We’re having an art show!

Introducing my first art show, shared with my wonderfully creative family.

Here is the postcard we came up with. If anyone happens to be local and is looking for something fun to do come on by the gallery and have a look.
Here is some info about the artwork we each will be displaying.

Photography x 4 

Gary P. Bergel is showing a selection of “SkyStones,” recent digital and word image explorations of the varied stone outcroppings near and within a 25-mile radius of his home near Charles Town in Jefferson County, WV.  

He also currently has works in “A Dip in the Blue” exhibit at Touchstone Gallery in Washington, DC (www.touchstonegallery.com) through June 3, and a suite of floral studies on display at The Bridge Gallery in Shepherdstown, WV through June 9th (www.bridgegalleryandframing.com).  

Gary holds a BS Degree in Biology and Secondary Education, and an MA Fine Arts Degree / Mixed Media and Ceramics, from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  He is a founding, exhibiting member of the Washington Street Artists’ Cooperative in Charles Town, WV and is a teaching artist on the faculty of Blue Ridge Community and Technical College, Martinsburg, WV.  Gary works in photography and mixed media, exhibits widely, and is represented by Bridge Gallery, Shepherdstown, WV, and at Touchstone Gallery, Washington, DC. Before moving to the Metro DC area in 1981, Gary founded Space Gallery and taught a live Arts and Ideas Curriculum in the Humanities Department at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo.

Joseph P. Bergel is presenting a sequence of recent “a-historical” larger-scale digital images documenting “Areas of Discontent” and other lived in “social sculpture” spaces, based on the premise that the role of artists is first to “re-present” the world around them.

Joseph graduated with a BFA  Degree in Visual Studies from the State University of New York, (SUNY) Brockport, and earned a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Photography/Critical theory from SUNY, Buffalo.  He is the co-founder of Play Therapy, an artist collective that seeks to act as a societal speed bump for everyday life.  He lives with his wife and family west of Toronto, Canada in New Hamburg, Ontario where he has his studios and operates New School Photography.   Joseph will be visiting and presenting an installation and “North of the Border Artist’s Talk” at the Slant Factory Art Space in Charles Town later this year.  

Anna K. Gibson is exhibiting a selection of portraits, genre and art digital photographs captured in Morocco, Togo and Benin, Africa.  Her love of people, animals, and nature are reflected in these moving digital images.   

Anna holds an Associates of Science Degree from Northern Virginia Community College.  She is a member of the Washington Street Artists’ Cooperative in Charles Town, WV.  Anna also specializes in wedding and pet photography, shares a lot of her photography at www.akginspiration.com, and breeds and trains bird dogs with Brave Heart Kennel in Point of Rocks, MD.       

Nathan X. Bergel is hanging a suite of small, intimate B&W gelatin silver non-altered images printed by the photographer.  His studies are about natural order and reflect his interest in finding beauty in the ordinary, in solitude, and in how weathered surfaces document nature’s process of reclamation. Two of his images were recently selected and published in the 2013 “Currents Art and Literary Magazine.”

Nathan is a recent graduate from Christopher Newport University, Newport News, Virginia, with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Psychology and a minor in History.   Nathan has been exploring Black & White 35mm film photography, is an accomplished downhill skate boarder, and enjoys reading Leo Tolstoy and other Russian authors. 

Here are two sneak peaks at what will be at the show. I am largely going to have color shots, but couldn’t resist working up some BW shots too. I will try and blog after the opening to show you how it looked at the gallery as well as additional images. One day I hope to have a book together too for these images.

Hop on over to the gallery blog and view the blog post they created for our show..  It has a sneak peak photo for each artist.   I am so looking forward to this show, it hit at a very busy season of work but it will be great to see these photos in print, hanging on walls… being viewed by people who may never have a chance to visit a place like Africa.

A new project… and I need YOUR help.

I am in need of photos… of your dogs.  Yes you heard me right, this photographer needs more dog photos (never thought I would say that). You see I have a new project in mind, and I don’t have enough variety in the breeds I get to shoot personally so I am looking for you to share your favorite photos with me.  Let me tell you a bit about the project and what I am looking for.  But first lets start at the beginning,  as per usual Luna had something to do with it.

