A bit of video fun for its own sake: Our cat climbing the garden gate | (Yes, art therapy can be fun too! It should be time to time!)

---

Fun for its own sake- thats what both the 3 little clips which went into making this video were, as was making it. That's a good thing. Even an "emotional bathysphere" such as I needs a break from sturm und drang, and anyone living with chronic pain or disability has more than enough of that in their lives.

This is another view which makes me something of an "art therapy heretic" but after 15 years in the church, I'm used to that! My "faith stream's" founder was decried as a wild boar running amok in the Lord's garden, so being a heretic isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Light and fun as shooting and producing this was, it is a significant event in my life. With its devastating effects on energy and concentration, fibro had robbed me of my ability to do the sort of elaborate and carefully constructed videos which had been my wont and my great pleasure. While this has been the case, I've never accepted it had to be so. I've been determined to find a way to work around the limited energy and attention span. This video is an experiment in doing just that, and it came out quite well.

The way I was able to make this was work was to break everything down to its most elemental and do that sequentially. So first I collected the video clips, then the pictures, then I put them in the editor, and within the editor I did each type of editing on all the clips, saved the project, cleared my head with something else, came back and continued. I also tried to keep this as simple as possible.

I hope to be able to apply these principles to more videos. If there's more to learn about living with fibro's crushing pain and lack of energy while still being a creative human being, I will. I will NOT concede ultimate defeat to this. A tactical retreat might be necessary from time to time, but surrender is not a concept I accept.

Here's the boilerplate from Youtube:

Three fun clips of my clat climbing the garden fence, mixed with photos of my wife holding her and her in the flower garden behind. Its been so hard to work on videos with fibro, wanted to try something simple and fun to get back into it. I had fun making this, I hope you have fun watching it!

Radio commercial is Creative Commons BY-NC-SA from http://www.archive.org/details/Vintag...

Visuals also cc: ny-nc-sa http://listig.multiply.com & http://suffering-and-art-therapy.blog...

PS- Fun fact: Phoebe here is almost 15 years old! She's a very active & healthy elderly kitty!

Job 19:26 Word Picture - Flesh fails, yet shall see God

---

This verse was the original one requested and this picture is what got me to act on the request. When I saw it afterwards I was taken with how vividly and perfectly it illustrates the verse.

That water is present in both pictures is not coincidental. I never miss an opportunity to take photos of flowers after a heavy fog or rain, the results are always quite impressive.

This is the same kind of flower- a cosmos- as the one for verse 25. Could even be the exact same flower.

It had been my intent to do this in landscape format as the previous one was, however when looking at the photos the words of this verse worked as perfectly above and below the flower as the ones to verse 25 had worked along side it.

Should the need arise I could do a version of it in landscape mode, however I decided it was better to go with the artistic "dao" than to force conformity between the two for conformity's sake.

The monochrome versions are below. The first looks better, the second prints better. This is not a picture which converts well to monochrome... far too much of the intensity of the withered petals and faded center is lost.

---

Better looking mono, using Floyd-S dithering setting 160, then inverted.

---

Prints out better. Same dithering as above. This was the first mono version I created.

Words & a picture: Job 19:25 and a cosmos

Foreword: There are some creative endeavors which have meaning even beyond the obvious. These are those which let us still engage in the pursuits and interests we had before suffering and disability came. I was a pastor/chaplain/missionary/evangelist. When I create these "Word Pictures" it engages me both creatively and spiritually.

The latter is something accessible to anyone who is disabled, whether they were of a spiritual vocation or not, and regardless of their particular spirituality. I find that engaging in the creative endeavor always brings me closer to God because God is the creator, and when I'm creating, I'm in unity with him. Additionally, since visual arts are my primary medium, I'm always working with the beauties of creation. Those are both dynamics which anyone who is disabled or suffering can engage in, and I highly urge you to do so.

---

Color, full sized

Only "fx" a bit of sharpening. Photo when taken was under exposed with fill flash, right after a heavy rain.

---

Mono, full sized

>
Converted to black and white by Floyd–Steinberg dithering, setting = 19

---

Color, half sized

---

Mono, half sized

---

---

---

There are many interesting aspects about this project.

To begin with, this started with a suggestion from a friend that I do Job 19:26. I agreed, its a great verse and often used in funeral liturgies, but when I looked at the context, I was taken with the previous (this) verse as well. It is the most beautiful expression of the Gospel in the Old Testament. Initially I thought to do both verses in one image, but that would have been too cluttered- neither the words nor the images would have been of a size to be worthwhile.

So how is it that I wound up doing this verse first? I worked backwards. I had been sitting on the request to do Job 19:26 for a couple of months. Then last week I took a picture of a cosmos withered up not at all thinking of the verse, but just because it was visually compelling. When I looked at the pictures though the verse immediately came to mind.

