Wrong tag

If I'd been paying close attention, I would have discovered that I had reversed the tags on the photos I submitted to the last juried show. So, the one I posted of the single flower may be a nice photo, but it was not the one that was selected.

This turns out to be good because I like the other one better and could not understand why it didn't make the jury cut.

So, this is a photo of the reflection in the window of an antique store in Athens, Ga one winter morning. There was a mirror in the window and other glass objects. I love how the window and the mirror reflect the building across the street! You may notice the the two pictures that have been accepted into the juried shows are both reflections.....I see a pattern here!

The only adjustments were slight ones to the lighting and saturation of the sky.

This is what I love about photography...it teaches you to look more closely at things and what you are actually seeing. I could have just walked down the street and taken a cursory glance at the antiques in the window, but by really looking, I saw more. With a camera attached, I could grab the image and keep it.

Juried shows

Part of finding one's way into a new field is just trying things. I think if we had done more research and some reading, we might have scared ourselves off entering juried shows, but we were naive and gave it a shot. We've entered two local juried shows so far and had one photograph selected for each. This turns out to feel really good!

The first is a photo taken of a vase in the window of a downtown restaurant on a nice sunny morning. I played with the levels and then inverted the original and adjusted the hue and saturation. I love all the little things that show up in the reflections.

The second is the photo that inspired me to try doing this professionally. It was the result of taking a professionally led field trip to beautiful DuPont Forest in NC. A lone flower on the shore of a little lake on a pretty fall day.

We are excited and encouraged to try more things and play more with our art. Photography is a great medium for exploration.

Finding our way

We took part in an "Art in the Park" event in a place called Hurricane Shoals County Park in north GA on Saturday. We had had rain on and off all week and the forecast for the weekend was pretty damp, but after much debate and checking the forecast, we decided to give it a try.

We managed to set up before the downpour, but that's about the only break we got. Finally we had to take down most of the framed art and cover the rest. Obviously almost nobody came to the event and at about 2:30 we decided it wasn't going to get better and packed up and headed home. We did not return on Sunday.

The event was billed as "art in the park" but there weren't more than 5 or 6 artists there. The rest were crafts, special interest groups, churches and food vendors. Therefore, the few people who did attend were not there to buy art.

The positive outcomes were that we learned to ask more questions before signing up for events in the future, and the chance to see a very nice and pretty heritage village in the park. It's worth a visit if you are in the Commerce, GA area.

This is a view from inside the little white church in the park looking out at the damp day. It is as yet untouched except to adjust the lighting a little. On a nice, sunny morning, this will be a beautiful place.

Public Art

One of our missions is to find the art that's all around us every day. I've been passing this sign for years and always meant to stop and take a few pictures. The other day I had my camera, blue skies and puffy clouds. Instead of a beautiful sign standing in an abandoned diner parking lot (the diner was torn down about 2 years after it was built) along a busy road, it's now a hangable work of art.

I adjusted the light a little and then posterized to get the mix of colors in the sky. Not sure of the title yet....Hop in Heaven?

News and views

One of my photographs was accepted into the juried art show at Upstate Visual Arts. Making the cut turned out to be nerve racking, but now I'm in. Results of the judging are tonite. It will be interesting to see what kind of art wins. I feel very honored to have been selected, and no, I'm not just saying that.

We are going to be in three upcoming events - and maybe more. Sept 19 & 20 at the Riverside show outside of Commerce - details when I get them.

Oct 3 we will be in the Trillium art fair in Travelers Rest, SC

Oct 10 at the Downtown Wake Forest Autumn Arts Fair in Wake Forest, NC.

We will probably also enter at least 2 more juried shows this fall.

We have come so far in less than a year and find we are looking at things very differently than we did and using our photoshop and painting techniques more selectively.

Here is one of Wayne's most recent works. We were on an errand and came around a curve to see this beautiful tree standing alone in a farm yard. Light and sky were about perfect.