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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAsS1tDNFWM?fs=1&w=480&h=295]Monday April 18th is the next date for the next K.I.S.S. Like Charr Workshop in Sacramento! This is an all-day, hands-on digital photographic art event that’s fun, educational and inspirational. Details coming!
Take a peek this video for a look-see at the How to K.I.S.S. Like Charr photography workshop and hear some great testimonials about how incredibly fun and easy Keeping it Simple really is when it comes to working in the digital photography realm.In this class you’ll learn some great Adobe Photoshop CS5 tools, work with type and you will create an incredible digital art piece from start to finish! Details and information coming soon. Want to be on the email list? Please let me know. Questions or comments? I’d love to hear from you!

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=widgetsamazon-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00064XR6Y&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr
I love this thing! Talk about simple and fun. Like a ring flash but for on the go kinds of situations. I’ve been having a lot of fun with mine and even though it says macro– try it for portraits, yeah! 🙂

Little Dancer by Lavona Gelardi
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Kaylee by Marie Ortman
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I’m delighted to show these two beautiful new works by Marie Ortman and Lavona Gelardi, both participants in my January K.I.S.S. Like Charr Digital Art Workshop. Each one of these images was created post-workshop using techniques, imagery and brushes I created for the course.
Thank you so much for sending these in. I’m incredibly impressed! They both show how using just a few tools can create something new and magical, adding a new layer of unique beauty or meaning to a photograph.
If anyone has comments or questions please share here in the comments box. I would love to hear from you.

http://www.youtube.com/get_player
WATCH THIS VIDEO TO SEE SOME OF THE BEAUTIFUL WORK THE PHOTOGRAPHY ARTISANS IN MY WORKSHOP CREATED!
The How to K.I.S.S. Like Charr January Workshop concluded last night and Woo Hoo, that was fun!
We took a picture of our model Monique at the start of class and then 14 people turned it into a great work of art, each one with a unique point of view. The imagination is a beautiful thing and I’m so in awe of it. As a teacher it was a great delight to see people light up when they learned some unexpected way of using a tool, some new knowledge or insight of the seemingly commonplace that suddenly elevated it to something closer to a carnival ride!
Yes, Photoshop is, as ever, my very favorite playground.
I’m so grateful for every single one of the members of this workshop who taught me as much as I taught them. Thank you and I can’t wait for the next one, I’ll keep you posted.

For more information or to get on my mailing list please email me at charr@charrcrail.com.

Thanks to Chris Goslow, the composer of the gorgeous music on this video. “The March of Rustling Leaves”

How to K.I.S.S. Like Charr is going fantastically well! Night two of three during this inaugural workshop put on through PPSV (Professional Photographers of the Sacramento Valley) was last night. In this hands-on workshop I’m sharing some of my personal secrets about how to create the lively and colorful art works I do– I’m teaching The Art of Making Art via Photography using the digital tools and knowledge I’ve developed over many years of doing this work professionally.
Last night as I walked around the room and saw what the students were doing I was so impressed and delighted, just glorious work! The energy in the room was incredibly exciting, everyone so engrossed in their project they literally groaned with displeasure when I told them we were winding it up for the night. Now that’s what you want as a teacher– excited, inspired people!
Our project has been to create a Rock n’ Roll Faerie. Last week I had the wonderful model Monique come in for a session on simple lighting and we captured the portrait that would be the foundation for the course. Even a few of the students took a turn with the camera and worked directly with our beautiful model.
Now they have an assignment to create their own piece using what I’ve taught them and using my brushes and textures off the workshop disk I gave them. I can hardly wait to see what they come up with and will be sharing here…

Welcome to my new blog about the Principles of K.I.S.S.ing… and this is NOT what it seems. 😉

As a professional photographer and artist I’m creating and holding workshops where people with artistic sensibilities can learn and explore the wonderful world of digital photography and create otherworldly images with ease and panache. I call it my K.I.S.S. method.

I constantly get asked– How did you do that? Using five or less elements to make something extraordinary, astonishing, fantastical, gorgeous… big words for something so simple.

KEEP IT SIMPLE SWEETIE. That’s what I will teach you about the process of creating art, Charr style.

KEEP IT SIMPLE SWEETIE!

I love to learn but I hate reading the manual. Most of what I know is by simple trial error– What I call the “What If” game. For years I have been teaching myself in Photoshop how to do the fun stuff beyond the basics by playing What If. Yes, sometimes I do look up how to do something, but consider that playing my game What If can be a lot of fun too. In this blog I will be posting art projects, workshop experiences and students work. It’s gonna be fun. Stay tuned…

Photoshop Playground, my favorite place to play. And I’m constantly learning too by simple experimentation… What If. Here are two examples of What If in action. Both images are of the same girl from the same photo session– now Charr K.I.S.S.ed. You can see the original image and then what I did with it.
I’m quite enamored with the use of typography as a graphic element and bits and pieces from other images I’ve shot. In these images you can find gardens from a wedding, old buildings from downtown, my own line drawings– and as complicated as they may appear they use very few elements to create the look they have. 🙂

Meet Brian Doyle, 24-year-old drummer in the process of making some big decisions in life and working towards a future that will allow him to pursue his passion for music. Doyle is a drummer, an energetic play hard and make lots of noise drummer who was with the punk rock band Guttermouth. Now Doyle is back home in Torrance California planning out a new future and splitting his work time between college courses and waiting tables, but playing drums on the side in his home studio. Ultimately his plan is to transfer to a four-year college and get his International Business degree where he believes his looks and outgoing personality will serve him well, ultimately financially fueling his music pursuits.
Doyle decided to become a drummer at 14 when he went to church and was amazed by the resident drummer there “ripping rock beats”. He chatted him up afterwards and began a great friendship, which included his new friend teaching Doyle how to play. “Now I show him what’s up!” Doyle says with some pride and a smile in his voice. Doyle has developed a style that is fast and hard with lots of different rhythmns. He says for him that drumming is a natural drug, better than any hard drugs. “I don’t do hard drugs but even if I did I know this is still way better than that!”

This video is from a Warped Tour performance… see Doyle in the back on drums.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuVN76akHT0]

One of the top dogs at California Musical Theatre once called Ron Swanson the “Mary Pickford of Music Circus” because everyone loves him and he makes them look beautiful. “I get them out of trouble, saving the orphans from the alligators, just like Mary” Swanson says with a sweeping hand gesture and an easy laugh. Early screen star Mary Pickford was well known as a victorious victim in her film roles so it stands to reason that saving actors from bad hair days makes Swanson a real treasure in the realm of making people look good on or off the stage. Swanson is the Director of the Hair and Wig Department for Music Circus and California Musical Theatre. Brilliant actors travel from both coasts to perform here each summer season and Swanson transforms them in to every manner of character one can imagine and he’s been doing hair and wigs at the theatre for nearly 14 years.

Why does he love doing hair? “I love the people, the hair artistry, the service performed, it’s fun.” Swanson adds that there is an enormous difference between Salon hair and Theatre hair. “Theatre can be very creative but salon has very strict parameters– contemporary, street level styling so it blends in with every one else out there. But in the theatre you are free to get completely lost in any time period you’re in and you can do anything, it will never be wrong. People are happy to wear great big ugly hair in the theatre because they know they can take it off.”

After a moment of reflection Swanson adds “Theatre people and actors are some of the bravest people in the world. When you are someone who makes a living with your looks, are noted for that, and you’re on stage in something that makes you look like your grandma– in front of two, three, four thousand people– that takes real courage! Most of us don’t ever leave our homes if we don’t look a certain way, I can’t! And then stand there singing like it’s all natural? Oh no no no no noooo, no, nooooooooo” he says with a dramatic and hearty laugh… the final nooooo trailing off to a thoughtful silence…..

However, in the interest of the Moonlighitng blog premise it turns out Swanson also has a sideline– an appreciation for doll collecting and restoration, which began ten years ago but got serious about five years back. (Check back because I’ll be photographing him doing restoration on a Shirley Temple doll in the next week or so and will have photographs as well.)

Though Swansons doll collection is large and varied with approximately 75-100 dolls, his favorite is Judy Garland as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. “It’s an investment, I’m not selling them now. I’m sitting on the collection because it’s going to be part of my old age retirement.”