I decided to do a stipple drawing of my favorite girl.  I learned the art of stippling (sketching with dots) way back in High school and have loved it ever since. Sadly, as is the case with many of my hobbies, I don’t get to stipple as often as I would like. So to combat this I thought I would start a new project. And this was the start of it… but I kinda started at the end. My goal is to select a dog breed to represent every letter of the alphabet and do a stipple drawing onto a card. Later I will probably offer the cards for sale but I need to get a couple more letters done.  This stipple of Luna will represent “V is for Vizsla”

I recently completed this one for a friend, “B is for Basenji”. This is her Basenji Petey. Isn’t he cute?  This is a very typical pose for him (and I assume other Basenji too)
So you see I have “B” and “V”  (kinda) covered but I have yet to start at the beginning.

Here is where you come in.

 Do you own a breed that starts with “A”?  Or know someone that does?

I am looking for my next inspiration and it could be your dog.  What’s in it for you you ask?  Well if your dog is selected as my next inspiration I shall send you a copy of the stipple drawing for keeps.

I am currently taking submissions for the letter ” A ” and ” B “. Once this letter is complete I will share and take submissions for the next letter.  You may submit images up until that point.  I may decide to do more than one breed for each letter so don’t rule yours out if you submitted it before I shared the completed letter.   Those with mixed breed dogs may submit as well if they feel their mix strongly represents one of the purebred breeds, or if you just have a photo you totally love and would work well for a card. That may turn into another series in itself, time will tell.

Here are some rules to make this process a bit easier for all. 

**  Images must be taken by you and owned by you… please no images that have appeared in other publications.

** I reserve the right to crop, alter, and/or change the composition of the image

** As the artist, I own the copyright to the original work I create from your image, I have the right to donate/exhibit/sell the original as well as create residual work from and/or publish in any way in the future

** If your image is chosen I will send you a copy of the original creation, most likely in greeting card form.

Image Requirements

* High resolution images in .jpg format

* Image filename should be as follows:

Fullname-letterA-1.jpg

Fullname-LetterC-1.jpg

If you want to submit more than one photo per letter please change the number to represent this.

Fullname-LetterC-2.jpg

Submit Photos to:  AnnaGibsonPhoto@aol.com

The subject line for the email should be ” Alphabet Series, Letter A” (change letter accordingly)

** In the email include your Name and preferred Email address.  Also please include some info about your dog. The name, breed, age, what you love about them, a funny habit… I like to know my subjects

**Please only send one image per email. With photos being higher resolution there can be complications with too many large files in one email. It is easier to just submit another email for any additional images.

I look forward to seeing your photos, please share with others who may be interested too, the more the merrier.

Shed hunting

Some of you may already know what season it is… maybe you are out there scouring the woods and fields too… maybe you are even bringing your pups along to share in the search… for what you ask?? Antlers of course. It’s shed hunting season in our area, and we have hit the woods hard this year. Logging an average of 8 hours a weekend, doesn’t seem like much but you cover a lot of ground in 8 hours, and the dogs cover even more.

Here are some shots from our outings lately.  Go on over to Luna’s blog to see more photos and get more of a play by play.  This weekend we were blessed with some really nice spring weather, sadly we didn’t find many sheds. But we still had fun.

We had quite the adventure today, but I didn’t bring the big camera with me.  Hopefully our good friend Ed will have a fun play by play of today over on his Blog. Links to his blog found on Luna’s page 

Sawyer Finale

The Sawyer family ended my family sessions for 2012, and despite the super cold temps we managed to get some wonderful family shots.  Such a fun family, here are a few favorites from the shoot.

I love when clients come to me with creative ideas for their shoot.  Sure they may have mostly been from Heather but hey everyone was a good sport and went along with it.

I don’t care if this one seems posed, I love it.

Love a good detail shot

The Ladies, how can you go wrong with such beauties, can you tell it was cold though?

Still figuring out a good BW conversion for LR4. But I do like this one.

LOVE love this one.  I know I am not the first to have a train track shot, but I love the light here too. So glad we were able to get out and get some christmas photos for this family. I had a blast, especially watching the silly string war at the end.  Note: Silly string does NOT work well when it’s cold.

