Here I am in beautiful Santa Fe with a good friend. The renters "from Hell!" are finally out of our house. My asthma inhaler is useful as an art object only in this climate. I just don't get ill in New Mexico. We've been getting the house in order, and that's kept us sort of busy. I would have had time to work on improving my photography but just can't get started.

This mood is nothing new to me. In my career as a handweaver and textile designer, I experienced it often. In long complicated weaving projects, it came over me in waves. Planning and drafting weaving projects got me very excited. After the initial planning stage was over, and I needed to start on the actual work of warping my loom, the resistance would set in. Warping done, I'd be excited ...

Where I even heard about this competition is lost to my memory, but this is a major award. There's a professional and an amateur division. It would be incredible exposure for any photographer. It's open for entries for the 2009 competitionstarting on September 22. The award ceremonies are in Cannes, France. Not too shabby! I just love looking at the winning images every year.

It seems to me that there are many photographers on Dreamstime that would do well in this competition. The URL with the details is below.

http://www.worldphotographyawards.org/home.asp

Pat Ballard

Lately, I've blogged about my mother's death and my resistance to photographing again. After struggling with mandala shaped fractals tonight, it came to me that my block might be another reaction to the stress of loss. The last two years have been hard emotionally. We moved. My husband changed jobs and had to travel. I was ill and had to have surgery. Our daughter was ill. We moved again. We lost a much loved pet. My mother died. Maybe I'm being too hard on myself. Partly, I started selling my work as stock to fill the time gap caused by the move. My time has been filled digitally rather than with cooking for my family and friends.

The fractals have increasingly become mandala shaped. As I design them I get the feeling that I had as a child when ...

One of the most refreshing things about any commercial art is that it's commercial with no pretense. My daughter spent two years as a photography major at a famous art school only to quit. She got very tired of people who had to "suffer" for their art and acted like any type of commercial activity was selling out.

The glamorous starving artist in a garrett in Paris (I wish) only came in with the rise of Impressionism during the late 19th century. Impressionism was a direct reaction to the invention of photography. The painter was suddenly freed from having to produce pictorial realism. They studied the science of light and the mechanics of the eye as well as painting. This radical new style of painting caused a violent reaction among the art loving French. It was years ...

An interesting thread on another blog that I follow popped up this week. One of the contributors wanted to know what colors sold the most images. It's been about 4 years, but I attended a one day design workshop in New York where many top people from the design industry and software industry spoke about commercial art and color choices. The man who does the graphic design for Martha Stewart, or did at the time, spoke on color choices. A woman who writes books on color for Pantone was there, too. I can't remember their names, but I do remember the basic ideas of their speeches.

The designer said that over 60% of Americans when polled on their favorite color listed blue as their first choice. Green was a distant second with all other choices being ...

Below is a small list of color theory web sites. It's been a fun hunt, and I'll continue it with periodic updates. Wikipedia turned out to be a great starting point. Some of these sites are serious some are just for fun, but I want to study all of them when I have the time.

Pantone

http://www.colormatters.com

http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/color/

http://www.w3schools.com/HTML/html_colornames.asp

http://worqx.com/color/

Pat Ballard