Deep paint: Making a one-shot expressionist painting

Question: How do you create a large exquisite expressionist painting in one session? My friend Paul LaFlam is an artist in St. Louis, and he would give an answer something like this: Pour several gallons of hardware store house paint onto a big horizontal wooden canvass and then "brush" the paint with torn pieces of cardboard, making sure to let your painting dry for at least three days, because it is 1/8" deep. The layers of the paint interact with one another, and "the paint does much of the work itself." Paul offered to let me videotape his unusual process awhile back, and we finished up editing the videotape today. Check it out.

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Present day leaves

One of my photographer mentors advised that I try to shoot SOMETHING every day. And this morning I finished reading Phil Zimbardo's "The Time Paradox," from which I learned (for the 800th time) that my perspective is skewed way toward future time orientation, which causes me to miss out on the present, especially ordinary things that are actually quite stunning. Therefore . . . I gave myself an assignment to take photos of leaves from the backside, illuminated from the front by direct sun. I tried to simply enjoy their beauty, but couldn't help contemplating their incredibly sophisticated function. IMG_2216 Leaves IMG_2261 Leaves 2 IMG_2299 Leaves 2 IMG_2321 Leaves 2 IMG_2324 Leaves 2

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