Hope everyone is staying warm and has had a good January.  Been quite cold here and we have had a couple small snow showers too.  Makes it difficult to get out with the camera, but I have been out to document the freezes a couple times maybe those will make it up on the blog soon, or at least the Vizsla blog.

The Lovely Lightle Family…

 

 

Next up is the Lightle family.

Yep they have a dog too, that’s actually how we know each other.

I trained their yellow lab Benny a while back and we have stayed in touch ever since.  Dara is quite the character and a talented artist too. More on that later.

Love this shot, I mean who doesn’t love the fishy face??

So much love in this family. They have been through some really hard times in 2012, I’m praying their 2013 is full of renewed strength, peace, and good health.

So I mentioned Dara was a fellow artist, is she talented or what?  Check out more of her work over at her TatAttack website. I will post more from a Henna party I attended, good times.

 

2 dogs + 2 cats + 3 humans = whole lotta fun

Where on earth have I been??? Well this year went by entirely too fast (as usual) and the end especially flew.  I have never been able to come up with one of those awesome year end reviews so I will just be bringing you some highlights of 2012 over the next couple posts.

First up the Benson family, who happens to also own a Vizsla and a lab.  I trained their Vizsla, Elmer, earlier in the year and they asked me to take some family photos for them.  I was happy oblige so we got together on a butt cold day in December and braved the weather for the sake of photography.

Such troopers, hoping to get together with them again in warmer weather to add to their collection.

Matt is always a crackup

I mean seriously how can you go wrong with such a beautiful family??

Like father like son… Elmer is a goof too

Even their cats were pretty

Lucky was totally in once she learned treats were involved

Elmer largely just wanted to know where his dad went.

I find these last two hilarious, I will leave you to come up with your own captions.

Many thanks to the Benson family for inviting me into your home and being beyond hospitable, even going as far as inviting me to your thanksgiving dinner part II.  I had a blast taking pics for you all, even if the pets were not cooperating.

So one family shoot down and I had two more back to back the following Sunday. I shall bring you some highlights from those next time. Hope everyone is having a great start to 2013

LPTG 52 Week Project; June

I bring you the month of June

LPTG 52 Week Project; Week 21: “In the Fridge”

It’s the start of berry season… I have been busy making strawberry jam, some of which is already residing in the fridge for our enjoyment. So I thought it was fitting to share the bounty with you via photo. I would share for real if anyone actually lived near me.

LPTG 52 Week Project; Week 22: “Memorial Day”

Many to remember on this day… I was without my “real” camera when I witnessed this wonderful evening light, thankfully I had my iPhone. Happy for once an iphoto turned out as well as I hoped.

LPTG 52 Week Project; Week 23: “Water”

From a small photo session with our new Betta fish… first pet fish I have photographed, I much prefer dogs I think. Bettas just don’t listen to posing prompts. Anyway he lives in the water so I thought it worked for the theme, plus he is kinda blue and red right? We like him, even if he doesn’t pose for photos well.

LPTG 52 Week Project; Week 24: “Monster”

I happened to go to the aquarium on our trip to Florida this week. I was thrilled to spot this shark to get a picture of for this week’s “Monster” theme. Check out those teeth!

Overall I am pretty happy with this shot, not easy at all to get pictures at the aquarium… not to mention all the people wanting to get pictures too. I love the composition of this shot a lot, and though the light was a little harsh on the top I think it helps lead the eye around too. Not too in love with the color/temp but kinda lends to the underwater feel too so I didn’t want to fudge with it too much. Of course it helps to have such a cool subject too. (Yeah so I kinda disagree with most my problems with this shot. The more I have looked at it the more I like it)

LPTG 52 Weeks; Week 25: “Looking Down”

If I hadn’t been looking down I would have missed this little gem. I wish the reflections had cooperated a tad more with framing, but still a wonderful find I think. Can’t really make flowing water cooperate. I love that the pocket of light illuminated it though.

So what are your favorites?? This project will be over before we know it but I am still going strong. This has been a busy busy summer at work, and the training clients are still rolling in. SOon as I send one home I get another in it seems. But hey business is a good thing. Fall is here, at least the temps will be nicer while working dogs…. and that means hunt training starts again which is whooooo.