Stormy Waters Black and White Presets | Weekly Feature

Yay! I cannot even begin to put into words how incredibly awesome it is to see these presets out there in the wild! 

This feature is by Ashley Elsmore. Ashley is also a student in my online class, and witnessing her reach deeper and explore new ways of seeing and editing has been such an honor. 

I really love this image before and after because it's a perfect example of vision. She knew that in order to craft the image she saw in her mind's eye, she needed to shoot against a darker background with the beautiful freckled face well lit. Next, she brought the RAW color file into LR and applied the Stormy Waters presets. I absolutely love the transformation here. 

Black and white has my heart. Every single time. 

Here are some words Ashley shared on instagram @aephoto20 about her experience, "I'm taking a black and white photography class from @thedefineschool. It is taught by @michellegardella who is AMAZING! It has made me fall in love with black and white photographs all over again and has made me realize I crave to be more real and honest in my photography! You're going to see a lot of change from me from here on out. If you're in your comfort zone you're not growing!" 

Stormy Waters Black and White Presets by Michelle Gardella

Head's Up: This post is personal in nature. If you are looking for Stormy Waters black and white presets, more information about them, and where to buy them, visit the shop here for all of those details. This blog post is me spilling my guts about my process, my journey and my why.

I have an evolving to-do list that gets updated each Sunday night. While Lily is in the bath, I sit and map out the week, moving the things that were left undone from the week before to a new spot, with a hopeful heart. Having things left undone, by the way, is kind of torture for my OCD heart, so it truthfully doesn't happen too often. When people ask how I got to be someone who always does what they say they're going to do, I now realize it's because I simply cannot leave things un-done. I'll skip a shower just to make sure the proposal is emailed, or, stay up super late just to finish an edit for a client. Or sell my house and everything in it, to live in an Airstream. 

But there is one thing that has been on my to-do list for the last three years: Sell Your Presets.

Without exaggeration, each and every single week it'd just get bumped, circled, circled twice, but never crossed off. At one point I reached out to a larger company to see if maybe they'd want to partner up (way before that was actually a thing) and they said yes. But it didn't feel right because I wouldn't be selling my personal, favorite, every-single-shoot presets that I made from scratch myself. So I just kind of hid, and promoted others, but never crossed it off and always, each Sunday night, added it to my weekly list of goals. 

Each time I would go to complete it, something would stop me. Sometimes it'd be a voice in my head saying I was bananas for letting my secret recipe be known. Sometimes it was a belief that I couldn't just release black and whites, that I had to also add color. And other times, most times, it was the sheer overwhelming amount of computer work that it would all require. There is SO much more that goes into this process than one would think, and it's no secret that I am a woman hopelessly in need of being outside as much as possible. The thought of sitting on my fanny for weeks on end staring at a screen doing technical things, had me mortified. 

But through my OCD exposure therapy, I learned that sometimes things have to be extra awful so that they won't be awful at all anymore. It's a stupid truth, and one I wish weren't true, but it's the truth nonetheless. And so, with my newfound courage to do awful things, away I went. I know that's not the most joyful of things to share, and I could have instead slapped up a photo of me laughing while at my computer with my daughter wearing a vintage dress spinning in the fading day's sunlight, but that's just not how I roll. 

The truth is, never in my life have I worked so hard on something so outside of my comfort zone. I've heard the saying, "Do what you love and success will follow," but I've realized it's not so cut and dry. I love helping others, empowering emotional storytelling, elevating my peers. I love black and white photography and presets and image making. But sometimes, in order to do what I love, I have to do a bunch of things along the way that I don't love at all not even a little bit. SO many mistakes and fumbles and tests gone wrong. So many long hours in front of my computer, listening to birds chirp outside my window, singing songs to me like, "Bitch what on Earth are you even thinking?" That kind of thing. But in the end, as cliche as it sounds, love won, and all of the damn-this-sucks-my-eyes-are-burning-off hours, became worth it. Because in the mud, beautiful things grew that I can say, with all of my heart, I am so eternally proud of. And, these beautiful, magical things that I made, will help others not have to sit in front of the computer so much. And that's just the best thing, ever. 

Since announcing that I was releasing these, the number one question I have gotten is WHEN?! The second is, why black and white? 

I am going to borrow some excerpts from my online class to best answer this.

It is no secret that I am madly in love with the primal nature of things. It sometimes feels like my life is a constant evolution and devolution happening at the same time. The more success I achieve, the more time I need living in a trailer in the backwoods. The more civilized I feel, the more nights I have to spend covered in clay hunched over my pottery wheel. I get a new house, but I throw handmade granny afghans all over the place. I need a new truck, but I buy the used one that’s already dented. I’ll make art, but only if it doesn’t feel trendy.

I have an undeniable need to feel tethered to the past in a way that feels tangible and visceral, while still feeling like I am growing.

“What I love about black and white photographs is that they’re more like reading the book than seeing the movie.” -anonymous

I try super hard to not use the word balance, but the truth is, I can’t really function from a fulfilled place unless the feral side of my heart gets lots of love. I could write an entire dissertation on why this all is, and the importance of reaching back to move forward, but for now I just want to provide you with a context for this class.

