Have you ever had a day start out so good that you feel like telling people?  I have.  And not just a few times.  I’ve had so many good mornings this summer that I want to spread the goodness to my blog readers (after a lousy winter, so I’m loving the good days).  I have four sessions open before the end of August and am offering 30% off of session fee and prints to the four people who book those dates.  Email info@wynonarobison.com to inquire.

I’m also adding a picture of my son who just turned five yesterday.  I paid him 50 cents to get this photograph.  And then he got a haircut and had a birthday and he seems so much older.

He made his birthday wish out loud.  He said “I wish that every day could be my birthday.”

11. If you could choose to live the life of any character out of a book (say for a couple of days) who would it be and why?

Sophie from Howl’s Moving Castle.  Her life is hilariously wonderful, and I have a crush on Howl.

12.  Where is your favorite place to be .. just be..

The City Library in Salt Lake City.

13.  What lenses do you have?

My bag of lenses includes the 50mm f/1.4, 85mm f/1.4, 105 mm f/2.8 macro, and the 17-35mm f/2.8.

14.  Okay….really all i want to know is if you ever have reason to be near Portland, Oregon.

Yes!  I don’t have any current plans to be in the area, but I love both Portland and Seattle and can’t stay away for too long. 

15.  okay, i also want to know how you take all of those beautiful SPs. i never have success when i try to take pictures of myself. any tips?

My tips are shoot a lot and delete liberally.  :)  I use a remote and a tripod for most self portraits.  I use the center focus point often, because it’s the easiest to line yourself up with, and I can crop later.  With every click, I change my expression or body position slightly so that there’s a large range of images to chose from.

16.  How do you always remain so calm?

I have 16 siblings.  Nothing’s so chaotic that I can’t handle it.  :)

17.  What’s your secret desire?

I secretly desire to have my photographs displayed in a gallery.

18.  What’s your favourite kind of weather?

I love right before a storm in fall, where it’s warm enough to be outdoors barefoot, but the wind is blowing strongly.  And I love those early spring days with snow still on the ground when the sun comes out and there’s that contrast of icy/warm.

19. When you do a shoot, is it planned in your head, or do you just go and shoot away. or maybe a combination of both? 

I usually have a few ideas that I want to try to execute, but I don’t let myself fantasize in too much detail, because I can never duplicate exactly what’s in my head.  I try not to control too much, because it always turns out better if I let the ideas unfold as I shoot.

20.  What is the number one thing you have to refrain yourself from buying at the grocery store? Something that you crave often or that whenever you see in the alley your mouth waters.

Grapefruit.

Here we go!  First ten questions.  I put all of the questions in a bowl and drew them randomly.  Thanks for playing!

1.  What Photoshop tool do you use most often in processing your photos? 

Curves.  I use curves for almost everything I do in Photoshop.

2.  Chocolate or vanilla?

Usually vanilla, but I love both!

3.  What is your favorite childhood memory?

I’ve told my favorite before, but it’s of Sharon and I walking down Main St. with cardboard boxes over our heads.

Maybe not my favorite memory, but the funniest is the day we (Sharon, Amee, and I) decided to ride our bikes down a really steep hill, but  we didn’t know the bike I was riding had no brakes.  I also happened to have laryngitis that day, so I went flailing through the air and no one could hear me scream.  :)

4.  Why did you choose a Nikon over a Canon? Would you ever switch to Canon?

I chose a Nikon, because I held it in my hands and it felt right.  I liked that it was larger and heavier and made me feel more important.  :)  I probably won’t ever switch to Canon, because it’s a huge expense to switch brands and I’ve always been happy with my Nikon.

5.  How old will you be?

I am now twenty-four.

6.  Happy Birthday! what’s your favorite color combos? for

living room decor:   I love green living rooms.  I wanted a fresh springy green and cream in ours, but my husband won.

Makeup:  I’ve been into brown/golds and purples lately.

An outfit:  I’ll wear any color except yellow or orange.  I like turquoise with grey.  Navy and red.

bathroom:  Mine is a greenish blue with white trim, and I do love it.

Pictures? b&w, or a tone…  I’m a color lover, so if I go b&w, I almost always  feel it needs to be toned.  In color photographs, I love the color of water with skin tones.

and what’s your favorite otter pop flavor/color?  I don’t like otter pops.  You must be pregnant to ask a question like that.  ;)

7.  After all of your years of photographing, what has been your favorite single photography experience so far?

Hard question to answer!  I had to settle on this session with Ella.  I just felt that she was so much like me as a little girl.

8.  What’s your preferred writing instrument; if pen are you a black ink or a blue ink sort of person?

I love black pens with that flowy liquid ink best.

9.  What is your dodging & burning technique?

I don’t dodge and burn.  I use curves.  :)

9. What did you wanna be when you were a kid ?

For a most of my childhood, I wanted to be an architect.  By the time I graduated High School, I’d decided I wanted to be a music teacher.

10.  I always want to know how people that are geniuses with photoshop and have such artistic photos learn that. How did you get started and learn all that has made you who you are today? Is it learnable or teachable or does that just have to be part of you?

I started photographing self portraits while I was pregnant with Gideon.  I’d learned he’d be born with a cleft lip and palate, and I had a mix of emotions that I wanted to say something about, but couldn’t directly.  I learned that I loved photography, practiced every day with my point and shoot to learn about light and composition until I could afford better equipment.  Eventually, I realized that I couldn’t not photograph.  One thing that helped immensely in my developing stages was starting the Art Foundation courses at a university.  It made me work with materials that I wasn’t good at: 3D stuff, drawing, and helped build a base in understanding and interpreting art.  I also took a course about contemporary artists, and spent hours in the art library scouring books on photographers and other artists and reading their words.

Artistic ability?  I think it comes in four parts.  There is a natural element to someone’s ability to create art, to communicate through a photograph.  I also think you need a desire to cultivate that ability.  You have to have something to say, and the skill part comes after that.  I do think the skills involved in photography are teachable and learnable, but the ability to see things is unique to each person.  I think that everyone has that inner vision inside of them.

So, my answer is

inner vision – everyone has it.

persistence/desire – not teachable, you’ve either got it or you don’t

something to say – comes from life experience

skill – comes from hard work and practice

Ask me any question you want and I’ll answer 20 of them on my birthday, Thursday, July 2nd.  I’m hoping for a variety of questions, so feel free to ask anything.

Edit to say you can ask more than one question.

:)

Wynona

I wrote this post yesterday, and wanted to add a bit about Gideon's disorder.  Cri du Chat is French for "cry of the cat", and in fact, the most apparent indicator of Cri du Chat is that the baby has a soft, high pitched cry that sounds like a kitten.  A clip of Gid's voice at one day old is linked right here.  As you can imagine, the nurses had a hard time giving him shots, because his cry was just so heartbreaking.  One day we were carrying Gid in his carseat into a doctor's appointment and an elderly lady stopped us and said, "It sounds like you've got a mad kitty in there!"