never playing the song the same way twice and Dylan's lyrics are laden with metaphor and imagery that each listen can be interpreted slightly different. Old painting and photographs do this as well. A friend posted a Gerome painting on Facebook today and it reminded me of a little painting at the RISD museum that I return to every so often. It was a simple painting in many ways, but its meaning seems to change each time I look at it. It certainly wasn't considered one of his great works, but in its simplicity--its subtlety there is so much to imagine. I always think that great art, like great poetry doesn't have one meaning, that the meaning evolves with time and the time in which it is viewed. Dated or time specific work seems to leave me flat. In working with clients I realize there needs to be that little bit of 'grab your attention' right away to the work, but when we can work through some of that, and seek something that translates beyond just the surface of 'this is a picture of you' then I think it gets pretty exciting. I guess that is the type of work I am always working toward achieving. Sometimes I find it.....sometimes. Right now I'm working towards finding 'subtle' again. SayerMotter Photograph by Richard Sayer
I have been fighting a cold so I feel more like I'm trying to survive a day than embracing it and trying to make the most of it. People who live around my neck of the woods know that today was a really crappy day to be out on the roads. I'm not sure my Toyota got over 40 mph today. So feeling poorly and having to be out in it on such a crappy day I didn't expect to get any photos. After making some rather standard pictures of a sign in Conneaut Lake I got back in my car and sat for a few moments. I noticed right away the windshield was great and I feared that when I started my car up that the wipers would automatically be on, but they weren't. So I sat and started making pictures focused on the windshield. At first I was shooting wide, but didn't like the washed out sky I was getting and decided to go longer lens. That's when this bus drove up passed me and stopped at the light and I tried to zoom in on just the yellow. I couldn't quite do this but shot what I could. When I got back I just cropped a little off the side and top to clean up the composition. I made two frames and had trouble deciding which I liked better--the wet windshield was moving and the distortions were different in each frame. I began shooting more lights of cars coming at me as well--none of which seemed to work 100% but a little cropping again on the one below produced an nice abstract. So I was surprised today and yes making a picture like this does make me feel a little better. Nyquil in a few minutes will do the rest! Photographs by Richard Sayer.
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