Tag Archives: coping with change

Altered Horizons 50

Altered Horizons 50 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricated landscapes when she feels depressed.

It was raining for days and days. Cooped up alone at home, I felt isolated and depressed. And frustrated because I had to delay my plan to focus on photographing bodies of water. I’d been hoping to shoot my pond and Cayuga Lake downtown, maybe Bullhead Pond up in Connecticut Hill. Instead, hunkering down in the house with mugs of hot chocolate, I rummaged through the kitchen and found a vase that reflected light like a rippled stream. In the high shelves where rarely used serving pieces lie in wait, there appeared a glass platter that could pick up the tiniest bit of light in the dim. In Photoshop, I paired these images to produce the fabricated landscape of the week.

Altered Horizons 50

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Altered Horizons 49

Altered Horizons 49 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops a fabricated landscape as part of her healing from loss and dealing with depression.

Even with the windows shut tight, the frog-song coming off the pond these spring nights is so loud it can keep you awake. The peeping, screaming, grunting or gulping sounds of each frog can reverberate all the distress already roiling around in your head. Or, if you settle your mind and limbs into the rhythm of it, it will lull you to sleep.

On the night of an almost-full moon I photographed clouds over the pond. Then I inverted the image in Photoshop, to depict the water below that teemed with new, noisy, messy and mysterious life.

 

Altered Horizons 49

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Altered Horizons 48

Altered Horizons 48 Robin Botie of ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricated landscapes in dealing with depression and coping with loss.

Making borders. Framing. For a long time I wondered why it was so satisfying to enclose each of my fabricated landscapes in a decorative border. My work just doesn’t feel done until I’ve framed it. Sometimes I photograph existing picture frames and then transpose their images into negatives in Photoshop, changing the colors and enhancing the shadows and highlights. Often I’ll start a frame from scratch, finding an interesting tooled edge or naturally defined edge on something and then I’ll stretch it out and piece it together, mitering the ends into four sides. Occasionally I’ll superimpose a floral or grassy graphic on the pieces. Surrounding my pictures is like securely wrapping them up into cozy nests. It’s like marking each newly composed place separate from the rest of the world.

The land and sky here is from the frothy edge of a wave washing up on a sandy shore, turned upside down and inverted to its negative in Photoshop. The moon is drawn from the image of an old tarnished Celtic knot pendant that I lightened and highlighted.

Altered Horizons 48

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Altered Horizons 47

Altered Horizons 47 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricated landscapes in dealing with depression and coping with change.

Well over half a century ago my kindergarten teacher told my mother I was talented. So began my career in art. By the 3rd grade, I was well established as a “good artist” in NYC PS94, and they gave me an easel in the back of the packed classroom where I could paint and draw all day during lessons. For years I painted and drew, and later sewed, my way through social studies reports, science projects, college term papers, and a master’s thesis. Art was a major part of my identity. Then, one day I quit. I couldn’t stand to even go near pencils or paints. People occasionally expected handcrafted cards or gifts, and I struggled through the process of “doing art” for them. Until I discovered I could “paint” with my photographs in Photoshop.

Here I’ve painted a seascape using a photo of the Yarra River in Melbourne, Australia, taken after tossing some of my daughter’s ashes into it. The frothy-looking land at the horizon line is the bubbly edge of an incoming tide at a beach where I attended family reunions in Sanibel, Florida. The sky is taken from an image of a sandy riverbank in Maryland where I rented a cottage with a friend during the first COVID Christmas. And the sun is my favorite gold pendant, enlarged, inverted and de-saturated in Photoshop.

When I “paint” in Photoshop I get lost in the process. Using images that pull at my heart and history, I now “do art” with a similar drive to what I had when I was young.

Altered Horizons 47

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Altered Horizons 46

Altered Horizons 46 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops a fabricated landscape in dealing with depression and coping with loss.

Inspiration for these fabricated landscapes often smacks me when I’m not at all focused on creating. Preparing to cook clams on my grill one evening, I unwrapped a package of metal mesh grilling sheets, shifting the layers in the process. The way they reflected the light reminded me of an ocean’s surface. A seascape, I thought. And later, in Photoshop, I paired the mesh sheets with a photograph of crystal plates that reflected similar angles and diamond shapes when stacked. Moon over a calm ocean. Too calm, I realized. I wanted it to be lighter, more uplifting. So I superimposed an image of the discarded remains of cutout tin can tops I’d photographed at a local scrapyard—to fill the sky with flying birds.

 

Altered Horizons 46

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Altered Horizons 45

Altered Horizons 45 Robin Botie of Ithaca, new York, photoshops fabricated landscapes as therapeutic photography for dealing with depression and grief.

There was an eye in the middle of the underside of a steel chute at the gravel pit. In a world where landscapes are riddled with security cameras, I did not question its presence. We’re always being surveyed and recorded. Possibly even in the remotes of a sand and gravel quarry, I thought.

In Photoshop, the only thing I added to the image was the frame that I pieced together from my photos of nearby gravel-transporting equipment. Also, I lightened up the dark steel to bring out its texture. Rusted metal can be so beautiful; it can be so depressing. But that eye—it was such a docile eye, a bit like that of an adoring pet—it almost turns the tiny industrial landscape into a portrait.

Altered Horizons 45

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