When I realized I wanted to do verse 25 as well I had to find a picture of the same flower with the same tone as the withered one. Here's where the story gets exciting (for me anyway)

I picked out eight candidates and reviewed them with my wife this afternoon. This photo was her immediate choice and I concurred. I had thought to leave it with that and proceed to do the requested verse first, but somehow this photo and the verse grabbed hold of me... and 10 minutes later, it was done except for adding in the credits and doing the reduced colors and sized versions.

I've never had a word picture come together so quickly, nor have I ever been so pleased. The words just naturally flowed around the shape of the flower. It was magical. Not only was I pleased with the end result, but I was pleased at how transparent to the process I became as I was doing it. I used to have that experience all the time before fibro took over my life, this is the first time I've had it in months.

I hope to do verse 26 soon so you can see them as I do in my mind, as a pair. The verses go SO well together and so will the finished projects.

Administrivia:

This is in landscape mode and I do not plan on doing a portrait mode unless asked because of how well the words flowed around the image. I can't image a portrait format being as artistically perfect, but if needed I will give it a try.

I usually create multiple monochrome versions. In this case though, with the dark and deeply saturated original, I am not going to. It was hard enough to get one good one. This image is a PERFECT example of why I go to the extra effort to create monochrome versions. When I printed the color image to my B&W laser printer, it was a disaster.

At the moment the images are only on Multiply and Facebook. I do plan to upload them to the other sites where I make my "Word Pictures" available but I'm worn out right now... doing things on the web still takes a lot out of me, so that will have to await another day. I'll probably wait until I have the image for verse 26 before I do those uploads.

---

Improved, MUCH better monochrome version

Full sized

This goes again to show why I put the extra effort into creating high quality monochrome versions of my Word Pictures ... the previous mono versions looked great on the screen but when I printed them they were ugly and muddled.

So I simply inverted the colors ("negative" in most software) and replaced the black "F" with white in the "For" because when I printed the invert the first time the "F" was not as clear as I'd like.

The same trick could be applied to any of my previous mono versions which are darker. I've come to see that monochrome versions need to be predominately white with black details. One is always learning as long as one is living.

half size

Job 19:25 Word Picture - "I know that my Redeemer lives" | IMPROVED monochrome versions

Full sized

This goes again to show why I put the extra effort into creating high quality monochrome versions of my Word Pictures ... the previous mono versions looked great on the screen but when I printed them they were ugly and muddled.

So I simply inverted the colors ("negative" in most software) and replaced the black "F" with white in the "For" because when I printed the invert the first time the "F" was not as clear as I'd like.

The same trick could be applied to any of my previous mono versions which are darker. I've come to see that monochrome versions need to be predominately white with black details. One is always learning as long as one is living.

half size

TODAY'S BEAUTY: 5 Petaled Zinnia rendered as a pencil sketch

This is a photo of a Zinnia with all but 5 petals gone which I ran through FotoSketcher. The filter is pencil sketch #3.

Its part of a series I started of using different filters in FS and PhotoFilter but never quite finished. This is my favorite of the series so far, so I thought it perfect to share with you as "today's beauty."

FotoSketcher is a fantastic program for rendering photos into paintings as you see.

As usual the original photo was under-exposed by two stops with fill flash.

http://www.fotosketcher.com/

Burning Bush - Slate Sky - Sample image AND why I've been doing daily art posts

---

I've taken easily over 100 pictures like this, I do plan to post them to an album, but I don't have the energy to do that today, and therein lies something worthwhile to comment on.

For years while I watched my wife suffer the torments of migraines with no relief, I urged her to grasp back at life, to pull some of it back from the maw of the demonic beast which had taken over her life. Since she is a dynamic creative person, a major thing I encouraged her in was expressing herself creatively and engaging that rich inner world of hers. Its paid off... she's written two incredible novels (as yet sadly unpublished), is well on her way to finishing a third, and has done numerous outstanding paintings (as yet sadly unposted.)

Since my atraumatic fracture of my femur last November, the discovery of osteoporosis & the diagnosis of fibromyalgia, I've had the unique opportunity (how I dearly hope its unique!) for me to practice what I've long been preaching.

When fibro first struck me down though it was a tough transition to make... before fibro, I was routinely doing major complex projects such as my video tour-de-force "Fire Spirit, Inspired by the music of Troll's Den." which featured photos I took of this same shrub- the "burning bush"- last year, using an innovative "animation" style which has greatly informed subsequent projects.

I couldn't begin to maitain the energy levels and concentration it took to create that now. I kept trying and projects kept being left uncompleted.

So lately I've learned to grasp on to what bits of energy and focus I have, for as long as I have them, and do smaller projects.

The next step will be to break the larger projects into smaller bits I can still do, but I want to get more well established in this groove of posting something creative every day before I do this.

---

About the photo

I used the "relief more" filter on it, but otherwise, this photo actually features far less "magic" than most of mine. I didn't adjust the exposure at all, I simply set the camera to "macro focus" so it could capture the leaves at low light settings.

When I'm able to process all the "Burning bush- slate sky" photos, I'll do an album. For now though, this stunning picture serves as today's window into my creative soul.

Cute: Squirrel with white eye shadow on a bird feeder- enlarged from a video still (and mini-tutorial- how to do it)

HOW:

I captured a video still of this by pausing it at the right moment, capturing a screen image and pasting as a new image into photofiltre.

then I used smilla enlarger- an open source program to enlarge small images without creating a ghastly mess of jaggy edges and all the other distressing visual clutter which usually comes with trying to enlarge a small source image.

I loaded it back up in PhotoFiltre and did one more trick which helps with enlarging small source images: I used the filter "ink outlines" - this smooths out the edges nicely. Just it alone can help yield very good results when enlarging a small image.

Thus we went from 640x480 to 2400x1800, a pretty significant increase!

WHY:

I don't normally like "tree rats" but this fellow is the cutest squirrel I've ever seen, with the white circles around his eyes and the perfect "squirrel" color to his fur.

DEEP EXISTENTIAL THOUGHTS:

Something doesn't have to be as breathtaking as the flower I posted yesterday to be worth while. Just as beauty for beauty's sake is a sufficient reason to take and look at a picture, share it with others, get lost in it yourself, so too are the fun and frivolous. CARPE MOMENTUM! What ever gives you a smile, gets you through the day.

When you are disabled, this is especially important... you have to make the most of the opportunities to be distracted from the torment and limitations of your body.

PERSONAL:

I've got a number of clips of this fun fellow playing... maybe some day I'll be able to figure out how to work through the fibrofog and do video editing again. Baby steps. I'm learning how to do some simple photo projects now, once I get into the groove of that, I'll move on to trying to apply the same techniques to working with video.

Beauty: Rain soaked cosmos with a "pickle bug"

Just a bit of beauty to share with you from the hundreds of such pictures I've been taking lately

.

What: A cosmos flower wet with rain with a "pickle bug" on it

How: Under exposed two stops, fill flash.

Deep existential thoughts: None - beauty is enough of a reason to take and post a picture.

The birthday I wasn't supposed to have

Yesterday was my 43rd birthday, and in some ways, it was the best birthday I've ever had.

Not because we had a blowout party. We didn't, just a nice cook out where I grilled my favorite foods.

Nor because of the presents (just one from my wife, mother, mentor, and mother-in-law)

but because... I wasn't expected to have it at all.

Many times during the course of this shredding of the boundary between the sane and the insane, the probable and improbable, the earthly and hellish, the grim reaper's shadow fell upon me. Indeed, almost from the start, there was a palpable fear that my broken bone and brutal pain presaged the presence of something dire and terminal such as cancer or a brain tumor.

The fear grew and grew with each test the doctors ordered which seemed to confirm it.

It reached its horrible apex on what we call "the day of death." A scan showed something which we were told indicated stage 4 (the last, terminal, essentially untreatable) cancer.

I'd held off speaking of that horrible day in public because any words I could give it seemed so insufficient. I was lying there counting my remaining minutes, wondering how I could spend as much of them with Tess as possible while also earnestly desiring to shield her from the agonies to come as much as possible.

The next day came a reprieve... a new scan, a new interpretation.

Even after the death sentence was revoked, the fear that something almost as bad was present remained. I had still broken the strongest bone in the body for no apparent reason. I still had excruciating pain without apparent cause.

And of course, the tests continued. All told, I spent close to a day in various machines having every inch, every cell, of my body scanned and rescanned.

It wasn't until the Fibro diagnosis came just in time for our 15th anniversary that the grim reaper's specter finally left us.

That wasn't too long ago, and the time of fear and uncertainty had been- if anything- more agonizing than the pain.

So when I awoke yesterday, it was indeed the most joyous birthday of my life.

---

About the picture:

I used FotoSketcher (win & mac) to convert one of the photos a dear friend shot for this blog post. The mode used was watercolor. I adjusted the settings to produce a picture which simultaneously had fewer sharp details yet conveyed the over all setting in a very vivid way.

The other thing I was after was to dampen the color intensity.

The net effect I wanted was to convey to you how my mind's eye sees the time there. (I was on a morphine pump after all.)

You on Multiply can see the original below.

You rug folk - yes, I did work rugs, and even tried to teach people how to make them (yes, even on the "Day of Death" since I've always wanted to be remembered for three things: My steadfast love for my wife, parents, and friends, my visual arts, and my rugs.)

If hell is a fraction as bad as Fibro, then I DRASTICALLY undersold it in my sermons!

---

To understand this dark humor, you need to know/remember that I was once a preacher.