Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Sara's Garden Project

I have a few hobbies aside from photography, and one of my loves is gardening. I enjoy the little miracles I see every day when I'm walking around admiring the beauty. I tend to enjoy flower gardening a lot more than working with vegetables. I do enjoy pulling something fresh from the garden and eating it, but I have never been one for working in the kitchen and the thought of all the work involved with preparing things for long term enjoyment does not appeal to me one bit.

Back to the garden...in May I was digging up some weeds and out popped this little gem...


...a miniature oak tree :)  After much admiration, and going to the house for a camera to take a portrait, I replanted this mighty oak in the woods behind our house. I checked on it throughout the summer and it seems to be doing well so far.

Taking that photograph got me thinking that I should try to take portraits of everything in my garden. That thought led to taking flower portraits in situ with my professional set up (insert laughter here):

which turned into portraits like this:

or these (set up with a piece of white bristol board instead of black):


Then I decided it would be easier to pick some and take them indoors to photograph:

These were seed heads I had saved from the previous fall to photograph "sometime"



And then I tried to get artsy and creative in different ways:








The great thing about this project is that it can go on forever. I am nowhere near done photographing all the things in the garden....and not even close to scratching the surface on the creative side.

When other photographers tell me they can't find anything to take photos of, it always gives me pause. I have never had that problem, but I guess there is that expression...simple minds are easily amused :)

Thursday, October 14, 2021

Showing your work

Groundless
 

As I mentioned in my previous post, I sometimes struggle with the question: how do I want to share my work?

This year I have shown my work in two solo exhibits and two group exhibits...all local venues within the province. Earlier this summer I decided to try something different and I answered an international call for a photography exhibit with the theme "Water". A Smith Gallery is located in Texas, and the exhibit was curated by Doug Beasley, co-editor of Shots Magazine.

I received notice in August that one of my images was accepted (Groundless - pictured above). There were 930 submissions and 55 of them were selected for exhibit, so I felt quite honoured. The exhibit opened on September 10th and runs until October 31st. A virtual walk through was held on September 25th, and Groundless is shown in the photos below, images that I received from the gallery owners:




As far as I know, there are no galleries in Canada that charge for submitting your work for a juried exhibit. Usually there are restrictions regarding the number of images you can submit for consideration. However, galleries in the United States seem to run differently. This particular exhibit cost $38 (US funds) for 5 entries.

So why pay to enter when there is no guarantee of being selected? Good question. 

In addition to the entry fee, if you are successful and you don't live in the area, you need to send in your framed image or pay for the gallery to print your image and rent a frame. Due to the cost of mailing a framed image, as well as the unreliability of mailing across the border, I decided to have the gallery print and frame my image. (a cost of $35 US)  

So by this time I have invested $73 US ($92.36 at today's exchange rate).  Although it's great to be able to put an international exhibit on my resumé, I really can't think of a reason to continue with this method of showing my work.

I would have loved the opportunity to meet with the other photographers by zoom and listen to everyone talk briefly about their work...that would have been a great experience. Otherwise, I can't think of a benefit to pay $100 to participate in an exhibit. Now....if my image sells I might change my mind about that. But I won't hold my breath for that to happen...lol.