This forward/backward simultaneous momentum relates directly to how I have found (am still finding) my way in the world of photography. I enjoy the convenience of digital, but I find that by focusing on as much black and white as possible, it keeps me rooted in a place that feels timeless, consistent, and proven. It feels more intentional and mindful.

Black and white photos are not real. I have never woken up seeing only in shades of grey. Yet, these images, others and my own, feel more real to me than any other art form I’ve encountered. Even when I am looking at an old polaroid with yellowed corners from the 1950’s out of the remote corners of India, I still find pieces of myself in a way I just can’t say I do with color images.

Photography is an example of evolutionary technology. There’s no denying that. But for me, it feels do-able as long as I am getting lost in estate-sale black and white albums and creating new black and white presets that make my heart thump. That balance; that nod to the past; that primal way of moving with the times; it’s kinda my jam.

So, in creating the Stormy Waters bundle, I feel like I'm creating something that will still help people long after the latest color editing trend du jour has passed. I feel like I am remaining true to what really matters to me. And more than anything, I feel like I am helping others create photographs that will stand the test of time. 

Photography gives us the ability to slow down our breathing long enough to drink in immortality. When you pick up your camera, or your phone, you are telling death no thank you. You are telling the rules of being forgotten to sit the hell down. You are resetting the privilege of others back to zero and exchanging your negative equity for a fresh start. In art there are no rules, there is only courage. I think it’s time to be brave, then.

Images, especially those in black and white, live longer than our heartbeats, and so, in the spirit of gratitude and the divine promise of our voices echoing in the eardrums of strangers who will sit in similar bone structures 300 years from now, I think the very least I could do was to do what I could, to help.

These presets are not for the pretty photographers. Not for the ones who whiten teeth or airbrush skin. Not for the ones who only post images of models half naked. There's enough of that out there, I think. Stormy Waters is for the ones who embrace the imperfect, the mysterious, the deep and the brave. For the ones who celebrate the visceral human experience and all of the messy hair, freckles, wrinkles and real life beauty it brings. Some people were made to ride the waves, and others were made to make them, I think. These tools, are for the latter. 

I hope you love them as much as I do. 

Visit the shop, here.

(In the spirit of honesty, there are actually two things that remained on my to-do list for years: Sell Your Presets and Write Your Next Book. Now that one of them is officially crossed off...) 

A Poem and a Photo

I breathe in the Texas sky the way others inhale good weed. Inhaling slow and holding long, letting it linger in my lungs long enough to fill each lobe. 

I work here on my stoop in the darkness, cuddled on my 1986 folding lounge chair, warm Goodwill blanket across my lap, braided hair that needed to be washed, yesterday. 

You slip into my sight every once in awhile in times like these. When things feel like heaven, I swear I can feel your living ghost telling me the truth of things. That sometimes people leave because it's the single bravest act of love imaginable. Sometimes the thing we call abandonment is the greatest gift of all. 

When everyone else is long asleep and the only company left to keep is the moon and my downstairs neighbor humming drunken Christmas carols in July, I can hear you telling me that it was never about a lack of commitment, but rather a declaration of you'll-be-better-off-without-me-kid. 

With the breeze and the trees and the afghan on my knees, this is my song of forgiveness. 

You knew you could never save yourself so you did the next best thing and saved me from you and I am grateful for the father-shaped-hole you left in my heart.

I've planted flowers there, and they're nocturnal. 

5 // The Connecticut Sessions

I have BIG NEWS. And I've been waiting for it to feel like the perfect time, or to find the perfect words, but I just decided tonight is the night! Because it's almost my favorite day of the year... MOTHER'S DAY!! 

Ok, here is the big announcement (eeeeeek! My stomach totally just flipped just then when I typed that!!): I am offering 5 River Story sessions in Connecticut at the Salmon River, where it all began. Ahhhhh!! The sessions will be in June and July while we are camping up in New England for 8 weeks. I'm only opening 5 spots, and I thought maybe if you've been called to the rivers, this would make a beautiful Mama's Day gift for you and your little ones.

I am totally rambling because I'm not very eloquent when I'm this EXCITED, but I can't wait another second. 

It's time to open my hands and set this bird free. I just know it. And I truly cannot wait to see who the 5 women are. My heart is pounding.

 
(I don't know how to make a fancy hipster graphic, but this one made me smile because it took me like 26 minutes to figure out how to make the polka-dotted circle, and so it stays.)

Joanna + Cooper // A River Story

Each weekend people fly here, to Austin, to meet me at these sacred waters hidden deep inside Pedernales. This is a reality I never, ever, not even for a second, take for granted. I cry almost every drive home along the long country roads, lit only by the stars. This is what I have to offer the world: My kintsugi heart gilded in flecks of gold and sea glass, muddy feet and weathered skin battered from the winds of a thousand storms. I speak the language of the rivers because they only know of words that deal with survival, and my armor has always been made of nothing more than salmon scales all along. 

 For years I show up and step in and promise to protect and proclaim and profess my love. For the skinned elbows, and the tears, and the rushing rapids. For the lightning bugs and the deer and the wobbly armadillos blindly trying to find their way home. 

But really it's all for Her. For the indestructible force that burns inside of every single woman.

This is our collective Home, this is where we belong, together, and week after week I am left speechless and in awe of just how breathtakingly beautiful it all really is.