Author Archives: charr

About charr

Charr Crail is a Northern California photographer and artist with an avid passion for creating unique digital imagery. Charr, a full-time freelance photographer, spans the divide between photojournalism and extraordinary art via photography and can trace back her evolution as an photographer/artist from three dominant sources. Her father made his living as a newspaper photographer and as soon as he could, was taking young Charr, then four, on assignments to capture a lifetime of experiences and images. He instilled a sense of adventure and curiosity in her as they would often meander down unknown country roads of the South – just to see and capture what was out there. Soon after, Charr would develop her eye for photography and journalism as “the river that runs through everything she does”. Charr’s mother blessed her daughter with the ability to appreciate art in its various mediums. Further, her mother was able to pass along the joy, satisfaction and excitement one can experience in actively creating something beautiful. It’s no surprise, then, that Charr would become a photojournalist and later a photo editor spanning two decades working for Northern California publications including The Sacramento Bee. Often, her assignments would include community events with a “close to home” theme woven into every image and story she captured. Her photojournalistic experience has therefore been nuanced through everything she produces. She’s also drawn to the wonder of color and the beauty that can be found in the composure of a face and the make-up of the human bodyscape. Charr has won countless awards for masterful pieces including; the Professional Photographers of America LOAN Collection for two consecutive years, WPPI Grand Award and her work has been featured in the Di Rosa Museum in California’s beautiful Napa Wine Region and is also part of the permanent collection. Separately, she instructs digital photography workshops that teach students how to blow out the creativity of their photography in simple methods using programs like Adobe Photoshop and how to market using mobile devices-- Visual Content Creation using Mobile Devices.. Charr lives in Sacramento with her husband Chris and kitties Leeloo and Sadie.

App-solutely! App-mosphere to Blog-o-sphere…

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(Image above is the original drawing, see bottom of post for the version discussed in this post)

Apps! I have so many of them they take up most of the space on my iPhone and iPad. But I LOVE them! There are incredible things out there for the creatively insatiable like we are. And even though the results of the art we create on the mobile devices may not be magazine quality/dpi it doesn’t mean we can’t use them to make art or to embellish our art. App-depending you can still get a decent quality out of most them I have found. And if not I’ve found I can tweak later and make it work.

I’m a digital artist… duuuuh. But I have found a couple of apps that I think are brilliant and monster kudos to their creators who took their time and brilliant genius to get them into the app store at .99 a pop so I can do and create things beyond my scope of abilities in Adobe Photoshop.

This particular image is a hybrid of one brilliant App and a pretty amazing website I was turned onto.

The website is http://www.mrdoob.com. The site has been around for years and has some amazing things on it but the one I enjoy when in a doodling mood is Harmony. I have no idea what the creator did, how it works, only that it does brilliant craziness and I love the results. I simply make a drawing, do a screen grab, open up the drawing in Adobe Photoshop and away I go– adding color, altering lines, drawing in faces and more line.

This image was originally drawn on http://www.mrdoob.com, then saved to my photo stream. The additional wave of fun is due to a hippie dippie App that makes me insanely happy called Phototropedelic. Psychedelic and fabulous if you ask me. Do a little button and numbers selection dance in there and bingo bongo, next stop Photoshop where I dialed in some color and a few more minor adjustments. Ta daaaaa!

I like to create for the sake of creating, don’t you? It’s how I learn. Trying things out, seeing what it will do. WHAT IF… That’s the game. If you haven’t yet why not play it with me? I’d love to see what you’re up to, please share and I just may post it! xxxooostickface

Owl City backstage at Endfest

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This just makes me laugh!

I’m always on my computer in my archives searching for something and often come across fun or unexpected file photos.  This one of Owl City is from End Fest last year. I was one of the photographers shooting the meet and greet and just before the crowd began to line up I had an opportunity to meet Owl City.  I asked them to jump, who knows why!  Only this one member said yes and I shot two consecutive frames then animated it.

When it comes to working with your subjects and something pops into your head It never hurts to ask them to do it because you never ever know what will happen next and what kind of fun it might lead to.  This just makes me laugh. 🙂

Fido and Fluffy are Family Too!

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C-is-for-cat-CrailYes, C is For Cat!  Meet my beautiful feline friend Toby.  He’s been with me for 16 years now and has been feeling a bit poorly recently.  One thing I’m so glad of is that over the years I have taken the time to make art pieces out of my cat friends.  Our pets are such important part of our family.  I do animal art portraits professionally too and my tag line is “Fido and Fluffy are Family Too”.  They are such wonderful companions with these great distinctive personalities and big love in abundance for us.  Not a day goes by that I don’t sit back and marvel at the joy they bring into my world with their sweet and loving companionship.  I’m feeling so much love and compassion for my ailing Toby today so decided to share this artistic representation I did of him a couple of years ago.  His bountiful purr is unparalleled!

On the technical side I found some wonderful old lettering and clip art to use for the drawn graphic elements and also wrote the prose, which I used both in english and in french.   It’s created in Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter.