• 24 Apr
    Becoming The Artist – More Editorial Photography

    Becoming The Artist – More Editorial Photography

    In some images, I feel my own journey to become an artist and to define myself in those terms. The baring of a soul that comes with creating art, and posting yourself right out there for the world to see. Still not quite ready to show the face. I don’t suppose anyone would like these images and that is why I created them. Just to have the space to make something I wanted to make without regard to getting ‘likes’ or paid or anything else. I like to use my artistic voice to show emotions thougths and ideas we don’t see everday. Things beyond the ‘happy people being happy’ that comprise the bulk of our newsfeeds. Don’t get me wrong,  I love happiness and capturing it for others fills me with purpose and excitement and joy! But I’m a complex character with a full range of emotions, and there is a B side to life.  Stress, worry, anxiety are players in this modern world and just about everyone I know is riddled with one if not all 3. I want to capture the way we really feel. I capture the happy sunny stuff in my professional role, this is my artists space to make things that are a little more moody.  I was playing around with my shutter speed trying to capture not a crisp representation of what is actually there, but a blurry pattern of light and shadows that makes you feel something you can’t exactly put into words. So here is an image that speaks to the variety of emotions we all experience everyday, especially the darker feelings we don’t take selfies of.

     

    ‘Mixed Emotions’ by Barbara Byrge

    editorialphotographybarbarabyrge

     

    artist barbara byrge editorial photography

     

     

     

    These images are made in camera, only levels and tones were adjusted in post. No cutting pasting or cloning or stamping or warping was done to my these images.

     

     

     

  • 15 Apr
    Things You Didn’t Know About Me

    Things You Didn’t Know About Me

    Here are some things about me you might not know about me. 

    Positivity is my thing. I believe in the power of love and the brain’s ability to find what it seeks, so I believe if you actively look for opportunity, love luck and light and you will find it! I had some powerfully negative experiences lead me to this path, and I studied a book called ‘The Happiness Advantage’ to learn the deatilas on  how positivity leads to succes!

    I am the last of 5 siblings. My eldest brother is 11 years older than me.

    I am the first in my family to attend and graduate from college. I graduated class of ’00 from UCSB with a BA in Psychology and Arnold Schwarzenegger signed my diploma (he was governator at the time).

    My father worked in Liberia West Africa for more than 4 decades, I have a Liberian step mother named Martha.

    I visited Liberia in 2005 and was one of the few American women in country. Children would run alongside my Dad’s truck to get a glimpse of me. There is a video shop in Neezoe named ‘Bobra Video Shop’ which they named after me, for some reason. I think I was supposed to send videos. I will be sending educational videos, perhaps a little late for the success of Bobra Video Shop.

    I used to work in Media Services, and can connect and troubleshoot all kinds of TVs, VCRS, and well as computers and peripheral devices.

    I was employed as a Barista during college at The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, and I make a mean latte. I prefer Americano’s myself, all the freshness of espresso at the strength level I’m accustomed to in brewed coffee. Cream no sugar, please.

    I succeed at the task at hand, and often go above and beyond.  While in school I maintained nearly all As even through college (chemistry and geometery were my achilles heels). When I lead the backpack donations project, I doubled the donations from previous years. When I volunteered for the Professional Women’s Association at UCSB, I eventually became president.

    I worked at UCSB for 13 years in IT as a technical support guru. For the last 10 years I worked at the college of engineering supporting Macs and PCs in a Linux based server environment. I am very skilled at troubleshooting desktop hardware and software issues. I did not care much for writing code.

    I worked as a Technical Account manager for a software company that manages creates a real estate accounting software product for both residential and commercial and real estate and leared a lot about accounting, leasing, and troublshooting their software! I worked on the eLearning team and wrote classes to help train others.

    I tell jokes. I’d have to get to know you probably to tell you the best ones because they are racy. Nothing mean, but sometimes scandalous in nature. These jokes come from a lifetime of Dad jokes and puns that permanently clog up my brain.

    I have done some fun volunteer projects over the years. I collected money to buy ‘sweet cases’ for foster kids who are displaced through a charity called ‘Together We Rise’ and donated these cases to a local foster care agency for kids to use. I went to the Transition House in Santa Barbara and brought materials for the kids to do a craft and boxes of costumes so they could pick out Halloween costumes. I have photographed events like Earth Day, and been present during people’s final family vacations and gifted them portraits through the Dream Foundation. I dontated my time to co-chairing conference committees, and thusly planned and executed a several hundred attendee conference on women’s issues.

    I have taken photos of people since I was 16 years old. I used to carry a film camera in my purse everywhere I went in high school and it was Chris Gutierrez who first dubbed me ‘Barbarazzi’ for always taking photos. I am a born nostalgic, and sap and photos are all about emotion and memories for me. No matter what else I do in life I will always take photographs. I see the world in still images.

    Yo hablo español! My espanol no es perfecto pero, yo se dos cientos palabras y yo quiero usarlo! ja ja!

     

    By Barbara Byrge Happiness Musings