Two show/sales down, one to go, then I’m done for the year. Last night was the “Little Spaces” show at Persephone theatre. Seven artists set up just for the evening, in a nice space in the upstairs area. Not a lot of visitors, unfortunately, due in part to the Grey Cup football game which was on at the same time and which preoccupied much of the population of the province, the Saskatchewan Roughriders being one of the participating teams. As the saying goes. “timing is everything”. It always takes a bit to get new ventures noticed and established, but at least this one has had a launch, and we’ll see what the future brings for it. Friday I’ll be setting up for the Sundog show which usually draws about 10,000 visitors over several days, so that should be a bit livelier.
The local public health authority finally opened up H1N1 vaccinations to the general public last week, and I thought I’d better get my shot in time for it to do me some good before I spend three days shut up in a building with the above-mentioned thousands of people trooping past my booth. Despite wanting the shot, I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend several hours in line to get it, so I went during the supper hour last Thursday. Apparently this was a good move on my part, since it was busy but not grid-locked, and it took only about twenty minutes for me to move from the end of the line to the front. I was impressed with the thought and attention to detail that went into setting up the facility being used for the vaccinations, and also with the positive attitude and cheerfulness of the public health staff who were working there. One of the nurses told me the line-ups earlier in the day had been over two hours in duration, so I felt lucky to get in and out in just over a half hour total, including the fifteen minute post-shot wait.
As foretold in last week’s blog, my principal camera body and I have parted company for the moment. It is en route to Vancouver for diagnosis, and, I hope, a cure for what ails it. I wasn’t too distressed to send it off as I have the smaller back-up camera, although my hopes for an uninterrupted life of taking shots as usual were severely dashed when I went on a shoot on Saturday only to discover that my mainstay big fast zoom lens doesn’t work with the remaining camera body. That means none of my usual style of photos until I get the “big” camera back, which could be a month or two. Not sure what I’ll be shooting for the next while, but I’ll come up with some sort of plan, I’m sure.
As a result of this set-back, the Newfoundland pony shots I had hoped to feature today just didn’t happen the way I wanted them to. I have been taking a bit of time to work with some previously existing shots, so that’s what we’ll be viewing today.
Shot one is one I created from a very dark (almost completely unviewable) shot I got during the Gypsy stallion photo session. It was one of the worst of the “misbehaving camera” shots, of which I had way too many. Me being the way I am about these things, I was curious to see what if anything could be salvaged of the image, which as best I could make out was nice enough apart from not being visible. With a lot of massaging and Photoshop experimentation, I was able to pull the horse and a dim background out of the murk, then I merged it with one of my night sky images, since although it was taken in the daytime, it looked pretty much like night anyway. I quite like the end result, although I don’t think it would be printable due to the poor quality of the original shot. When I get time I’ll select a base shot that actually has some technical merit and try the same idea with it. For the moment, it’s in the “interesting concept” file.
Shot two would be from that same “interesting concept” file. This is another merged shot from one of the abandoned farmhouse series, with added and overlaid elements. Again, I think there is an idea here that I like, I’m just not all the way there yet with where this concept needs to go, so this version is just one of the stops along the way.
One of the things I’ve been meaning to do is to work up a series of images that I will print on greeting cards. Shots two and three are a couple that will end up in that format. I have lots of images that will work well for cards–ones that are too good to delete, but not quite right for larger format printing and framing as art shots. I’m enjoying thinking up captions for the more humorous ones.
Shot five shows my entry-area gargoyle in sunnier and warmer months. I bought him a couple of years ago at Hallowe’en and am quite fond of him. I never have liked his finish though, so today I decided I’d better extract him from his vine and drag him into the studio for a new patina, before he gets frozen in for the winter. I plan to “antique” him with (I hope) a slightly warmer hued stain. Not just sure how I’ll proceed, but at least I’ve got him indoors which is step one. For the moment he’s hovering beside the computer, waiting until next week when I have show season behind me and will be able to devote some time to more frivolous pursuits, such as gargoyle refinishing.

©Copyright 2009 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.